ODDS’N’SODS — Getting there was half the trouble

Well, sirs, I first heard of Anyox, B.C., way back in 1935 when I met a fellow riding the freight trains. (That seemed the thing to do in those days.) “I just came from Anyox,” he told me. “Worked in the copper mine there.” Naturally I asked, “Where the hell is Anyox?”

“Well,” says he, “it’s north of Prince Rupert and east of Alice Arm, but never mind that. Let’s find out when No. 403, the next freight, is going east.” It was about then that the Mounties picked us up and shoved us into a boxcar . . . but that’s another story.

To move ahead to 1937 — I’m minding my own business wrapping rolls of paper for the Powell River Co. when I get a letter from one Peter Murphy advising me that I’ve been hired as a helper on a diamond drill and to report to head office in Vancouver a.s.a.p. It turns out that said Murphy was the boss of the outfit called T. Connors Diamond Drilling Co., the office boss and factotum being Dunc Chisholm. Murphy was an excitable little character, to say the least, whereas Dunc was more easy-going. When the dust had settled, it seemed that we were going to, of all places, Anyox.

“Anyox, haven’t I heard that name before?”

We were sailing under secret orders, or so I was told. The scuttlebutt was that Cominco (Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company, in those days) had purchased the town of Anyox from Granby and had the right to mine what was left of the orebody.

An old pal of mine, Bill Mathieson, had gone to work for T. Connors a year before and, lo and behold, the first thing I knew, he and I were sailing on the Union Steam Ship Cattalla.

Say, boys, how many of you have sailed across Queen Charlotte Strait, then into Queen Charlotte Sound? With a nasty westerly blowing, it’s an experience you won’t forget. We crossed in twenty-foot waves with a couple of nice Yankee girls and teased them all across the Sound. We were in our early twenties in those days.

We had many interesting stops, including Namu, Prince Rupert and, of course, Hyder, Alaska. We didn’t have time to go into Stewart, B.C., three miles away, but we did slip into Hyder. At this ancient town of old saloons, we replenished our booze supplies with provisions of lemon gin. Horrors — lemon gin! It seemed popular in the area, as there was plenty on hand. Not bad stuff, but it didn’t seem to last long.

Then up the Portland Canal to Anyox. The wharf was solid and stood up to a rough docking by the old Cattalla as she came alongside. By this time, Anyox was a ghost town for all practical purposes, so few were there to welcome us. Postmaster Bill Eve was there, though. We got to know Bill quite well over the following nine months, often while playing cards at his house. In Peter Loudon’s book, “The Town That Got Lost,” William F. Eve is given as his official name, but to us he was just Bill. He had a nice young daughter named Bubbles, and in a town where she was the only young lady, Bubbles was pretty popular. But, being a little shy in those days, I wasn’t in the game. Incidentally, Loudon’s book is well worth reading, though there is one thing I should set straight: Louden was told by some air force type that the liquor store was open until the start of World War II. This, I can inform you, was not true. We had to send out to Rupert for the stuff. I was in said RCAF later and, as in any other group, we had our share of liars. Well, back to the diamond drill crew. There were Ezra Campbell and Glen Marshall, the diamond-setters — they were the bosses.

Diamonds were set by hand in those days; holes were drilled in the bit and then the borts in the holes were caulked with small punches. (Borts are low-quality industrial diamonds, often coming from Brazil or Africa.) Behind the bit was the shell, set with ballas, another hard stone, which kept the size of the hole uniform all the way down and allowed water to flush the cuttings up from the bottom of the hole. Diamond-setting was a painstaking trade.

The rest of the crew consisted of a driller and a helper. There were six crews, including: Mathieson and Gold, Bridgeman and Aconite, Holmes and Marshall, Squires and DeJardine, Green and two others I can’t remember. We spent a lot of time exploring in those early days.

— This is the first of a 2-part article. Doug Gold is a retired Cominco supervisor.