CPR Section House
Friday, March 23, 2012
Tension Builds
This song during the 60's as a teenager living in the CPR section house had a big impact on me. It captured the fear and panic of chaos at home and away.
I lived a lot of my life in fear , as I was a timid child in the a small world . Like most teenagers , I played the all-knowing role more for survival than in actual knowledge and experience. As long as others thought you knew something of life , there was no real challenge to your personal security. That behaviour got me through some personally scary times .
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Hi Christine
Love your blog -- it has so many interesting bits of information and links. Today i'm looking at a pile of grapes that need to be dealt with -- what's your recipe for grape jelly?:-)
I live in Vancouver and teach at Capilano University. Right now I have a break from teaching to do some research: my focus is the community of people who lived in the CPR section houses along the Kettle Valley line in south-central BC. Almost all of the section houses are long gone, but i'm slowly tracking down people who lived in them during the 1940s and 1950s. I'm particularly interested in finding out about the everyday life of living in a fairly isolated location, and especially what the experience was like for women and children.
My husband's grandfather was a CPR engineer and bought one of the last section houses along the line when the CPR abandoned the route in the 1960s. Since then the house has been a special family retreat. It still doesn't have electricity, but it has water direct to the kitchen sink. This fall, my husband and I have been living off and on at the section house, in part so I can capture a small amount of what it was like in the past.
Your recollections are wonderful to read -- they give me a glimpse of life along the railroad.
thanks!
Jeanne Mikita
I'd love to talk further -- you can contact me at jmikita@capilanou.ca
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