A Story About the Sisters of Christ the King in Anaham, 1944-2013

A Story of the Sisters of Christ the King and Anaham, 1944-2013

   In 1944, Tl’Etinqox Chief Casimir Bob offered land to the Sisters of Christ the King.  Archbishop Duke built the convent.  The sisters offered to serve the people, which they did for decades.  At one time, Anaham had ten sisters.      

   "Sister Nurse"

                                                        

   The sisters were nurses.  In those days, people rarely travelled.  For many of us, these sisters were better than doctors.  People would travel by horse and wagon to see “sister nurse.”  Sister Theresa would travel by horse and wagon, in all kinds of weather, to treat the sick.  The convent was our pharmacy.

    The sisters ran the hospital near their convent.  They treated people from all over.  They delivered babies.  They saved lives.  Oldtimers will remember the day the hospital burned down, in June, 1958, on a hot day.   People came running to rescue as many patients as they could, but some patients died in the fire.

     The convent was also our source of religious inspiration and religious articles.  Who didn’t get a rosary or scapular from them?      

   "Teaching All Subjects"

 

     The sisters were also teachers.  They taught in our schools, and not only catechism.  The first school was a one-room cabin by the priest’s house.  The second school was Raphael Alphonse’s old house.  The third school was Late  Johnny Harry’s house.  Then the present school was built, with electricity and plumbing, which the earlier schools did not have.    Sister Assumption taught in the one-room cabins and in the present school.   Soon there will be a new school. 

   Many people remember the sisters teaching all subjects in the school.  Until the 1970s, all the teachers were sisters.  Even the first teachers who were not sisters were Catholic:  Mr. Joe McIsaac and Ms. Joy Zelamaya, for example. 

Sister Eileen would be in the school early every day to supervise floor hockey, and there until late at night.  Under her leadership, the school won tournaments in floor and ice hockey, in Anaham and elsewhere.  When she blew her whistle, children and staff jumped.

The sisters also brought school students on field trips.  One memorable annual trip was to the May Ball Festivities at Alexis Creek.  Students square danced, as they did at other times during the school year.  The sisters even ran clubs, such as Brownies, Girl Guides, Cubs, and Boy Scouts.    

The annual school Christmas concert was a fun and glittery event.  It required lots of preparation.  One year, the school performed “The Nutcracker.”  Another year’s theme was “Around the World.”  Students had fancy costumes and did dances from different cultures:  Dutch, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, and prairie Indian, for example.  Another year, the students acted out “Twas the Night Before Christmas.”  At the end of the concert, people would honor the nativity scene.  Sometimes there was a real baby in the nativity scene.  

                                                                                                                        

"Happy and Relaxing"
 

Sister Rose, our special Sister Rose, collected and distributed clothes for years.  She had a green thumb, and her garden was beautiful every year.  Many of us stole apples from her tree.  Sorry, Sister.  There were even chickens for awhile.   Sister Rose wanted to be buried in Anaham, but she rests in peace in Quebec, near other sisters and their Mother House.  Perhaps there’s an apple tree there. 

The beautiful grounds around the convent  were a great place for children to play.  How happy and relaxing that was for us kids.  Some children even stayed in the convent for awhile.          

The sisters prepared generations of us for sacraments.  They did this throughout the Chilcotin:  Stone, Redstone, Nemiah, Toosey, and Alexandria.  For baptism,  communion, and confirmation, the sisters were our patient, caring teachers.  A sister would help nervous parents and godparents during baptism.   

Sisters saw many priests serve in Anaham, and they fed many of these priests at the convent.  Father Haggarty was a frequent diner.  Now that he is in  Lillooet without any sisters to help, perhaps he can cook.  Father John is in North Vancouver and Father Maynard is in Edmonton.  Perhaps they can cook now, too.  The people gave the sisters fish and moose.  The sisters gave the people their dedication.

  The sisters served with many priests, brothers, bishops, chiefs, and councillors.     

  The sisters also made spiritual house calls.  They would visit homes during May, the Month of Mary.  They brought communion to the sick and to elders.  They would always be ready when a family was bringing a body back before a funeral:  the church would be open, clean, and welcoming in those hard times.  They would pray with us.  They would pray for us.  They became part of us.

"Busy Times"

At Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter, busy times, the sisters would decorate the church, with help from the community.  At Thanksgiving, each helper would bring something.  Each would go home with something. 

During advent, the church was beautifully decorated, with a nativity scene, branches, and candles.  If a sister chose you to light an advent candle, you would feel like a very special person.  Up in the loft, the children would sing along.  These young participants would remember Midnight Mass for years.  The church would be warm and crowded.  The New Year’s Eve  celebration would sometimes be in the convent chapel.   

During Holy Week, sisters would choose the readers, as they would for weekly masses.  Being asked to read at a mass was an honor.    

Many times during the year, children and their families went to the convent chapel in the wee hours.  This was before everyone had electricity.  The convent would be a warm and bright place.

"Favorite Sisters"

     

Each of us has favorite sisters. Some were here for a long time.  Some were here for a short time.  Some went away for awhile and came back.  Some went to other countries:  Haiti, Philippines, Korea, and countries in Africa, for example.  Some sisters retired.  All were special:   Sister Marcella, Sister Hisako, Sister Joanne, Sister Jackie, Sister Gemma, Sister Henriette, Sisters Sheila and Elnora playing guitars, Sister Edwina, and Sister Joan with her beautiful singing voice.

Sister Helen had a volkswagon, which people would race on horseback, and a little house where she taught pottery and other crafts.  Sister Eileen played the church organ, and drove fast, until a deer hit her.  She says she didn’t hit the deer.  She says the deer hit her.     

Sister Theresa was called Sister St. Paul, when sisters had saint’s names, not their own names:   Sister Lucienne (Sister Assumption), Sister Evva (Sister Veronica), Sister Irma (Sister Gabrielle), just to name a few.  In 1994, the sisters celebrated 50 years of service in the Kamloops diocese.

"In Our Hearts"

Chief Casimir Bob welcomed the sisters to Anaham.  Today his grandson, Chief Joe Alphonse (me), and councillors, thank the sisters for 69 years of service.

This is a sad time and a happy time.  We say farewell to the sisters, who have been here so long and done so much.  We miss them already, and they’re not gone yet.  Come visit anytime.  We’ll ask the deer to stay out of the way. 

The sisters leave our land, but they stay in our hearts.

-Written by Carla Alphonse and Michael Wynne      

Bike, Bush, Breach, Be, Beer, Bard

Sunday, October 6, 2013   Williams Lake, Canada

With a title that goes from bike to bard,
Catching your eye should not be hard.

This tale begins on a bike, riding in search of Dog Creek Road.  One can find this road by driving
from Vancouver on the TransCanada Highway 350 kilometres north northeast, then on Highway 97 200 kilometres north, then on Highway 20 two kilometres west of the Williams Lake junction.

Today I found Dog Creek road through on bush trails that spidered up the hills that divide it from South Lakeside Drive, which branches off Highway 20 one kilometre west of the aforesaid Williams Lake junction.

A previous attempt had me go to the end of South Lakeside, about seven kilometres, then climb onerous hills on shrinking trails before I emerged at Kwaleen School, the latest local public school to close; but on the same side of the hills as South Lakeside Drive.  Today I branched up less-onerous hills only two kilometres along the drive.

Bushwacking away, mostly pushing my bike, I emerged at Allen Road, which joins Schmidt Road, which joins Dog Creek Road.  Rather than a leisurely coast downhill back to Williams Lake, however, I rolled eastward off Dog Creek Road onto Tamarack Road, to search for a bush trail way to get back downhill to the city below.

Woody Guthrie came to mind as I walked up to a log fence with a sign that said, "No Trespassing."  On the other side it said nothing.  That side was made for you and me, but I walked along the fence rather than breach it.  A log mansion has breached the hilly forest, its kilometre-long, winding driveway private, but a necessary path downhill, to...

Walmart, another breach of the local wilderness, and robust local economy and fair wage legacy.

That legacy is history across Highway 20, where a non-operating sawmill squats along the Williams Lake River Valley.  A lake river valley, you wonder?  Yep.  Riding among the many buildings and piles of planed lumber and logs, I remembered when this mill was noisy with jobs and production, a few short years ago.

I rode toward the millsite bridge, to avoid going farther along the river to find a cross the river on one of many railway flatcars converted to bridges farther downstream.  Every time I have seen the bridge, the gate on its east side has been locked.  Today the gate was open, the padlock hanging on the gate's chain links.  Open gate, open lock, like Rome, open city in the Italian film of that name, private property in retreat, at last.  The mill people or the bike people breached this barrier, I rejoiced.  I want to find someone to thank.

I rode a kilometre along the path on the river's east side, then began to climb a trail to the railway crossing above.  This crossing had crew shacks and sheds when I came to Williams Lake in the early-1990s.  An old woman lived in a little house surrounded by lilacs, on the west side of the tracks.  Now all the buildings are gone.

Two snakes, brown, about a centimetre wide and 40 centimetres long, crossed my path as I climbed the trail.  Coleridge's line from The Ancient Mariner came to mind as I stopped my bike to let first one snake, then 20 metres farther uphill the other snake, cross my path:  I honored man and bird and beast, as Coleridge wrote; or at least I honored snakes.  Perhaps a reference to Milton's Paradise Lost is more fitting.  The snakes breach the land long after provincial government sold what was a provincially-owned railway to what was a federally-owned railway, and is now a subsidiary of a United States railway.  The railway went.  Jobs went.  Snakes survived, possibly thrived.

I considered riding a few kilometres north to the dump, with its Share Shed, actually two sheds, and surrounding ground, where people may leave things or take what others leave.  I imagined that many former millworkers shopped there, given the recent destruction of the local economy by governments and businesses, near and far.

But people be.  People survive, some happily like me, here in this depressed and sometimes depressing city, whose population was 13 000 when I got here in the early-1990s and is below 10 000 now.  The art of merely being, enjoying each day of life, is a useful art too rarely practiced.  My late mother-in-law could do it.  I have a photograph of her merely sitting on a lawn chair, smiling in the summer sunshine.  Many times I saw that look of contentment on her face:  merely glad to be alive.

The beer can, which I found in the dirt off the edge of the Walmart parking lot, in my bike bag, I rode across the train tracks, walked uphill a couple blocks, and rode a few more blocks home.  Riding along the paved path that joins my apartment building to the local recreation centre, with its swimming pool, two ice rinks, and performing arts theatre, I saw several beer cans.  They filled my bike bags.  The beer cans were from fans of last night's hockey game between a local team and another town's team, in an adult league that feeds no professional hockey league.  The economy goes nowhere, the hockey players go nowhere, but the beer cans go for dimes at the local liquor store, a  government-owned corporation in a province and country selling assets built by generations of people.

These were mostly Budweiser beer cans.  I once read that the Busch brewery in St. Louis, USA, or somewhere, has enough capacity to fill the whole Canadian beer market's volume; albeit with yucky beer. This could turn Canada into a nation of teetotallers, or alcoholics for lack of tasty beer. 

One bike trail from earlier in the day was called Guinness, presumably the beer choice of some mountain bikers.   I wouldn't ride those steep trails, drunk or sober.

While I wait for a local renaissance, I'll turn on the U.S. Public Broadcasting System television channel to watch William Shakespeare's Henry the Fourth, Part Two, from the English Renaissance:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/episodes/the-hollow-crown-shakespeares-history-plays/synopsis-henry-iv-part-2/1750/