Music and Kitimat are tied together for me. Our music teacher’s idea of “teaching” music was basically to print out the words to all the top hits of the day and have us read them as he played the recordings. Some of the songs I remember are Cher’s “Cherokee People” and “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves”, “Raindrops keep falling on my head” by BJ Thomas, “Sweet City Woman” by the Stampeders, “I can see clearly now”, “Black and white”, and most significantly for me, Gordon Lightfoot’s “If you could read my mind” (he has been my go-to favourite ever since). I was also in a large children’s choir in my church, eventually moving up to the more select Girl’s Choir. And I started piano lessons while we lived in Kitimat. When I hear hits from the early 70s, I think of Kitimat.
Kitimat is an industrial town at the head of the Douglas Channel, literally at the end of the road, built in the midst of old growth forests in the 1950s by Alcan to facilitate the production and transportation of aluminum. When I lived there, Eurocan also operated a pulp and paper mill. The factories were well out of town, but occasionally, the scents of industrialization wafted over our neighbourhood. It is coastal, but so far up the Channel that it is actually quite a distance inland from the open Pacific. Kitimat is almost completely surrounded by mountains, except for the sliver of the Channel.
My dad was the minister of the Baptist Church. It was a well attended, active, multi-generational church, mainly post-war German immigrants hired to work at the aluminum smelter. There was also a small group of Portuguese immigrants. Kitimat is where I was introduced to Portuguese sweet bread, fisherman’s stew, homemade German Black Forest Cake, and Rouladen (I also associate Kitimat with very good food). We had a lot of fun at church in Kitimat, and at Christmastime, I remember the glorious carol singing and the beauty of the advent wreath which was suspended (magically, it seemed to me) in midair at the front.
Moving from southeastern Saskatchewan to northern coastal British Columbia represented, to say the least, a massive change of scenery. We went from almost endless sunshine and blue sky to short days and a lot of rain. Wikipedia says about Kitimat that it “has a very wet oceanic climate, albeit close to continental with significant temperature difference between winters and summers. The winters hover around the freezing mark, bringing snow.” You could say that. In fact, one of the winters that we lived in Kitimat, it snowed almost 40 feet over the winter, and we had a record snowfall of 112 cm in 24 hours in February 1972. The snow was wet and heavy, perfect for kids who liked to build snow forts and tunnels, but not so perfect for people who couldn’t get the snow removed from their roofs quickly enough. I can recall climbing up the snowbank to the top of our roof and sledding down the other side to the street level. I also recall hearing about people whose roofs collapsed under the weight of the snow.
We moved from the wide open prairies to tall dark forests and mountains. The wildlife was different (there are no grizzly bears in the prairies, and no antelope in the mountains). The food was different (fresh coho salmon, oolichan and halibut). The adventures were much different. My memories include afternoons spent hunting mushrooms in the forest, exploring abandoned mine sites in the mountains, and I still have some fossils and petrified wood that we found around Kitimat. One of my uncles and his family lived down the highway a bit in Prince George. We took advantage of their summer cottage at Cluculz Lake, where I caught my first fish and saw cougars in the wild (the first and only time in my life). The drive from Kitimat to Prince George, through the Skeena River Valley past the Seven Sisters Mountains, was breathtakingly beautiful. One of our favourite stops along the way was at the nearby hot springs at Lakelse. There’s nothing quite like sitting in an outdoor pool in a swimsuit in the middle of winter. Another favourite stop was near Hazelton at the ‘Ksan Historical Village and its totem poles and beautifully decorated houses. Kitimat is in the traditional territory of the Haisla people, and I think it was probably here that I first became aware of traditions and cultures of some of Canada’s indigenous peoples.
I went from attending a traditional prairie town school with 4 grades (a 2 storey building with a central hall and 2 classrooms on each side of the hall), to a large, relatively modern school with grades from Kindergarten to grade 6. I think it must have been a pretty good school; although the music programme was lacking in actual teaching, we had an awesome art class, including a real working pottery wheel and kiln, and I have a scar on my leg from a third degree burn I suffered in grade 4 chemistry when we were boiling something in flasks over open bunsen burners. We had real gymnastics equipment and I can recall being airborne over the trampoline.
Kitimat is also where I first remember experiencing loss. Although my beloved grandmother died two years before we moved to Kitimat, I do not recall my reaction to her death beyond a feeling of bewilderment. In Kitimat, the teenaged sister of a classmate committed suicide, a man from the church fell off a boat and drowned, and a woman who was very active in the church, and a friend of my mother’s, died in a fatal car accident. Her daughter, who was around my age, was seriously injured. This is where I became aware of the tenuousness of life, and correspondingly, the importance of making the most of each new day.
I have no idea what Kitimat is like now. I haven’t been back since we moved; it isn’t an easy place to get to. But I recall my experiences there, my friends, my school, the scenery, my neighbourhood with a great deal of fondness. One day, I would like to go back and see Kitimat through adult eyes. In the meantime, I’ll continue to be reminded of my life in Kitimat whenever I hear hits from the 70s.
