Alma Harris

On Aug. 30, 1983, Wilf Schmidt conducted the only known recorded interview with Alma Harris, in her home in Silverton. You can listen to the audio or read the transcript below.

[The Reco] was quite a luxurious hotel. It was Johnny’s home. Everything was for the guest the same as for Johnny. The towels were of linen, the sheets were of the best, the meals were of the best. It was like a large home, you might say. We had mining men, general managers, presidents of the companies that came from Toronto, New York. They’d phone in or send word through their companies they’d be there at a certain date, and could they have huckleberry pie? I still have linen serviettes, linen towels we had in the hotel.

These were stitched in with “Reco Hotel”? There were markings on them, yes.

There was some talk about he came from Virginia because he was trying to get away from somebody. Is that true? No. He came west as a young man. {1} He was reading those days about “Go west, young man, go west” and he came west. Wound up in Wallace, Idaho. He had a real estate office there. In 1891, Eli
Carpenter and Sandon founded the Payne and a piece of the ore that they found wound up in Johnny’s real estate office. He said he couldn’t keep his eyes off of it. He sold out and came north.

A lot of people have written about Sandon and there are a lot of mistakes. I know. I’ve read them.

Like, for instance a postcard that’s out right from the Sandon Historical Society there were 20,000 people in Sandon at one time. Never. 2,300 was the most. {2} And it was mostly all men. It was strictly a mining camp.

In the spring of 1892 [Johnny] came up. He borrowed a boat at Slocan City and came up on the lake. And when he got to New Denver it took him three days to get up to Sandon. He knew the previous year John Sandon had camped at a point where this stream came into Carpenter Creek, the main creek down the valley. When Johnny got up there he could see where he had camped. He called that Sandon Creek and he located the townsite and called it Sandon.

So he named it? He named it Sandon, yes. {3}

Some writers have written that it should have been called after Harris. He’s really the founder. That came up many a time during our residence there. Why didn’t you call it Harristown? He said well, John Sandon had preceded him. He found his camping spot and he named it Sandon.

Was his main concern mining? He was a young man and he was all fired with this ore and he was interested. But he didn’t know anything about mining. However, he ranged out in the hills, prospecting like all were doing there. All fired with this discovery. He bought a group of claims called Ruceau (roo-koh). It was pronounced ree-koh. It was always misspelled, so he changed it to Reco. He bought this property. That was the Reco mine you’ve heard about.

He did prospecting. He found some claims up Sandon Creek. The Whites, Byron and Oscar was his manager, a cousin, he was manager of the Slocan Star. Johnny had located the Rabbit Paw which had apex rights. There was lawsuits. He spent some years fighting this lawsuit. He lost at the various courts and he finally took it to privy council. They rendered the decision there. He had one lawyer at the Supreme Court of Canada. He paid him $10,000 for one day’s
work, which was a lot of money in those days.

I read when the decision came in, he matter-of-factly dropped the word he just won the case. I guess that would have been in the Reco Hotel when he heard the decision. I don’t know who he was with but he said “Oh, I won that case.” I can’t tell you. He came from Virginia, a place where there is great fox hunting. Warrenton. He had a horn they used calling the hounds. He said he went out and blew this horn to the town of Sandon when he got word that he’d got the decision.

So that was really important to him. It was, because he was a real honest man. I found in some of the letters in the vault, there was one letter from the president of a bank in Spokane that was retiring. He wrote Johnny a letter. They had become friends. Johnny had done business … everything emanated from Spokane in those days. He used to borrow $20,000 to $40,000 every fall. Just borrowed it on his signature. This bank president referred to Johnny from “the days you used to let you come in I used to let you have this money on winter’s work.” They just mined in the wintertime when they could rawhide. Then they closed down in the summer. The horses were put out to pasture. They rawhided the ore down but he’d have to have that money to start up with before he could ship. He was very honest and his word was as good as his signature.

When the fire occurred on May 4, 1900, Johnny was somewhere else in the United States. He was in Virginia. {4} That was his home. At Runnymeade. Their home property there was Runnymeade. In King George’s time, an area was granted to the Smith family, which was some of his forebears. Runnymeade was the centre of it. The family burial ground is there. I would say it’s 50 miles out of Washington. He bought an estate, Glenara, which was adjoining. He went back and bought it. He was there at the estate and had fine cattle and horses and had a brother looking after it.

He lived a bit like a Virginian. Yes. He was a Virginian until the day he died. Accent, definitely Virginian.

A lot of people say he had a beautiful accent. He did. There was something about him. I used to have a very hot temper. I was annoyed at something one day. This is after we were married. I kicked the wall or whatever was nearby and hurt my toe. And he said in his Virginia voice, so gentle, and so calm, and so reassuring: “You see, it doesn’t do you any good to lose your temper. You only hurt yourself.” There was nothing violent, yet if something like this lawsuit that he went through, he knew he was right. He knew they were mining. And it was proven. In the court one day, when it was found out that Oscar White was lying, the judge turned his back to Oscar. That was where Johnny was vindicated.

He was a southern gentleman. Definitely. When we were on our wedding trip, several times he was taken for a U.S. senator. He was really outstanding.

How did you meet Johnny? I was working in a shop in Calgary. I was the bookkeeper and I could see that the boss was going broke. He had been a tailor before he became a retail man and it just happened after the war, 1918.

Things were booming. A friend of his that he knew in England came through and introduced Randly [?] coats to him. He was producing them in Vancouver. He said “Fred, you should go into ready-to-wear.” He said “I’m going to make you a shipment and you’re going to be sold on it.” He sent him a shipment of suits and they sold like hotcakes. He went into ready-to-wear. Harling Ladies Ready-to-Wear. Exclusive ladies ready-to-wear and fine furs. And it was a beautiful shop. Beautiful things. Everything the best. But he didn’t have the experience. When things slowed down, he wouldn’t put anything on sale. His head saleslady and assistant buyer begged him to have a sale. “No, this is an exclusive shop. We don’t have sales.” Here would be beautiful evening dresses that cost $79.50 and sell for $125. Every six months when I made a new inventory sheet, here would be these beautiful gowns. His head sales lady and head buyer begged him to sell. No. We could see he was going broke.

I thought well, things are bad, I think I’ll have to make a change. I’ll be out of work. I saw this ad in the paper about wanting a bookkeeper/accountant. Something intrigued me.

This head sales lady and assistant buyer, she and I lived together. We had an apartment for five years. {5} She came home one evening and saw this letter on the table. She said “Alma, who are you writing to in BC? I didn’t know you knew anybody in BC.” I said “Well, I think I’m going to BC. I just know I am. I can see a grey-haired man and I think I’m going to work for him.”

So you had a premonition. Something, yes. I had a reply. Mr. Harris said “I liked your letter but I’ve got someone coming for the position. However, should they not turn [out] satisfactory, I’ll let you know.” I had also written that I was presently employed but I would like to make a change, and it would be necessary for me to give notice. I couldn’t come right away. Finally, I got the telegram to come as soon as you can. I gave a week’s notice and came to Sandon.

That would be quite a trip at that time. It was. I went to the information desk in Calgary and we pored over the timetables to make connections because there were only three days a week you could make connections between the railroads and the boats going into Sandon. So we worked it out and I arrived on May 15, 1924. {6}

How old were you? I was 24.

So for a young woman to go into the mining area, that was quite unusual. My father didn’t approve of me coming. One thing: in Mr. Harling’s store, as I said, he had beautiful clothes. He used to pick out our clothes for this friend and myself. We were two distinct types. Whitty was tall and rounder and fair. I was darker and more angular. He would pick out our clothes and let us have them for cost. Of course, Whitty was making more money than I. But I kept my nose to the grindstone.

I wasn’t making as much and I had to borrow $150 in order to pay Mr. Harling what I owed him and to make the trip to Sandon. I asked my father if he would back my note at the bank. I was very independent. And he did. He would have given it to me, but I said no, I wanted to borrow it. I did. I paid my bills and I came to Sandon. Of course the salary that was offered was worth more than I was getting in Calgary, plus living accommodation at a hotel. My father didn’t approve of me going to BC. He said “You know, you go up there in the mountains and the forest, there’s timber, lots of lumber mills, sawmills, and he said there’s all kinds of bedbugs and things you’ll be running into.” But I was determined. I was going. I came and I stayed.

So you were a fashionable lady … Yes …

… coming into Sandon. Perhaps you’ve heard the story.

No, I’ve read a little bit. You made quite an impression. There was one gentleman, whenever I still meet him, he said “You were the best GD looking woman that ever came into the Slocan!” [Laughs] He lives in Nelson, retired. I arrived in Sandon with a bag of golf clubs over my shoulder and there wasn’t a golf [course] closer than Nelson.

What happened when you met [Johnny]? The train came to Three Forks and turned around on the turntable. It backed into Sandon. Sandon is kind of a dead end. You go down the gulch and turn out to Kaslo. In the morning, the train leaves Kaslo and comes into Sandon head first. It backs down to Three Forks, goes on the turntable and then heads for Nakusp. It’s there during the lunch hour and makes the return trip. It comes up to Three Forks, goes on the turntable, backs into Sandon and then heads out for Kaslo.

So there are no longer two trains running. Oh, no. That was long finished before I went to Sandon. The car I was in was I think one of the first ever. A combination baggage and passenger. I was at one end and got off and walked … oh yes, before we arrived at Arrowhead, I questioned … see, I took the train from Calgary to Revelstoke, stayed overnight. The next morning took the train to Arrowhead and on the way I asked the conductor would he see that I made the connection okay. I didn’t want to miss any of my connections. I was bound for Sandon. Kitty corner, across the way, was a young man. He overheard me questioning the conductor. He said “I’m going to Kaslo, but I’ll be passing through Sandon and I’ll see that you won’t miss any of your connections.” So he helped me off the train. We got off, we were at the end on the platform and there was no Mr. Harris. He had gotten on at the other end. The train was crowded with people. We looked around, no Mr. Harris. The train waited there for about 15 minutes. He said “I’ll take you down to the hotel.” We got down to the hotel and at the door he deposited my baggage and golf clubs and looked up the street and said “Here’s Mr. Harris coming now.” He had gotten on the other end of the train.

We had dinner. This was around 5. He showed me my room and made me feel at home. After dinner he said I’d to take you for a little walk to acquaint you with the town. He said we can go up Sunnyside here on the old K&S railway grade, and I can show you the town and show you where everybody is. So we went for this walk and he described it all.

He said “Can you drive a car?” I said “Yes, I’ve driven a car since I was 12.” He said “I’ll get a car.” So this is on a Wednesday. And on Friday, Mr. Peebles came up from Nelson with a Ford Roadster and brought it to Sandon. The road to Sandon from New Denver had been completed the previous fall. Mr. Peebles stayed over till the next train day and explained all about the car. I took him back to New Denver on the Monday. I got the reputation of being the first woman who had driven over that road. Some of the ladies in Sandon couldn’t believe … They said “There are places where you drive that the shale comes down into the road after you pass.” I said yes. “Weren’t you afraid?” “No, I wasn’t afraid.”

You were like a breath of fresh air, I would say, to Mr. Harris especially. He told some of his particular friends “That’s going to be Mrs. Harris.” And when I met him I felt right at home. I had that premonition.

[tape flips]

… It was interesting. Living in Alberta, I was conversant with his properties and his company. [Pat Burns] But to read the book, I could picture the pioneer days. He had a butcher shop in Sandon. He was telling Johnny that he had a bookkeeper who wanted a raise. He said I was paying him top dollar at the time and he said “I was on the road myself doing the hard work, and was paying him all I could for what he was doing.” He supplied the meat, drove the animals and killed the meat when they were building the railway. He had butcher shops. The register at the Hotel Reco has his advertisement. I have the last register of the Reco here and I would like to give it to the archives.

You mean in Victoria? Yes. [Bert] Herridge years ago wrote me and said I could get in touch with Dr. [Willard] Ireland of the archives. He said you’ll have a lot of valuable things they would like. I wrote Dr. Ireland and he came in. I had a big table there with a lot of old prospectus and records and papers and things. Pictures. He just glommed on to it. He took it with him in the car. I had some big pictures on the wall of the office in the hotel. I said I would like to give them to him. He said if you will get someone to frame them, we’ll pay for the charges to ship them down. I gave him pictures of the early days. Beautiful big pictures. I think they were by Trueman.

To continue now, you’ve had your introduction to Johnny, you’re driving your car, and you’ve started your professional relationship as an accountant. He had the hotel, the water and light for the town of Sandon. He was mining. At least, he had lessees that were mining. And the Hotel Reco. I kept sets of all these books. They were all combined under J.M. Harris afterwards. I did that for all my life that I was with Johnny. He were married in Washington in November 1926.

When did he finally propose to you? He never proposed to me. He just said that I was going to marry him. I was engaged to a millionaire from Toronto, a mining man. He would make trips to Mexico, California, Alaska, and every time he came west from Toronto he would call to see me. Every week there was either a huge box of chocolates or a book or a large carton of imported cigarettes. When David would come to see me, Johnny would say … He told David: “You think she’s going to marry you? She’s not going to marry you. She’s going to marry me.” You know, one day I saw David kick my dog. That was it. I had a Russian wolfhound. The engagement was off.

Did you tell him that? No. I just changed my mind. He didn’t know that I saw him kick my dog. But he could have kicked me. Of course Johnny had some visitors from Salt Lake City. We went out. He ordered horses. We went up in the hills and picked huckleberries and he told this couple that I was going to be Mrs. Harris. We’d be married in Washington and that we were going on a six months’ wedding trip. I went along with him because he was wonderful to me. He changed my personality from a person who was hot tempered and he was just so wonderful to be with. It was perfectly okay with me. He was 37 years older than me. I was 26. He was 62.

This Russian wolfhound. Did you bring it from Calgary? I had bought it. It came from Calgary. I didn’t bring it with me. I like animals. I’m very fond of animals.

Then you went on your honeymoon, to Washington. Yes. Then we spent a month at his home, with his relatives, at Runnymeade. We went to New York and then we went to Florida, Cuba, and then we trekked across the continent to California and spent some time there, and down into Mexico. And came back in May. We bought a Lincoln car in Detroit and travelled all the way. It was 20,000-something miles.

When you came back to Sandon, did you get the usual welcome that married people got? Oh yes. Everyone was glad to see us and greeted us. We learned afterwards that some people were wondering just how long it would last. There were several bets made on the side, maybe last two years.

And then you continued doing what you were doing? Yes, I went on with the office work. Johnny’d gotten someone in the meantime to look after it. Then 1929 came. October. Johnny sold the market short. We lived very quietly for a number of years. The stores closed down. Hotel Reco had a little commissary. I felt heir to the post office. I think it was $9.28 a month was my spend the first while. There were a number of years where we used to go hunting. Take the dog, go fishing, had a garden, lived quietly. Paid our taxes. Had a few dollars that we kept in case of sickness. Johnny always said, “Well there’s the mine. It’s just like a bank.” And I said “Yes, but we can’t draw any money out of it at the moment.” “Oh,” but he said, “you will. Someday.”

And then we had the Japanese invasion, which was quite a godsend. Because we had only paid the taxes on the mining interests and they held a moratorium on the Sandon taxes, the Sandon properties.

Including the light plant? Yes, everything in Sandon. Hotel and all. We read in the paper they’d like to put the Japanese in the interior and Johnny and I looked at each other and said “Well, Sandon would be a wonderful place for them.” So the next day the government man from Kaslo came in with some of the commissioners, the BC [Security] Commission. They asked us if we would permit the Japanese to come into Sandon, if we would agreeable to it. We said yes. All of a sudden, it was from one extreme to another. They sent a group of carpenters in and arranged to build bunk beds to put all these people in these buildings. There were quite a few big buildings. We were down to just Johnny and myself. He looked after the water and light plant, I did the bookkeeping, looked after the commissary, did the cooking. We had a little girl who came in periodically to help with the housework. We lived in the hotel, but just private quarters. We did about $300 worth of business a month [in the commissary]. {7}

See, the population had gone down too. Just about that time mining started up a bit. There was some mining, people beginning to come in. The commissioners asked us if we could enlarge our commissary. We had this big building. Could we put in a stock? Yes, we could. So we ordered a stock. They had made arrangements with the wholesalers at the coast to transfer supplies to this area to accommodate the Japanese.

So Tattrie-Greer is closed? Yes. They had left when mining had gone down and things got quiet during the Depression.

Black and Cameron had also closed? Yes. Mr. Black had died and that was wound up. There was no other, just the Hotel Reco and everything was in there. The only telephone in town was in the Hotel Reco. Then it was from famine to feast. They brought in a trainload of Japanese and I never saw grocery shelves depleted. They came in wanting everything. They just brought their baggage. They told us what they would be needing and we got a carload of groceries. I think there was 20 ton of rice in the balance of the car. We ordered hardware things, dishes and cooking utensils.

Then of course the mail came in. However, the commissioner said if you arrange for the Japanese mail all to go out to the Japanese there’s one group here of the Japanese will look after the mail. They’ll do their business with you, of course, but any incoming mail goes to the Japanese post office. I thought my word, I didn’t have any directive from head office. I thought “We’re at war with these people.”

I bundled everything up and sent it to the district director in Vancouver and months later when the inspector came, Johnny asked him how Mrs. Harris was managing. He said “Splendid. She was the only postmaster that knew what to do when the Japanese descended on her. She sent the mail in to be censored. Why, she can postmaster around postmasters who’ve been in the business for years.” He thought I was handling it very nicely.

They had about 1,000 Japanese in that first trainload. We had to get busy ordering more groceries and more of everything but we just gone along fine with them. We employed Japanese in the hotel and got along very well with them. I was very busy. I had to get an assistant in the post office because I had to order for the store, Johnny was in the store, we had two Japanese that were businessmen in Victoria that we our chief clerks. We had another lady clerk and I tended to all the ordering. We got paid rent for the buildings. We began paying our back taxes. It was a good feeling to be paying income tax again after all the Depression years from 1929 until 1942.

You were quite lucky compared to other people who played the stock market and lost. Yes. Johnny had two mining friends that committed suicide at that time. We were happy during those years. We’d go fishing. We had a Dodge car. The Ford Roadster lasted about two years and Johnny thought I should get a real car. We got a Dodge Coupe. But we’d take the car and drive up the mountain and park it and go hunting. He never got anything more than a grouse. He’d see a deer and he’d look at it. He couldn’t shoot it. All we had were fish and grouse.

You’d fish out of Carpenter Creek? Yes, but we used to go to Bear Lake, a little picnic holiday, go fishing have a campfire. We enjoyed life. I was just as happy then as when we were in some swell place in Miami or New York.

How many people were in Sandon before the Japanese came? We were down to seven. One Irishman had come up from New Denver to help shovel snow off those big buildings. Then had flat tops and metal tops. You’d make the rounds to shovel the snow from a lot of buildings, you’d have to start in again to make the rounds. This Irishman saw me step out of the door one day and he made a remark to the other man. He said “By gum, you know, Mrs. Harris is the best looking woman in town! She hasn’t any opposition.” I was the lone woman. That was how Sandon had gone down. Then it picked up after.

Was there any animosity between the whites versus the Japanese? No. We got along fine with them. We welcomed them. Of course, they changed life for us from famine to feast. A chance to catch up after all those years of back taxes and doing without. I had Japanese help in the hotel and some of the commissioners used to come down and visit us and talk Japanese. The doctor was a friend. He’d drop in nearly every evening. Johnny liked to play bridge. There was always a bridge game going. Sometimes I could participate because my days were long.

The doctor, Tommy Yamamoto, in fact, he came and visited us this summer. He’s retired from Toronto and he’s not married. He was so glad to see us and we were glad to see him. He used to drop in and fill in at the bridge table. Johnny always liked his bridge. In fact, the last three years when he was bedridden, he’d get up and dress over his pajamas and have a rubber of bridge.

We always made a rubber of bridge possible for him. He always had a side table with his medicines on. There would be a tray with some liquors and when his friends would come in they’d have a drink and visit with him. There was always somebody dropping in so there was a bridge game at night. He wanted a game of bridge and it was a bit of relaxation for him.

The Japanese that were in Sandon were a minimum security … there were no [unintelligible] were there? No. We had one RCMP. We had no trouble whatsoever. Mr. Cooper who was our commissioner at the time said “You know, if our own people were in the same situation as the Japanese are, our own people wouldn’t be as co-operative and get along as well as they do here.”

This period lasted from ’42 to ’47. No, to ’44. Of course there was always some being moved east, they were allowed to go to work as domestics or beet fields or some such. There was always some movement out of the camps. Sandon was the first camp to close because it was the most costly. The railroad grade from Three Forks to Sandon, that would be about four miles, everything cost six cents a pound more for that last bit on the railway. The grade was so steep. I think it was the steepest on the continent. {8} So naturally Sandon was the first camp to close. It was a little better than two years of the occupation.

What happened to Sandon? There had been a little mining had picked up while they were there. But it gradually went down again.

So you were back to bust or had you picked up enough money to hold on and enjoy live again? The commissioners told us six months ahead of time that Sandon would be the first camp closed. So it gave us a chance to get the stock down in the store. We had a little mining going on so we got our stock down and we didn’t lose any thereby. I think it was about ’52 that mining camp up again.

What happened to Johnny’s life after the ‘40s? It was during the resurgence of mining that we had our 25th anniversary. Johnny was …

[tape ends]

Mining was quite, there was quite a resurgence at that time. And then, let's see, Johnny passed on in December the 6th, [1953].

(Discussion on the date of Johnny’s death and the washout.)

The flood was in ‘55. I know I was so glad that the flood happened. Now, Johnny passed on in [‘53]. And there was a washout that spring, had destroyed the water, which was our power. And I could see winding up everything. It would have been so costly to repair this washout on the hillside. With so few people in the town, it was impossible to carry on. Everything was old. See, it was built in the ‘90s and it had been repaired. It was past repairing, all these wooden flumes and whatnot. So I wound up the Sandon Water Works and Light.

We still had our drinking water. And then the flood happened in ‘55. I wasn't there at the time. I was substituting for the postmaster at South Slocan. He and his wife were on the first holiday they'd had together for a number of years. I went down there for two months.

While I was there, the flood happened. It was a late, cold spring and then there was three hot days, blistering hot. And then a storm came up. And it just poured.

Someone said there was three inches of rain in 24 hours. I came up that weekend from South Slocan. And all along the way, you could see branches down and trees down.

I got as far as Three Forks and Ted came down with his truck to pick me up, to take me up to Sandon. They had called for help, Silverton and New Denver, to help fight the high water.

There was so much water coming down, it would create dams. Then the water would gush forth. We had one building down in town there that had ten big rooms that we used to rent out to miners. Downstairs was two apartments, two four-roomed apartments. There was one big dam up and they would put explosives to break it up to the water. When that finally came through, this building was built on stilts, and the water had washed under the stilts beforehand. But when that gush of water came down, all they could see was boards flying in the air.

Was that the Sandon House or the Ivanhoe?No, that didn't have a name. That didn't have a name. The Sandon House was a hotel. That was undermined, too. That was kitty corner on the corner there from the Hotel Reco. The other building was about half a block beyond. And there wasn't a piece of board left of that building after that water came down, after that wave of water.

I had two Siamese cats in those days. And I had one with me at South Slocan, and I left the other one. Ted was looking after it in the Hotel Reco. And when the flood came, he was on duty and had just moved a bed down in the kitchen of the hotel. He was going to sleep there. Then the lights went out. We had gotten lights from the mining company there that had the powerhouse there, the old Silversmith. The lights went out all over town, and here was the water raging at 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock at night.

Someone came in and said, “Ted, you have to come and help us. Everything is just going wild.” So he got up and went out, and he thought about the cat. He had put the cat out before he went. He went outside and on the porch, he was going to jump on the ash pile.

We used to dump our ashes off the porch because the snow was so deep in the wintertime. Then in the spring, we'd have them hauled away. He was going to jump on the ash pile and go around the side of the building to see about the cat. And the ash pile wasn't there. The creek was there. He was washed about two blocks down in this stream towards the bank, the railroad track. He tried to grapple the side, and it would just crumble away. It was all washed away. And finally, a stump came along and hit his elbow. He grabbed onto it, and that kind of got off to one side, and he got out. He could hardly walk for the fines that were in his clothes, from all the gravel and the mine dump and everything that was coming down in this. And he went up the railroad track and up to the building where the ladies were making sandwiches and coffee for the—I was going to say firefighters—for the flood. So he had a lucky escape.

I was talking to Mr. Pedley, a geologist for the mine there. He said, “Do you know, I never expected to see Ted's truck again.” He said when the creek was diverted and went around the back of the hotel there, all you could see was the top of the cab of his truck.

When the water was changed back to its regular course, here was his truck, up in the air on a great big boulder. He cleaned out the radiator and that sort of thing. He came down to Three Forks and picked me up and showed me. They had bulldozers up there, trying to make a road to go into the place. I couldn't believe it was Sandon.

So is that when you kind of made the decision that you were going to move out of Sandon and liquidate? No. Yes. The Virginia block was undermined, but Ted got the section man … see, it washed out all, I don’t know how many washouts there were. The rails were hanging between Sandon and Three Forks. I don’t know how many places where the tracks were up in the air. The bank was just washed away. He got Mr. Swanson and they propped up the building. So that's, of course, at that time.

That was in ‘55. I stayed with it up there in Sandon. Of course, I was busy in those days with the estate, winding up things. We had all those lines, and poles and wires. The previous fall, Ted had taken them all down. You know, tourists coming in, they go into buildings. If an accident happens … he just dismantled everything in connection with the Sandon Waterworks and Light. We shipped out the copper wire. So that was one thing that we salvaged before the flood.

Yeah, and before the vandals. And before vandals, yes. So I had this little apartment in the Virginia block. That was my headquarters for a while, while I was working with the estate and trying to wind up things. Then in ‘62, I went back to Alberta for the death of my parents. And then my fatality, my sister and her husband, went back and made a home for the two boys.

So your maiden name is Alma? L-O-M-M-A-T-Z-S-C-H, Law-mitch.

How do you think Sandon should go from now on? There's still the element of fire and flood. And Sandon mining... Times have changed. Instead of having bunkhouses and cook houses in the hills, they now transport the men to New Denver or Silverton.

Do you know there are more people living in Sandon now in my whole seven years of going to Sandon? Yes, but it will never be a town again, or a village, or what you might call it, or a camp.

They're all temporaries now, too. It's just temporaries, yes. We still have Gene Peterson, the mayor of Sandon, as we all call him. But his home survived. And he's a mountain man. He loves the mountains, and he loves that life, nature. He loves to go hunting, fishing, mining. So I would say it would never be anything more. And when Gene is gone, why... Oh, it's just tourists. An old mining camp. And there's lots of them. And yet, Johnny said this country, mining-wise, it hasn't been scratched. But, of course, when he was mining, and then he was involved in this lawsuit, they didn't develop enough ahead. And when you're fighting a lawsuit for a number of years, and then $10,000 for one half a day's work for one lawyer, you run out of money.

That's what I read, that the lawsuit might have won him the case, but it didn't help him in the other way. No, no, no. But he was justified. He was proved that he was right.

That's important to a Virginian. Oh, definitely. And he always said that he said, Your word is worth your signature. And his was.

Where does Johnny lie now? I took him back and put him beside his mother. In the family plot.

Did Johnny keep a diary at all, or no? Winding things up in Sandon after flood and everything, what could I do with all of that stuff? So I got rid of it.

Oh, that’s too bad. We always think of the now at that time, don’t we? I have all these volumes from the lawsuit. I was going to read them someday, but I’ve never had time yet. Now my eyes are failing me, but I hope to, with these implants that probably I can.

Johnny always promised me that he, when we sold the mining interest, we’d retire home on the lake. Living all those years in the gulch, he could have sold the mine. I think he could have made a deal, but then it may have amounted to something and it may not. I think it was something like he’d had it for so long, he’d hated to let it go too. So it was left for me to sell.

And he had promised me the home on the lake. Ted, who had been with us for years, said, “I’m going to see that you get your home on the lake.” So he's made this all possible for me.

I really enjoyed this visit. It’s been interesting. It’s been nice to talk about things. You go along from day to day, and you live in the present and kind of forget about the future.

I’m going to come back again another time. I have all the maps of the way Sandon was and the way it was going to be with all the subdivisions. I saw a picture the other day. A friend of mine that came over last year, they brought some Alberta Reports. I hadn’t seen that magazine before. And it’s a splendid magazine. Of course, it’s all Alberta. But I saw an article in there. It was really about Mr. Trueman. In fact, they wrote me if I had any information about him, you know, being in Sandon, R.H. Trueman. But here’s a picture of Sandon I've never seen. Now, our prospectus for the Reco mine showed three years of the main street in Sandon, which was the street that was right underneath this bank on this side. And there was buildings there just of that day and age. The main street was over there. This is the day before the fire. These buildings on this side were higher than the buildings on the other. This would be the building on the other side. This was the barn for the hotel for the Reco horses. And then the creek.

There's a bit of the creek right there. Yeah, the creek ran down in there. That was a hotel or the barn for the horses. The horses were sent up to Lardeau for the summer. And the stableman was still there with a hydrant, and he saved this building when the town burned down. All these people that were there at that time, 2,300 miners, well, they were up in the hills too. But they came and slept in the hay mow. And Johnny came back from Virginia, and they turned that into a hotel. So that was the Hotel Reco.

I’d been there for years. We were married for years, and one day I was walking along the railroad track, and I looked at the back of the hotel there, and the paint had faded. It was a brown… And I could see “stable,” the words, and I said to Johnny, I didn't know then that that had been the stable for the Hotel Reco. And he said, yes, and he told me about it.

And this is a picture. Look at that man’s face there. Have you ever noticed that in looking at that picture?

No, I haven’t. That’s where I was going to climb up. I told you I was going to climb up the Payne Bluff because I wanted to shoot that very same picture. No, I’ve never seen that. That is amazing. That’s the first thing I noticed. I've drawn that to several people's attention that they hadn't noticed it before.

[…]

Oh, my. Gee, that is a beauty. That is really a nice picture, isn't it? My goodness, he did look like a real... He is distinguished looking.

Yes, that's for sure. And this is taken on the boat going across to Catalina, in California. Companion pictures. He wore a gray suit there. He always wore something dark. I initiated him into a Harris-Tweed suit. And this is up at the mine at a dump. That's myself and Johnny. And these were two of our leases, two brothers and Mrs. Hanna. Her husband was at the Ruth Hope. Another picture of Johnny at that time.

God, that’s another good one, isn't it? I mean, cigar? Oh, yeah, he smoked cigars.

I got the impression that you smoked cigarettes because you received these as presents. Yes, I did in those days. But really, I was never a cigarette smoker. My friends, we used to play bridge. There was five of us of an age. And they all smoked. And I got in the habit of smoking. But I really didn't care. I’d like to maybe have a couple of puffs. That was about the size of it.

Notes

{1} But he came west in the footsteps of his brother Arthur, who was on the run from the law after killing a rival storekeeper in Virginia in 1881.

{2} Even this figure makes little sense. But it’s the one Johnny liked to use late in life. It first appeared in an interview he gave to R.G. Joy in 1940.

{3} He probably didn’t. The original Sandon townsite, surveyed in July 1893, belonged to Robert E. Lemon. Johnny’s townsite addition was platted in late 1895.

{4} He was actually in Pittsburgh.

[5] The roommate was Emily Whitman and they lived in the Norfolk Apartments at 1-225 13th Ave. E. What Alma doesn’t mention is that a month and a half before she went to Sandon, Emily married Fred Harling. But the store did indeed go broke in 1925. The Harlings subsequently moved to California.

[6] May 15, 1924 was a Thursday, so either Alma arrived a day earlier than she thought or she got there on a Thursday, not Wednesday.

[7] $300 in 1942 = $5,100 in 2022

[8] It was not.