Ch 17: To University

UČENÍ JE MUČENÍ (Learning is torture) 

When the Russians put the first SPUTNIK satellite into orbit, the US and its NATO allies discovered to their horror that the Communist countries had better educational systems and were producing more scientists, engineers and doctors than the West. The Western governments responded by pouring money into education.  Many new universities were established, students recruited and were offered generous student loans.

The University of Waterloo was born in that era. When I arrived on campus, construction companies were still at work, putting on the finishing touches. The secretary in the Admissions office pulled out my file and checked it over.

“You have all the requirements to be admitted as an adult student. Unfortunately your application came too late. We can only admit 480 students in the first year. We have a bottleneck in the drafting classroom, it can take only 120 students and the four classes are full.” she told me. “Drafting course? I am a draftsman, it is my job, I don’t need to learn drafting again” I told her.            

 She called her boss. He read my application. “You finished college in Czechoslovakia and I see that you went to a night school, took calculus, physics, English and history courses  and passed with A’s. Was it difficult?”  “It was not easy but I studied hard and managed” I lied.

OK, we will make an exception, you don’t have to take the drafting course. Congratulations, you are accepted into the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering as an adult student. See you in September.” he said.

I was stunned. I could not believe my ears. I would be going to university.

I was slowly getting used to the fact that I would be going to university when I received bad news.  “I think I am pregnant” my girlfriend Margo told me. I was shocked, what should I do? The worst part was telling her parents. Don, Margo’s father, took it well, remembering his army days.

 “Knocking up a girl, I thought you were smarter. Don’t say anything to my wife yet, she may take it really hard. I will talk to her first,” he told me.  

But Margo’s mother Jill took it with an English stiff upper lip and started to sort things out. “You should get married, the sooner the better. The United Church minister in Shallow Lake is a good friend of mine.   I am sure he will marry you. And you, Jerry, should go to university. It will be hard but you can do it. Margo can stay home. You need a degree for better life. Look what happened to us. Don was a medic in the army. He wanted to be a doctor after he was discharged. We moved to Ontario and he was accepted into the medical school at Mc Master University. Unfortunately he met some army buddies and they spent too much time playing cards. He failed the first year and took a job as a drug salesman. He likes his job but he is on the road all the time. What kind of family life is that?”

My head was spinning, getting married, becoming a father, I could not imagine that kind of life. Until now I had been in charge of my life, suddenly I became a spectator. A wedding date was set, a couple of friends were invited and I listened to lectures about family life.

Then Margo got sick and went to see a doctor. She came back with surprising news. “I have German measles. It is very dangerous during pregnancy. There is a big chance the baby would be born retarded. The doctor recommended to have  an abortion and I agreed.  ”

Suddenly my life took yet another turn and my memory is fuzzy about what followed. There was no reason for a naive, eighteen-year-old high school girl to get married. Her mother always stressed education and could stop the wedding. Instead she allowed her daughter to head into unpredictable future with only a high school diploma. I didn’t mind, getting married, it would be better than lonely university life.

                                                                                                                     

Happy or petrified ?

So the marriage went ahead and we spent the wedding night at the Chalmers’ hobby farm. On Monday Margo went back home to go to school and I stayed in the boarding house. We enjoyed married life on the weekends at the farm. On the last day of school Margo created a sensation in her class, wearing a wedding ring. Shot gun marriage, she is pregnant, was the verdict. But months went by and she stayed slim. Eventually the busy-bodies blamed the wedding on an eccentric English mother. We started out married life in a couple of rented rooms and I remember watching men landing on the moon on a small black and white TV.    

  

I had no knowledge of university life and was in for a surprise. Most lectures were in big halls, professors speaking with different accents, not giving a damn whether students grasped their lecture or not. Lectures in calculus, physics, chemistry, electronics, labs and more were being pounded into my brain. Fortunately there were other adult students so a few of us stuck together. We were an odd group. Harindar was a Hindu, smart as a whip. Lewis was a draft dodger from Alabama, slowly falling behind. Two gay students joined us because we didn’t care about their sexual orientation. I was hanging on to Harindars’ shirt tails, copying home assignments from him.

The midterm exams came and I knew that I would probably fail. But it was important to pass because their marks counted in the term average. So I made couple of cheaters, small pieces of paper covered with formulas we were supposed to know. In my old country, cheaters were fair game, at exams, almost everybody used them. Many were very elaborate and tricky; some girls would write formulas high on their legs, under a skirt where it was a taboo for the teacher to look. 

The math building 

Harindar was shocked when I showed him my secret weapon. At that time university exams were based on students being honest. Instead of looking for cheats as would happen in my country, the professor would occasionally leave the class to fetch something, giving me a chance to copy a formula. Luckiest I passed the midterm, barely.  

In my class were twin brothers Molnars from Slovakia. They had spent two years at the University of Bratislava and I was impressed how smart they were. Some calculus problem I spent hours trying to solve they figured out in couple of minutes. They had a complete contempt for our university. “Even high school at home is more difficult than this kindergarten”. I passed my final exams and managed to squeak through the first term. I noticed on the posted sheet that Molnar names were missing. They had flunked the term.  

I had more confidence going into the second term, knowing that I could manage. Our class was much smaller, many students had dropped out because school was too hard for them or they spent time partying instead of going to lectures. The Molnars were allowed to rewrite some exams and were back in the class. But their attitude hasn’t changed, they blamed flunking the term on prejudiced professors. This term some courses were elective so I picked up a few that were easier to reduce my load. Also there was another big change, all exams were open book and my cheating days were over. I passed the term and the Molnars flunked again, vanishing from the university.

Engineering was a co-op program, each four month school term was followed by a four months work with jobs in various companies. It was a good system, allowing students to get practical work experience in the engineering field and make some money. However it meant that we were moving every four months. It was particularly hard on my inexperienced wife, trying to find a job knowing that it would last less than four months. Eventually she found steady work in Kitchener and stayed there while I moved to my jobs.

One day I received sad news from a climbing friend in Czecho. He had heard through the grapevine that Franta, my climbing buddy who escape with me, had been killed in a car accident. We had kept in touch through mail and Franta used to send me post cards from his climbing trips. Then suddenly all of his mail stopped and I was wondering what had happened to him.

Four and a half years in the university went by with lightning speed. I wrote my last exam and it was time to look for a job. The wall in the engineering building was plastered with lists of companies that had job openings and students were signing up for interviews. One of the companies was Alcan. I still remembered the film I had seen some six years ago at Wright Engineers about the Kitimat Project so I signed up for an interview.

“We have job openings in Arvida, Kingston and Toronto” the interviewer  told me, giving a description of each job. I was not really interested. “ How about Kitimat? You wouldn’t have a job there?” I asked. He checked his papers again. “Unfortunately we don’t. Why would you like to work in Kitimat? It is up in northern British Columbia, a hardship post.  Not many people like it there.” I told him about the film. He chuckled. “You saw one of those propaganda films commissioned by Alcan”. The interview was over; he wished me good luck, knowing that I was not interested in his jobs.

I had many job interviews, the most interesting was with the Iron Company of Canada in Wabush, Labrador. I flew  there in the company’s aging turboprop plane. The airport in Labrador City was fogged in but the pilot was determined to land. The plane was descending, circling, then suddenly motors started to roar and we were in a steep climb. It happened few times, making everybody nervous.    “Don’t worry, we have a very experienced pilot, he flew a bomber in the war” said the stewardess, trying to calm the passengers. “Well, tell him the war finished thirty years ago. He doesn’t carry bombs any more, just a bunch of scared passengers. Next time when I go on this plane I want a parachute”  half-joked one passenger. The job at the Wabush mine was very interesting and if it was offered to me, I decided I would take it.

 “The man from Alcan that interviewed you called. He wants you to call him right away” my wife told me. I was wondering why he called. He knew that I was not interested in his jobs.

Enjoying a canoe trip on Abitibi river 

Ch.18: Long way to Kitimat.

“We have a job in Kitimat for a mechanical and engineer, are you still interested?” Asked me the Alcan man I had an interview a couple of weeks ago. Of course I was interested! “We will book airline tickets for you and your wife to fly to Kitimat as soon as possible. Good luck with the interview.”  

            The Kitmat-Terrace airport was fogged in so our plane landed in Prince Rupert. From there we took a three hours bus ride to Kitimat and arrived at three o’clock in the morning. The bus stopped, the driver called “Here is the Alcan Lodge“ and we got off. We were standing on a road with snow banks piled up to the power line. Where was the lodge? Then I saw a tunnel in the snow bank. We walked through it and on the other side were lights and houses, all snowed in. One had a sign “Alcan Lodge”. The door was not locked so we entered. On a coffee table was a note. It said “Welcome to Kitimat Mr and Mrs Bazant. You are staying in room 105.
The next morning I was given a tour of the smelter and then sent from one department to another, to chat with each supervisor. My wife was shown the town, shopping center, schools, hospital and swimming pool.

           

   

We were given a brief history of the Kitimat project: High up in the coastal mountains of northern British Columbia is Ootsa lake, the source of the Nechako River. The Kenney Dam created the Nechako reservoir. Impounded water was diverted through a 16 km long tunnel under the Dubois Mountain, down 2,600 feet through penstocks into a 780 MW power station in Kemano, a small, isolated community located at sea level. A hundred kilometres further north is the Douglas Channel, a long fjord reaching to the ocean. At the end of the fjord was an isolated Indian village Kitamaat. Nearby, Alcan built an aluminum smelter and a long transmission line connecting it to the Kemano power station. In the valley, carved out of old growth forest, was sited Kitimat, a town of 6,000. The best city planners were hired to design a modern community that would attract people.
 All facilities in town were within walking distance with a minimum of traffic.                                                                                            

                        


Kitimat is located on a coastal range with high precipitation. In mild winter the weather is wet. Snow is followed by rain and the weeks of grey, overcast sky is a challenge for many people, especially housewives, with many suffering from cabin fever. In a cold winter, a meter of snowfall in a day is not unheard of. It is company policy to bring both husband and wife for the interview so they are not surprised by the severe weather. However when the sun is shinning, summer or winter, you could hardly find a better place to live….told us Alcan’s PR man.

A week after returning to Ontario, Alcan offered me a job as a mechanical engineer in the smelter. There were a few other job offers but I didn’t need any persuasion regarding where to go in spite of arriving in Kitimat just after the dreaded meter of snowfall. The company would pay for moving expense and give us the cash equivalent of airline tickets to Kitimat. 

 We had decided to drive through the States, I wanted to see the Yellowstone National Park, my long time dream. However it was not the best time to go, the Yom Kippur War between Israel and Egypt had taken place a few weeks earlier and OPEC had declared an oil embargo against the USA. In many states there were long lines at gas stations and in California there were occasional shootouts between gas queue jumpers. But we would take the chance. 

Yellowstone Park lies in the Black Hills in South Dakota. The Indian tribes were pushed into this area by white settlers and the US government signed a treaty with them, promising that the land would belong to the tribes “as long the sun will shine in the sky and waters will flow in rivers.”  Then white men found gold in the Black Hills and the treaty became a worthless piece of paper.


Some hundred years ago a German writer named Karl May wrote a couple of books romanticizing the Old West. The main heroes were the Indian chief Winnetou and his pale face companion Old Shatterhand. Their journeys included the Black Hills. These books became very popular in Europe and were read by every young boy from my father’s generation on. In North America very few people have ever heard of Karl May, and readers would laugh at his European view of the West. But I remember being Winnetou while playing cowboys and Indians in my town’s park. Maybe I would meet his ancestors. 

Our first stop in the Black Hills was the Devil’s Tower, the lava plug of an ancient volcano, towering 350 meters above the surrounding countryside. It was a favorite destination of rock climbers. Near our campground I saw two climbers getting ready to climb a smaller rock tower so I went over to talk with them and they asked me to rope up. I was surprised that I could keep up after many years of pushing pencil.

Close to our route was Wounded Knee, a small town on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. At this site 300 Lacota Indians were massacred in the 1890’s by the US cavalry. I remembered this story; “Bury my heart at Wounded Knee“ was my favorite book. Also Wounded Knee had made recent headlines because it was occupied for 71 days by armed Indian warriors and there were frequent shootouts with the police and FBI. However I was disappointed when we arrived. There was only a plaque commemorating the massacre and foundations of a church burned down during the shootout that marked the location.

Our next stop was a campground near Mount Rushmore where the faces of US presidents were carved into the mountain. We were driving along a scenic road when suddenly through a break in trees lining the road I glimpsed HUGE HEADS  carved into rocks. They were enormous; I had not imagined something like that was even possible .I was amazed by the effort but not impressed by the work. To me as a mountain climber, each mountain has its own splendor and majesty. Blasting it away to carve face into it is like tattooing a pretty girl’s face, making her interesting but ugly.

At the visitors centre overlooking the carved up mountain was a row of flags snapping in the wind, speakers were blasting patriotic songs, and a couple of men were standing at attention and looking at the stony heads, right hand over their hearts. 

Suddenly I realized that this scene looks familiar. Yes, I had seen it in Prague where the Communist government had erected a huge statue of the Russian dictator Joseph Stalin. At the viewing stand speakers blasted communist songs and few communists stood at attention, looking at their beloved leader.

It then occurred to me that Russia and United States were in many ways alike. They had the same supper-power mentality: We are the mightiest, strongest, the best; both claimed to have great past and glorious leaders.

I read some comments in the visitor book : “What a beautiful view, I am speeches.” The next one claimed “The history of the United States carved forever in stone”. The last one upset me: “Man’s genius conquered nature. I am proud to be American”. Now if was my turn to write a comment. I looked around; nobody was there so I took the pen:                

        

“What are you proud of? You stole the land from the Indians and defaced their sacred mountain with heads of four clowns” and to rub it in, I added: “Pay attention to the third head with the mustache, it looks like the Russian dictator Stalin, you had been duped by the KGB".

I was disappointed when we arrived at the Yellowstone Park; the road to geysers was closed!   The sign at the Information Centre said that President Nixon had ordered all National Parks to be closed, part of the national effort to save gasoline. However I was determined to see Old Faithful. My wife stayed in a motel and I drove back to the locked gate. The countryside was full of snow but the road was clear so I jumped over the gate and started to walk. A half hour later a truck stopped beside me, it was the park ranger. “Where are you going? The park is closed.”   

I started to give him a sob story about being a refugee from a communist country, that I have heard so much about Yellowstone Park, that I was on my way to a new job, and this was my only chance to see Old Faithful. “OK, I will give you ride to the geysers but you have to hike back. It is a long way back” he warned me

The area around Old Faithful was snowed in; buildings were still boarded up for the winter. I was alone in the park, except for a herd of buffaloes, just the way it was in the past. Old Faithful blew high, hot water bubbled in various pools, and I walked around, dreaming of seeing the ghost of Winnetou with his silver-studded rifle.
Three hours went by fast and I started to hike back. Suddenly there was a car going in my direction so I lifted a thumb. It was a newspaper reporter and photographer doing a story about the National Parks being closed. I explained why I was walking on the highway and soon was telling them the story of my escape. The reporter was taking notes. “A refugee from a communist country hiking for miles to see geysers, dodging buffaloes along the road ….It will add a spice to my story”. He was delighted. “Make sure you buy the Sunday edition ….” 

                                                                         But we didn’t have time to hang around for the weekend; we were in a hurry to get to Kitimat. My new job was waiting for me ….. 

Ch 19: Kitimat yarns.

My first impressions of Alcan were good. I had a nice office overlooking the Douglas Channel and would watch the changing tides and ships coming and going. One day I was rummaging through my desk and found the logbook of my predecessor. His last entries made for interesting reading. It went like this:

March 15: More than 10” of snow overnight. Late for work, got stuck in the driveway.

March 18: Snowing all day, more than 3 feet of snow. Spent ½ hour in the parking lot digging out my car only to find out that it was not mine. 

March 19: Shoveling snow off the roof all evening. The weatherman is calling for rain tomorrow.                                                                                                

March 20: It rained all night and again this morning. Wife depressed, stuck in the house for a week.                                                                                        

    There were more entries but the last one was short:  March 28:  QUIT!   So that is how I landed my job in Kitimat!  

      Our boss was Charlie Fox, an arrogant Englishman who divided his employees into different categories: the British were on the top, then British subjects, followed by immigrants and lowest on the totem pole were Germans.  Draftsman Jerry Friedrich belonged to the last category. His claim to fame was a personal, hand written letter by Werner von Braun, the famous rocket scientist. Von Braun thanked Jerry for being interested in working for him, however the position was already filled and he wished Jerry good luck in job hunting. So instead of designing rockets, Jerry was drafted to the Wehrmacht and spent the war on the Russian front. He was an older, quiet, fumbling, mumbling person; it was hard to imagine him fighting the Russians. Sometimes at coffee beaks he would talk about the war and his luck that help him to survive:               

              

       One summer day he was at a forward observation post and his relief came half an hour early to enjoy the sun. Jerry left the post and a few minutes later it got a direct hit, killing his relief….. Another time their position was attacked by Russians. Jerry was drawing water from a well when a shell exploded nearby and the force of the blast thru him into the well. The position was overrun by Russians and all the soldiers were killed or taken prisoner. Jerry spent two days at the bottom of the well, listening to Russian soldiers talking above. The position was retaken by Germans and Jerry was fished out.  Or the time when they were retreating in the winter from Leningrad and Jerry broke his leg. He was lucky, it was a compound fracture and he was evacuated on the last train out of Leningrad.….  “I am a very lucky man, I survived the Russian winter” Jerry used to say.                                                             

        
However his luck had run out with Charlie Fox. It was a time when inflation was running high and the company gave all the salaried employees an extra raise. Charlie called each draftsman into his office to inform him about his raise. All but Friedrich were called in and he became upset, mulling about what to do. Eventually he screwed up his courage and knocked on Charlie’s door.    “I came about the raise, I didn’t get any….” Jerry mumbled but didn’t get any farther. He was interrupted by Charlie:  “You know Jerry, today is a special day for me, my anniversary. Thirty years ago I was in the RAF, flying a bomber to Berlin and we were shot down. I was the only one to bail out, the rest of the crew were killed. I broke my leg on landing and the Germans treated me like a piece of shit. I spent two years in a stinking POW camp.  And you come to me on this day and want to talk about money. Not today Jerry, pick another time…”   “But it was not my fault, I was on the Russian front…. “Jerry was mumbling leaving Charlie’s office.

       In Kitimat lived a few dozen Czechs that came after the Russian invasion in 1968. I heard various stories about their early days in Canada and some make interesting reading:  One recent arrival bought his first car and invited a friend to come along for a drive. The weather was bad, freezing rain made it dangerous. After a while they were passed by a speeding car.   “This guy is crazy, he is going to get killed” commented the driver. And sure enough a couple of miles further the car was smashed in a ditch. Inside were two occupants, heads covered in blood, moaning. They hadn’t worn seat belts and their heads had crashed into the windshield. Our Good Samaritans were not sure how to help, so they handled the accident as they would in their old country: They pulled the victims out, loaded them into their car and drove to the hospital in Terrace.                                                                                                                 
They stopped at a gas station to ask for directions. The road was glazed with ice. Another car arrived at the gas station and unable to stop, hit the Czech car broadside. A woman driver got out to look at the damage. “I am sorry, I am sorry, I couldn’t stop ….” She looked inside the car and saw two occupants spread on the back seat, covered in blood, moaning. “I AM SORREEE, I AM SORREEE….” She started to scream, believing she had caused their injuries. An ambulance arrived and took to the hospital two injured men and one hysterical woman.

      There was a famous story about the first bank robbery in Kitimat: Just before closing time, three men wearing balaclavas entered the bank. One carrying a gun stood by the door. “HOLD UP don’t move ” he yelled. His accomplices jumped over the counter, pushed the frightened employees into a corner and scooped money from the tills. They then ran out of the bank and into bush just a block away.

      The robbery was perfectly executed but the planning was lousy. A Hudson Bay Store cashier recalled that a week before three men had bought balaclavas. She remembered the men well. It was unusual to buy balaclavas in the summer and they spoke with a heavy accent. She gave the police good descriptions. There was only one road heading out of Kitimat and police quickly set up a road block, looking for people speaking with a heavy accent. When three Czechs didn’t show up for the afternoon shift at Alcan, their names were broadcast over the radio as robbery suspects. They managed to avoid the roadblock but within a few months two were arrested. The last robber escaped to California and lived there happily, feeling safe in another country. One day he was hitchhiking and the driver ran a red light. He was nailed by the police and the alert cop asked the passenger for his ID.  BINGO, his name came up, being wanted in Canada by the RCMP for a bank robbery…..

     My friend Otto was a fellow with itchy feet . He would work in Alcan for a year or two to save money and then quit. “Time to move!“ he would tell the family and take his wife and three children on a long adventure trip. Their apartment was sparsely furnished: a kitchen table with chairs , a creaky sofa and few bookshelves made from wooden boards and bricks. No beds, they slept on mattresses and all their stuff was piled up in cardboard boxes.  “Otto you live like gypsies, why don’t you get some furniture?” I asked him. "If we buy furniture my wife will get used to comfy life and she wouldn't go on another trip"
  

       A few months after we met, Otto quit his job in Alcan and was getting ready with his family to leave for California. He made big plans. “We are going to Los Angeles to Marina del Ray. I am going get a sailboat there  and sail the Sea of Cortez for maybe a year. Then we will sail back to British Columbia to Kitimat. See you next year!”

                                                                                                                      

A year later Otto was back in Kitimat. “Where is your boat?” I asked him. “It is on Vancouver Island.  We ran out of money in Seattle and my wife had to pawn her wedding ring. We managed to sail to Sydney and left the boat in the marina. I want to bring the sailboat to Kitimat and need a deck hand. Do you want to come with me?” Of course I would. But there was a snag, Otto only managed to get a week off of work, not enough time to go to the pawn shop in Seattle. We arranged that I would fly ahead to Vancouver, rent a car, drive to Seattle to pick up the wedding ring and meet Otto in Sydney. 

I picked up the ring in the pawn shop and on the way back stopped at the duty-free shop at the US border. As I was leaving the shop I heard “Jardo”, somebody calling me by my Czech nickname. I turned around and was dumbfounded. Standing in front of me, wearing a Greyhound bus uniform, was Franta, my climbing buddy who had escaped with me and who was supposed to be dead for the past five years. We shook hands. His was warm and firm, it was not a ghost.

       “You would not believe it” He said, “I have been running the Seattle- Vancouver bus route for two years. Each time I stop at the duty free shop so the passengers can buy booze. But I always stay in the bus to keep an eye on their hand baggage. Today, for some reason I got off the bus to stretch my legs. It was raining so I went into the shop and you were standing there.”

       “What happened to you? You were supposed to be killed in a car accident five years ago. I never heard from you since that time. Is it you or your ghost I am talking to?”  Franta smiled. “It is a complicated story and I don’t have the time to tell you everything now. But I have a two hour layover in Vancouver. Can we meet in Stanley Park?” Franta was waiting in Stanley Park and I couldn’t wait for his explanation. He was an oddball but faking his death?  

“Do you remember my girlfriend Hanna?”He asked me. I certainly remembered that pretty blond.  “After we escaped I got a letter from her that she was pregnant. She and insisted that I was the father of her daughter. Somehow she got hold of my address in Seattle and I started to get letters from her, from the Czech Embassy, from her Czech lawyer, and even from an American lawyer. All were asking me to pay child support. But I found out that she was going with another guy when I was dating her. She couldn’t prove that I was the father. Those letters were upsetting me so I decided to disappear. I wrote to my friend back home to spread the news that I was killed in a car accident. It worked, the letters stopped coming.”

“But why didn’t you tell me what you were going to do”? I asked. Franta looked at me with a smirk on his face. “I know you , you have a big mouth, you couldn’t keep a secret.”   

We stayed in touch. A few years later the company sent me on a course in Seattle and I saw Franta again. He changed jobs and was now driving a bus for a travel agency.  “I mainly do tours of the Rocky Mountains. We usually stay in one place for a couple of days. I keep my climbing gear in the bus in case I got a chance to go climbing.  Sometimes I catch other climbers, few times I took a passenger with me but usually I climb solo."  

“You are crazy to climb solo, you could kill yourself.” I told him. But Franta was fatalist. “What is supposed to happen will happen.”

  

Every year we would exchange few letters to stay in touch. Then one day my letter came back with a postal stamp “Addressee unknown” and I never heard from Franta again. I don’t believe he faked his disappearance again, he probably never returned from one of his solo climbing trips.

Alcan  aluminum smelter

Ch 20: Baby names and wildcat strike.

For an outdoor person Kitimat was an excellent place to live. There were hiking trails to Claque Mountain and Mount Elizabeth, canoeing and fishing for salmon in the Kitimat river, fishing for salmon in Douglas Channel  (called the Chuck), or sailing to many anchorages, some with hot springs, and much more. We bought a house, a half of a duplex with “great potential” for $30 000, the maximum we could afford. But the house had a million-dollar view of the Douglas Channel and mountains. Over breakfast at our kitchen table we could watch the fjord, the mountains and how the scenery changed with the weather and the season.

However for many people Kitimat was a transient town. They would stay three to five years and then move away. It was difficult to make and keep friends. Not many seniors could be seen in town, retired people moved south to a warmer climate.

Our house had big potential and great views: Mount Elizabeth from the living room. 

For mothers of a firstborn, Kitimat was not the best place to be. Their life was in turmoil but the family, mother, grandmother or aunt they could ask for advice or help lived too far away.  There were neighbours, friends and other mothers to turn to but it was not the same.

 We found that out when our first son was born. Neither I nor my wife had any experience with infants and the first few weeks were difficult. When the baby came home from the hospital I was afraid to hold him, scared that I could drop him or if pulled on his hand, it could break off like a lizard’s tail. “Your baby is beautiful” I had heard many times. Beautiful? That was a matter of opinion. To me, with a red, wrinkled face and bald head, he looked more like a little monkey.

Shortly after birth, new parents would face the difficult task of giving the baby a name. Many took an easy way out and named it after a grandparent or close relative; others used the name of some famous personality, a flower or something else they liked, not comprehending that their offspring would carry that name their whole life. (I wondered how I would feel about my parents if they named me Adolf). Well, I had a different idea. The name should fit the personality of the baby. I didn’t want to stick a name on the baby just because I liked it. Also I wanted a name that my mother could pronounce and would be somehow familiar with.  It was more difficult than I thought. We kept throwing names at the baby but none would stick. We consulted a book of names and asked other people, but to no avail. So I gave him a nickname - It. Then one day I was repeating names again, looking at It and suddenly Mark popped out. Yes, Mark would fit him perfectly. How could we miss that name before?  So It was named Mark Allistar, second name after the Chalmer’s farmer friend.

Naming our second son was even more difficult. We spent more than two weeks trying to find a name for It (the nickname inherited from his brother), but again nothing would stick. Local newspaper had a page announcing births and we missed the deadline; they wouldn’t put the announcement in the paper without the baby’s name. The second deadline was coming and still no name, nothing would stick to It.   I was thinking naming him Teflon but was afraid of what he would call me when he was a teenager. We were going through the same ritual again, calling out names, and out of the blue we stopped at Michael. “Nice name” I said looking at It. We continued trying other names but always came back to Michael. The Teflon curse was broken and we named the baby Michael Leslie after his aunt. I quickly learned new skills like changing diapers, feeding and cleaning the baby, and strange words like burping, teething and soothing. Time went by, the infants grew into babies and life slowly returned to normal.

Then one night I was woken up by the phone. “Wrong number,” I thought, trying to ignore it. But the phone kept ringing so I picked it up. It was my boss. “We have an emergency at the smelter and need you there. Be prepared to stay for a couple of days, bring a sleeping bag and some work clothes. I will pick you up at five this morning and tell you more.”  CLICK! “He doesn’t drink, could he be into drugs?” I was thinking, packing my sleeping bag. 

At five o’clock his car pulled into our driveway. Three of my co-workers were in the car. Our boss was explaining what has happened: “Our Company has another aluminum smelter in Arvida, Quebec.  The labour contract expired last month and the union went on strike. The Quebec Union is very militant, negotiations for a new contract were very difficult and the company was forced to shut down the smelter .

The union retaliated by sending a dozen of picketers to Kitimat and they set up picket line on the road to the smelter. The local union asked its members not to cross the picket line and the night shift didn’t show up for work. Only shift foremen and a few dozen of the hourly paid workers are in the smelter, keeping the pot lines running.

It is an illegal wildcat strike. The local union recently switched from the United Steelworkers of America to CASAW, a Canadian union and the leadership is trying to show the Company that they would not be a pushover in coming contract negotiations.

The wildcat strike took the company completely by surprise, it had never happened before. According to the company’s lawyers it is illegal for a union from one province to picket in a different province. They are going to get a court order to remove the picket line. But it will take a couple of days and management decided to keep the smelter running with salaried staff. The road to the smelter is blocked by a barricade so the staff will be ferried by boats from the marina across the Chuck into the smelter.”

It was a long boat drive from the marina on the opposite side of the Chuck to the smelter 

At the marina were many people, standing in small groups, talking quietly while waiting to be ferried across the channel to the smelter. The mood was gloomy. Alcan employed almost 3 000 hourly workers. Now the company wanted to operate the pot lines with 800 salaried staff. Many of them had worked in the past as hourly employees and were familiar with the smelter operation, however the majority were pencil pushers not used to the dirty work they were going to face.

Aluminum is produced by a complicated electrochemical process in large cells called pots. The raw material containing alumina is dumped into the pot where an electric current dissolves it into a molten bath of aluminum and crust. The aluminum is siphoned off into crucibles and cast into ingots. The operation of the pot must be constantly monitored and the pot can be put on “hold” for only a few hours. Otherwise it would get “sick” and be shut down. In the smelter were fifteen pot-lines casting 700 tons of ingots daily. If few pots got sick, chances were that the whole pot line could get sick and would be shutdown. Restarting lines was a complicated and expensive process that would take weeks. 

The inexperienced staff would have to maintain the production until the wildcat strike was resolved. There were hundreds of different jobs that had to be done. Many “old hands” were sceptical, predicting that it would be an impossible job to keep the production going and a few ex-union men felt queasy about crossing the picket line and becoming scabs.                                                                

It was a dark, cold and windy morning. One member of my group was a Dutch emigrant. “This morning reminds me of the beginning of the war. I was a small boy but I will never forget the day when the German army attacked Holland. People were gathering on streets, worried, wondering what was going to happen. I’ve got the same feeling now.” he said. I understood what he meant. We would be caught in a war between the Company and the union.