Let’s start at the beginning…

It’s pitch black and I need to pee…badly. My mom takes my hand and the flashlight beam bounces down the wooden path as we make our way to the outhouse I’m about to use for the very first time. We have arrived in Kwinitsa.

Kwinitsa was a CN railway station located between Prince Rupert and Terrace with a population of three…US! No running water or electricity. Not much of an adjustment for me since I was so young, but I can’t imagine what my mom must’ve thought. My dad worked for CN as a telegraph operator and was in charge of relaying messages between the trains as the radio signal wasn’t strong enough between Terrace and Prince Rupert. When we first arrived we didn’t have a car so the train would pick us up to take us into town. We had the option of riding in the caboose or the engine car, and I preferred the caboose so I could watch the world go by while laying on a bunk.

CN provided us with the basic staples such as toilet paper, kerosene for our lamps, dishes, bedding and other such necessities but for groceries we needed to go to the “big city”. The whole food situation was a little bit like Little House on the Prairie. Fish that my dad caught in the river was canned, a large garden for veggies, chickens and geese for meat and eggs, and lumpy powdered milk for our dairy intake (ugh).

Once I became school age, my lessons were mailed to me by my correspondence teacher and my mom became my instructor. School for a couple hours in the morning and the rest of the day was mine to explore the swamp or hang out in my tree house. Suffice it to say that once we moved to civilization and I had to attend school, I didn’t adjust well to having to sit in a classroom for hours at a time! Team sports and activities weren’t really an option so I joined the Lone Brownies in which I was mailed the tasks I needed to complete in order to get my badges and enrolled in Scottish Highland dancing classes in Prince Rupert. No typical ballet classes for this kid…I was determined to be unconventional in every way!

I never remember being bored or wishing there were other kids around. We were always busy with hiking in the woods behind the station, canoeing the swamp, fishing in the Skeena River, snowshoeing in winter, gardening, baking, canning and making jam, playing cards and games, and reading the library books that came on the train.

A few memories etched in my brain: our dogs returning from the woods with their faces covered in porcupine quills, my dad using a 22 rifle to shoot a packrat in my bedroom and the bullet lodging in the living room wall downstairs, jumping in the snowdrifts after heating up in our homemade sauna, my dad stuck in the outhouse when a wolf sat outside the door after hearing him “sing”, being chased by a bear after it was annoyed that our dogs had the audacity to chase it up a tree, a bear coming onto our back porch and my mom thinking it was my dad until she opened the door (suuuurprise!!), and having our front windows smashed in during the winter when the train’s snowplow went by too quickly with their large load of snow.

We left Kwinitsa when I was about eight and I hadn’t returned to the area until 2019 during a nostalgic road trip with my mom. Kwinitsa was barged down the Skeena River from its original location to Prince Rupert and is now one of the few remaining railway station museums. The staff opened it up for us to explore without any other visitors and we shared old photos and memorabilia with the curator. It was surreal to see the rooms that I’d grown up in. They seemed so much smaller than I remembered, but also the same.

Perhaps living in Kwinitsa inspired my need for outdoor adventures and exploring the planet? I’m not sure, but I do know that it taught me to enjoy my own company, appreciate nature, be self-reliant and have the propensity to roam.