I have been with my father to the place
He was born and spent his first six months.
A stone-fitted cottage
High in the hills
In County Cork.
A place of steep slopes and rocks
And sparse grass
And heavy, hanging mist.
Taken there after a dinner of boiled potatoes
And lamb stew
By a distant relative or a friend of a distant relative
It was never made clear
Up a rutted path
My father rode in the bucket of a tractor
Up the steepest parts
While the rest of us kept pace
With the farmers daughters and dogs.
He told his tales of how his mother would
Walk four hours into the village for supplies
And how their small family would spend months
Isolated in this harsh magnificence.
An isolation made deeper
By their being shunned by the local people
For my grandfather’s refusal to join
The movement.
He being Scottish and my grandmother English.
His time in the stone cottage
Is what my father based his Irishness upon.
Your great-grandfather William Blacklock came from Scotland to Ireland as a boy when his father was appointed to be the shepherd on an English estate outside of Michelstown, Ireland. He and his brothers Archie and Adam and their sister (name?) would walk several hours to the village school on the days they were not needed on the estate.
In the early 1900’s, Archie and Adam left for Canada to start their own sheep farm in Alberta. William was too young to leave and stayed at home until World War 1. He enlisted and went to England. During his time in the military he was elevated in rank several times, and then disciplined back to corporal when his love of drink got in the way.
At the end of the war, William returned to Ireland with his new English bride, Agnes Bolton, but it was a changed country. William refused the opportunity for membership in Sinn Fein.
This is where grandpa Jock was born.
Doors in the village were closed to them and Agnes was not permitted purchases in the village shops. Occasionally fresh milk and eggs would appear at the bottom of their path to the village. The isolation of the mountain was heightened by the social and political reality of the troubles.
They had to leave. But William’s skills were limited. He knew sheep. But that skill in Canada was not in high demand. He had to make a difficult decision.
He could go to New Zealand or Australia where sheep were plentiful.
Instead he went to Canada where his brothers ran a huge sheep farm in Alberta.
Was he expecting hospitality? Kinship? If so, it was a rude surprise.
Sent out to winter range in a rough plank shack made it clear that their welcome was icy. Why? He doesn’t know. The Salvation Army had supported their move to Canada but it is thought that the brothers had also helped with the fare to Canada. We know that William’s drink had created problems earlier in his life and perhaps the brothers wanted nothing to do with it. Nonetheless, it seems cruel to put a young family twenty miles away from the main ranch.
Whatever the reason, the small family moved to Calgary where Bill worked in a steam plant until he was fired.
At the suggestion of a friend, Jock Shannon, they moved to Astoria, Washington with the new baby Jean, where William worked in a tannery steam plant until they were removed by the authorities because Bill had claimed to be Canadian and not British although it is not clear what difference that would have made.
So it was back to Canada. Vancouver this time, where they knew no one. Living on Kingsway or Hastings and William, a big powerful man, slinging shingles off the railcars, unable to keep pace with Chinese labourers half his size.
Leaving his family, William headed for Powell River to fight a forest fire and stayed to build a footpath through the forest to Brooks School and then there was a job at the mill.
And then my Grandpa Jock at age 7 and Jean aged 5 moved to Mowatt Bay. Archie was born soon after.
Grandpa Jock remembers the float house as an adventure. You could see storms coming all the way down the lake.
“Maybe twenty by sixty with a fence around the whole thing. There were two or three bedrooms with a kitchen and dining room, a wood stove and heater.”
The furniture was rough and haphazard but he remembers it as home. The privy was at the end of the gangway where William always did his washup.
At high water the float was level, but as the water went down it was high-sided, sitting on a stump.
Grandpa Jock has a lot of good memories—taking a cedar plank and cutting sharp ends and paddling around the bay—“running the blocks” which was hopping from one cedar block to another. He had a Vancouver Sun paper route and delivered 65 papers every morning.
It was a community. Maybe ten or twelve float houses all together in the bay. The health people made them tow the float to Two Mile Bay because they were polluting the water around the swimming beach.
It was a four mile hike to the elementary school, and later a longer walk to the Brooks high school. Sometimes a taxi came to take them to school.
William couldn’t swim so when his teeth fell into the lake he had to get someone else to dive in and find them.
William like his drink and when he came home would give Agnes what was left of his pay. Eventually she would meet him at the mill gate and take his pay then and there.
Eventually they moved into a house in Cranberry. It was never painted. They had to carry water 200 yards uphill, especially difficult on wash days when they filled the copper tub.
Uncle Archie eventually took over the house and William built a small cottage on the back of the property. It always had an outdoor privy.