ABC Wednesday

and the letter this week is M

M is for Mascot Mine

Located some twenty miles northwest of Keremeos where the old buildings of the Mascot Mine cling to the side of the mountain that towers above Hedley, ( which the Sukwnaginx people of the Similkameen called 'the place of the striped rock')

the rock face of the mountain upon which the Mascot Mine is located

The Mascot Mine Story (available in the Hedley Museum, tells us that by 1898 almost all of the Nickel Plate Mountain had been staked, but Duncan Woods, a hard luck prospector had learned that "prospectors 

tended not to bother pounding claim-stakes on terrain inclined toward the vertical".

"Woods identified an unclaimed sliver and in the summer of 1899 hired a local packer, George Cahill, to go up and take a look.  Cahill did and staked a claim for Woods on the very edge of the precipice which plunges some 2900 feet down" into Hedley.  This cliff face working surface was not conducive to attracting development money, and in 1904, when the main mining company on the mountain decided they might be interested they sent their superintendent to talk to Woods.  Alas, the man so angered the old prospector that he vowed he would "eat road apples and old shirts"  rather than let this mining company dig one shovelful of ore from his claim.

It would be 1931 until Woods was able to make a deal with a group of energetic businessmen from the Coast.  The mill started operating on May 5th, 1936.  By 1941 it had yielded almost a million dollars in dividends.

It was about this time that Charles became part of the operation, working for part of a year in the Mascot Mine before he joined the R.C.A.F.  He tells hairy tales of the mode of transportation supplied for shift workers.  The mill site was some 950 metres below the mine mouth, and to connect the two " a mile-long aerial tramway consisting of two pairs of precisely parallel cables upon which danced a pair of three-ton bottom-dump cars - plain rectangular gondolas hanging from two tandem-wheeled axels."

"The loaded weight of the descending car powered the system, and controlled the speed with a huge brake.  Whatever needed to get to the mine, including shift changes rode to the top in the ascending car".

The Mascot Mine has had its ups and downs.  In the 1990s it was felt worthwhile to work the tailing ponds from the mine, and when that enterprise was exhausted there was talk of burning the original buildings of the mine, perched above the town, lest some crime or accident would find the owners liable.

However, the potential of the mine site as a Tourist attractions resulted in the Provincial Government making handsome donations to the cause.  The Upper Similkameen Indian Band made badly needed repairs to the buildings and the Hedley Heritage Museum Society lent its support to the project.

In June of 2003 the Similkameen Band obtained a grant of $300,000.00 "to retrofit the abandoned Mine and make it a site for adventure tourism by developing an interpretive program that not only complements the view but also gives people a feel for what happened here 50 or 60 years ago"

Click here  and here for the story of this enterprise and for pictures of the Mine site as it is today.

My thanks for information obtained in part from an article by Donald Malcolm Wilson www.crowsnest-highway.ca

What else has M to tell us, - click here to go to ABC Wednesday to find out.

April 12th, 2010

My mind is scrambling through the day, searching for something to write about.  What did I do? What should I pick??

Well, I set a record for leaving bed at five a.m. and returning to bed four minutes later - in the meantime padding down the hallway, scooping up the sleeping dog, slipping on a jacket, carrying him down the stairs and he, sleepy eyed, quickly tinkled (euphanism...) and came back to be picked up and deposited on the couch to finish his night's sleep.  And I too, was soon back to sleep for another hour.

When the mornings are warmer and lighter I stay up and putter in the garden, but still, in April, the sweet warmth of the bed calls me back.

Monday, and I change the bed linen, wash the breakfast dishes while I watch the rosy breasted finches feeding on the niger seed in the far apple tree.  I haven't seen any gold finches yet, but they will be back soon.

Small sighs of dismay when I dip into the day's list of blogs I follow and find that the Weaver of Grass has posted a list of literary quotes that SOMEBODY has identified completely.  100%.....  They are mostly all familiar, but I could certainly never identify all the authors.

I go on to do some paper work, write a letter of love, take Caspar for another short walk to shake off all the trimmings that Charles has clipped off his little legs.  Now that he is such an old gentlemen we do this job in bits and pieces, - a little trimming today, a little more tomorrow, and so on.  Before the job is all finished he is inclined to look a little shaggy in spots, but there - does that really matter when the sun is warm and the breeze is fresh and he lives to see another spring.

We stop for a cup of coffee, and then I go out and start some water on the garden, - a small sprinkler that will do the job efficiently and not disperse the water into the wind and away, away.

Lunch time and I open a can of onion soup to add to the cheddar cheese and hamburger concoction - a leftover in the freezer.  Charles has always been most appreciative of his meals,  - handy with compliments and sparse with complaints.  For which endearing trait I am most appreciative.

A little reading after lunch, until I nod off - then up, refreshed, and out to the kitchen to bake a batch of banana/blueberry muffins and make plans for supper, - is there enough salad left, - shall I retrieve a chicken breast and shake and bake it?

It is Happy Hour, but Charles has escaped outside and is deep into a new watering project involving pipes and stiff plastic hose that is not in the least amenable to bending, - I don my go-fer cap and eventually we settle down to a little drink, a little supper for us, and for Caspar and Callie the cat, -  an hour of Tom Barnaby, and then I am off to bell practice.

our bell choir at Christmas

We practice a concert piece and then we shine the bells and pack up for a workshop on Saturday.

Home, and the end of a perfectly ordinary day that nevertheless gives great contentment for things accomplished, for peacefulness and conversation, for friends and dear ones to cook and care for, for the mourning dove that Charles spotted in the neighbour's tree and called me to come and see, for the barn flowers that are waiting to be planted and are flourishing still in their plastic bags.

The world is so full of these wonderful, ordinary days.   Amen

Skywatch Friday

Wind swept evening skies after a blustery day in the Simillkameen.

Whereas a few days ago K Mountain wore a lacy cap 

and there was yet another rainbow hugging the hills

April skies are capricious skies.....

For more wonderful skies go here, to Skywatch Friday..

ABC Wednesday

L is for Lavender

and for Lilies

and for Lavender and Lilies together

all from our Lovely Lost garden

ABC Wednesday, thanks to Mrs. Nesbitt and her crew of helpers, have many more interpretations of the letter L - here.

A Rainy Day

The April rain, the April rain

Comes slanting down in fitful showers,

Then from the furrow shoots the grain

And banks are fledged with nestling flowers.

And in grey shawl and woodland bowers

The cuckoo through the April rain

Calls once again.

Mathilde Blind,  April Rain

Finally all this blustery, miserable weather has produced a wonderful rain that falls gently on the ground the wind has dried, and the emerging garden that has had it up to here with the March breezes and now looks for the refreshing April showers.

It's quite lovely, - I retrieved the umbrella and Caspar and I went for a short walk, - he was not as appreciative of the moisture as I was.

It is a good inside day.  Charles is hunkered down in his new workroom at the back of the house, and I was inspired by our daughter's account of the wonderful homemade tomato soup she had yesterday.  A plethora of vine ripened tomatoes last fall ended up in the freezer just as they were.  Usually I would have chopped them, added onions and peppers and stuffed them into bags for stews and soups but that didn't happen last year.  So I ran their nice red frozen ripeness under hot water and slipped off the skins, then thawed them in the microwave, pureed them in the blender, mixed them with some cheese sauce left over from Easter Eggs Benedict, added another two cups of thin white sauce, some basil, some thyme, a little celery salt, a smidgen of onion powder, and what a nice soup for a rainy day!

Lovely with the remains of the Hot Cross buns, toasted.









Tomorrow we go over the Pass to Penticton, - what will the day bring, I wonder.

Beautiful blue sky and wispy clouds

or

this, another moody day.

Whatever, it is spring, and I love its capriciousness.

Easter

Break the box and shed the nard;

Stop not now to count the cost;

Hither bring pearl, opal, sard;

Reck not what the poor have lost;

Upon Christ throw all away:

Know ye, this is Easter Day.

Build His church and deck His shrine,

Empty though it be on earth;

Ye have kept your choicest wine—

Let it flow for heavenly mirth;

Pluck the harp and breathe the horn:

Know ye not 'tis Easter morn?

Gather gladness from the skies;

Take a lesson from the ground;

Flowers do ope their heavenward eyes

And a Spring-time joy have found;

Earth throws Winter's robes away,

Decks herself for Easter Day.

Beauty now for ashes wear,

Perfumes for the garb of woe,

Chaplets for dishevelled hair,

Dances for sad footsteps slow;

Open wide your hearts that they

Let in joy this Easter Day.

Seek God's house in happy throng;

Crowded let His table be;

Mingle praises, prayer, and song,

Singing to the Trinity.

Henceforth let your souls always

Make each morn an Easter Day.

Gerard Manley Hopkins 1866

On Easter Day the veil between time and eternity thins to gossamer.  ~Douglas Horton

Pamela Kemke Digital Art

He takes men out of time and makes them feel eternity.  

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

See the land, her Easter keeping,

Rises as her Maker rose.

Seeds, so long in darkness sleeping,

Burst at last from winter snow

Earth with heaven above rejoices...  

~Charles Kingsley

Ye sleeping buds, break

Open your green cerements, and wake

To fragrant blossoming for His sweet sake.  

~Margaret French Patton

Alfred Sisley

Easter Blessings

Skywatch Friday


A day in the life of the Similkameen Sky


5.55 a.m., and already a cloud has put one toe tentatively into the new day, on the wrong side of the bed!

7.01 a.m., and there is a tender rainbow in the west, - promises, promises...

The afternoon brings blue skies and alabaster clouds.

And in the evening the stillness of a glittering moon.

To see what the skies are doing in other parts of the world slip over to Skywatch Friday, here.