Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous interviews held by the Royal BC Museum and Archives

LINDSAY CARTER

Interviewed 30 Jan 1976 by Derek Reimer and Cole Harris, taken from transcript

p. 5: In 1918 old Johnny Harris, he sort of locked himself up in his room at the Reco Hotel and he wouldn’t go out anywhere; he was afraid to get the flu too. He was afraid of what would happen if he ever got it.

p.12:

Mr. Reimer: Were the hotels in Sandon divided into working class hotels and upper-class hotels? Mr. Carter: Well, they were all working-class except the Reco. John Harris charged $5 a day for anyone to stay in the Reco, because he didn’t want to have the men with the hobnail boots tramping over his floors. So he catered to the mining engineers and the travelling salesmen and bosses and things like that; they all went and stayed at the Reco. But for the common ordinary plug well, he stayed at the Sandon House or the Palace Hotel.

Interviewed by Derek Reimer, 1976

Tape 1: In fact, old Johnny Harris, he sort of locked himself up in his room at the Reco Hotel and he wouldn’t go out anywhere; he was afraid to get the flu too. He was afraid of what would happen if he ever got it.

How did the people of Sandon view Johnny Harris? Well, Johnny Harris, he was a funny man. Some of them had no use for him and others thought he wasn’t such a bad scout. He owned a power plant, which supplied the lights, of course. He also owned the waterworks which supplied the water, and he also owned a number of the buildings around here, you know. So he was fairly well off, and he did very good things around that people appreciated.

For example, the school would put on a Christmas concert every year and they’d rehearse these concerts in the schoolrooms at appropriate times, but the night before the concert was being put on in the big OBU hall, they’d want to rehearse it on the stage here. So Johnny Harris had an agreement with the children in Sandon. He said: “If you don’t disturb any of my property on Halloween,” he said, “I’ll let you use the hall for free that night, without charging anything for the lights.” And there’s lots of lights. “And,” he said, “you can have the lights free for the concert, too.” So the children never bothered his property and he never charged them for the lights and that agreement lasted for years and years, you know. So that is one nice thing about him.

I remember there was a woman in Sandon, the poor soul — she was about as homely a person as you would ever meet and she had a vocabulary that would stagger a mule. She got mad at Johnny Harris and bawled him out over what she considered an overcharge on her bill. Well, it wasn’t a week later when her little daughter accidentally fell downstairs and knocked herself out, and there was no doctor there at the time.

So Johnny Harris heard about it. He sent word up to her. He said: “Now take that child down to Kaslo in this car and take her to the hospital and give it all the necessary medical treatment it needs and forget about the money.” He said: “I’ll pay for it.” Now that was good of him, after the way she treated him.

He had his good points and yet he was sort of a stubborn old guy. We lived up the end of the gulch. It was direct current, and by the time the lights got up to our place the power was so low that the globes looked like oranges hanging down on the end of the strings almost. He put little limiters on the poles, little fuses, so that you could only pull so much power, you see. We didn’t have any meters on, being up at the end of the line. We probably had a defective socket in the rosette in one of our drops, and so he come up and checked it all over and swore that we were stealing juice from him. Well, of course, we weren’t. He sent his electrician up afterwards and he raised the devil with my mother while Dad and I were at work. So Ma told us when he come home about it. His electrician came up and checked it over and discovered this defective rosette and told Johnny about it. So when I saw Johnny — I happened to see him downtown — “Well, convey my apologies to your mother,” he said. “I guess I was wrong.” I said “If you can go up there and insult her, make sure you’re gentleman enough to back there and apologize.” I didn’t tell her anything about it and he never went back.

To show what he thought of money, Dad went in on one occasion to pay the light bill — we had a little pump in the kitchen for our own water — and it was 6 cents or 7 cents that Johnny was looking around for change when Dad said “Oh, forget that little amount of money. This is enough.” Johnny Harris said: “Now, Mr. Carter, it’s this way. They call me Mr. Harris because I look after my nickels and dimes. They call you old man Carter because you don’t look after yours.” So he was giving the old man a lesson in thrift.

He was very honest. Any time Johnny said he’d do a thing he’d keep his word. I remember another case of a man that saw where someone had tried to burn out his powerhouse. But this fellow saw it in time to spread the alarm and they got the fire out. It wasn’t a year later when Johnny Harris caught this same fellow stealing electricity from him. Now instead of having him hauled up in court for it, he said: “Well, I’ll put a limiter on the pole in front of your place so you can only get so much juice. I can have you hauled up in court, but seeing you saved my power plant last year, we’ll call it bygones be bygones.”

So Johnny had his good points, but he could be pretty miserable sometimes. To work for, oh, he was absolutely a crime. I remember I shovelled a lot of snow in my day in Sandon when I was younger. This time, when the Depression was on, money was very scarce. So he says to the people around town: “Now you get your light bill, your power bill, your water bill go until wintertime, and then instead of me paying out money to have you shovel snow and you paying out money year-round to pay for your lights and water, you come up and shovel snow off my buildings to work off your bills.”

So Dad and I, we were among those that did that. When I started working for him up in this Virginia Block, old Johnny came and said: “Now, Carter, I’ll show you how to shovel snow my way.” He had a big cutter up there, and he said “Now you put a cut in here, another cut in here, put a cut in here. Now you take your shovel and shovel it under and jar that loose. Mind that you don’t cut the roofing paper. Then you take it around and shovel it off the roof like that. Now watch, Carter. I’ll do it once more.” Then he went through all the process once more. “Now Carter, let me see you do one.” So I went through all the same procedure he did. “That’s the way you do it. That’s the way. Do one more for me.” And I did, and after I did it the second time “Well, I guess you know my procedure. Now mind that you do it that way. I don’t want any holes in my tar paper.”

So as soon as he went down off the roof I went back to shovelling the way I usually did. It was the oldest tar paper anyway. You couldn’t stand up there on the roof for eight hours watching how you shovelled snow. So that’s just what he was like.

I remember another time he wanted Dad and I to bring up a new stove. He had a stove in one of his apartment buildings that he wanted moved into the Reco Hotel because the one there was getting pretty badly worn. So he says “Carter, you and your boy come down and we’ll bring that heater up and put it into Reco dining room. So we went down to get it with a sleigh to haul it up on, and we unlocked the door and went in there and there was just the outline of the stove in the dust on the floor. “Well,” he says, “it looks as if somebody wanted that stove worse than I did.” So he closed up the door, and that’s all he ever said about it.

Johnny Black continued to keep his doors of his store open until Johnny Harris took over, and old Johnny Black died. Johnny Harris took over and opened up his store in the Reco Hotel, and you could go in there and buy groceries.

Tape 4:

They were all working-class [hotels] except the Reco. John Harris charged $5 a day for anyone to stay in the Reco, because he didn’t want to have the men with the hobnail boots tramping over his floors. So he catered to the mining engineers and the travelling salesmen and bosses and things like that; they all went and stayed at the Reco. But for the common ordinary plug well, he stayed at the Sandon House or the Palace Hotel or the Exchange Hotel or the Kootenay Hotel. They were just working man’s hotels.

EDITH GREER

Interviewed circa 1972 by Imbert Orchard

When we went to Sandon, Mr. Harris ran the Reco Hotel and had a great deal of mining interests. The Reco Mine at that time, other mines too I suppose, but chiefly the Reco. He had gardens. We had a great deal of snow in Sandon and we didn't have a very long season for gardens. But he always had pansies and forgetmenots and all the flowers that were easy to grow. And he had his garden set out in beds. It was just the breath of springtime when his flowers came out, because not many of us had flowers. He was always very interested in the town. He owned pretty near all of Sandon. He ran the Reco and looked after his mining interests. He also had the light plant and the waterworks.

He was a very nice gentleman. He was from Virginia and used to talk to me a great deal about days in Virginia, and of the negros. He came to Sandon because he was in Idaho. Wallace. And he heard of the silver and lead up here and so he came and he staked the town of Sandon. It was the Loundoun claim. He spent 60-some years of 88 years there, in Sandon.

They used to tell stories about big gambling games going on up there. Mr. Harris was quite a card player. Sometimes he won and sometimes he lost.

He was always nicely dressed. Well dressed. Always had a collar and tie on and he had lovely grey hair. He was always busy around the town, cleaning up. When Mr. Harris lived, Sandon was well kept because he saw to it that he did his share and everybody else did their share. After he died, Sandon wasn't as nice as it had been because people got in their cars and went, you see, rather than make the place a home.

When he heard that Sandon had been burned out, he borrowed a great deal of money from his bankers and sent money for relief. Also, he came back to help rebuild the town. Never heard that he had any insurance.

SANDY HARRIS

Interviewed circa 1972 by Jurgen Joachim Hesse

I used to know old Johnny Harris very well. I used to introduce him as my nephew when he was 90 and I was about 30.

The hydroplant was built by Johnny Harris in '98, I believe. The City of Nelson had one before that in '96, and then Victoria had one. But the Sandon powerplant was the second one in British Columbia. And it ran until about the time of the flood. In 1955, it was dismantled. I think it was quite a tribute to the man. He wasn't an engineer. He owned the Reco mine, he got very wealthy with property and he owned the Reco Hotel. He was the main push of Sandon, there's no doubt about it. He was the big sparkplug of Sandon. For a man to go in there in those days, the generators he had were 252 and 253 and they were General Electric direct current 35 kilowatt plants. And that is something. Those two generators were pretty old. It was just direct current, domestic power. Today it would be considered very poor power, but in those days it was wonderful.

NEIL TATTRIE

Interviewed 18 May 1965 by Imbert Orchard

Johnny Harris came here from Idaho. He come up Slocan lake on a boat of some kind. He landed in Denver and made his way up the quick to Sandon and got ahold of the Reco claims. He got two or three men working for him and packed his grub from Denver up to the claims. He later started Sandon and sold lots. He owned the electric power plant and water rights. In fact he owned most of Sandon. He was quite a card. He was a nice man to meet. Nice manners. I got along with him. He always treated me very well. Some people didn’t get along too good with him. He was a man that had a mind of his own. If he thought something was right, you couldn’t change him.

[…]

He made a lot of money and lost a lot of it too. Noble Five was going strong so Tattrie and Greer had stock. Greer went to Ireland and left instructions for Tattrie to sell when it was high enough. Was at 80 cents, and Tattrie had $1 in mind, but instead it dropped to 78 cents and he sold. Afterward he was in Johnny’s office to get the stock market report. Johnny said “Neil, it’s going to $5.” I said “Buy lots of it, I sold mine.” He wound up with a lot of Noble Five stock It went down to nothing.

[…]

On the Rabbit Paw lawsuit: The night he won the case he went up and down the street ringing a bell. Drinks were on the Reco Hotel. I was in the parlor at the Reco looking out the window. There wasn’t a half dozen people who went to that bar that night. They just didn’t. But he was very happy on winning that lawsuit. It meant quite a lot of money to Johnny Harris. If he thought he was right he would go to the limit of anything to prove his point, which he did in this case.

On how the townsfolk felt: Their feeling was with the Whites, most of them.

ED VIPOND

Interviewed 9 Mar 1985 by Peter Smith

Johnny Harris was king. He owned just about everything there.

[…]

He was a nice fellow. I liked Johnny Harris. He was a painful rascal in some ways. I wanted to eat two meals a day in his hotel because the eating facilities in Sandon were pretty poor. I asked if I could have lunch and dinner in the hotel. He said oh sure, that’s fine. What’ll it cost me? He said 75 cents a meal. I said that’s what you charge the transients too. He said yes, that’s right. If you want to eat in my hotel you pay 75 cents. If you don’t want to pay 75 cents go across the street. Going across the street wasn’t so hot. So I ended up for about a year and a half having two meals a day in his place.

[…]

I used to enjoy going into his office. He had a beautiful office for those days. Someone bought all that office equipment he had. It was all solid oak. The desk the bookkeeper was supposed to work on, one of those high desks that you stood up to or sat on a stool, beautiful wood. Huge old roll-top desk. I bet that desk must have weighted a thousand pounds. Huge thing. Made of real heavy wood. Oak.

[…]

He was an inveterate poker player. He pretty well always had a stud poker game going in the Reco. Naturally being as wealthy as he was, or supposed to be. Johnny was wealthy in possessions he had. He owned the hotel, he owned the water works, he owned the light plant, he owned about half the buildings in town. He had been wealthy in mines too but then he got into a lawsuit with the Slocan Star mine. Where two ore bodies meet, the apex, you’re not supposed to go down in your own [sic] mine. Harris maintained the Slocan Star were mining ore on his side of the line. They went to court over it. The judge found against Harris so they appealed it and won in his appeal. They took it to the Supreme Court of Canada and lost again and then they took it to the court in London … All they succeeded in doing was bankrupting the mine. I guess it pretty well near bankrupted Harris too. The mine was still there and the ore was still there and Slocan Star they just formed a new company with the same people called the Silversmith mien and continued to work. Harris wasn’t mining at all. He had the Reco mine and I think six different claims in that Reco mine. Pretty well always he had some leasers up there working independently. It was quite rich ore.

[…]

Did you ever watch Harris at any of these poker games? Oh yes, I sure did. A Greek fellow came in one time looking for a poker game. He’d heard about Johnny. Johnny loves stud poker. He came in they had a couple others to sit in with them. I stood on a bar chair in the card room from about 8 o’clock in the evening until 2 o’clock in the morning. When the chips used to be in the regular games, white chips were 50 cents, red chips were $1 and blue chips were $5. In the two nights of play with this Greek, Johnny hauled out the yellow chips, which were going for $50 apiece. Quite a gathering standing around the table. Everybody watching the Greek fellow because they were sure he was doing something to be able to … call on Johnny as often as he did when Johnny was bluffing. He may not have been doing anything at all except he was a better poker player than Johnny. But he lost. He lost $1,100 the first night, Johnny did, and then he lost some more the second night. I don’t remember what he lost the second night. But he paid the fellow off with a cheque and then we’re told afterwards he stopped payment on the cheque.

[…]

Johnny bought a motorbike. Must have been an Indian. Someone got on it and killed himself. Johnny sold it to my boss. I used to peddle it. Swedish fellow in Nakusp. Sawmill operator’s son tested it to see how fast it could go. Missed a turn, hit sawdust pile.