By comparison with people whose families own Gulf Island retreats or cabins on prairie lakes, I have no cottage to inherit, no family tradition to maintain. All I’ve got is the memory of ten childhood summers on Shuswap Lake in the B.C. interior.

My family has tended to go its separate ways, only coming together for the occasional Christmas dinner. But a generation ago, in the decade culminating in my sixteenth birthday, we made an annual pilgrimage to “the lake.” There, from Dominion Day to Labour Day, my mother, brother Paul, and I (joined by my father for his annual vacation and sporadically by other relatives) lived a carefree, shoeless--or at least sockless--existence.

I have often wondered since how much of the magic was due to physical circumstances--the lake, the forest and the cabin--and how much was due to timing. Although it was the 50s and 60s, which today’s conventional wisdom brands as materialistic and obsessed with newness, my parents were content with the rustic cabin and the utter relaxation it offered. We children were simple creatures, used to making our own fun. There was little to do beyond imagine and play, and few of the other people on the lake had enough money to spoil it.

Earlier, we had spent my father’s summer holidays on car trips, usually tenting in provincial park campgrounds. We ranged across the country to visit relatives in Quebec, and travelled through the American west to Yellowstone National Park and down the coast to California. The summer I was seven, after spending a week at a dude ranch called Rose Lake Lodge near 100 Mile House, we detoured to Salmon Arm rather than returning directly to the coast via the Fraser Canyon. “Your father has an old army friend he’d like to visit,” mother explained.

Arriving late on the sultry evening before the planned rendezvous, we stopped at a resort called Glen Echo, near Tappen on the west side of Shuswap Lake not far from Salmon Arm, just as a thunderstorm was massing in the sky above Bastion Mountain. As the wind picked up, Dad wrestled with the flapping canvas while Mum spread out our prospective dinner, which looked a lot like lunch, on the front seat of the ‘54 Chev sedan. In the middle of the night, with the downpour drumming on the tent roof and our parents trying to keep us from rolling against its canvas sides, a wild roar shook us awake and a shockingly bright, white light flooded the tent. I saw trees starkly silhouetted, panicked, and, clawing my way out of my sleeping bag, was restrained by my father’s arm as the train screamed past. We were sleeping no more than 50 feet from the CPR mainline!

The following day, at the suggestion of the army buddy, we moved into his cabin at Pierre’s Point, a cottage community a half mile south of Glen Echo and a few hundred yards (at least) from the tracks. At the end of an idyllic week there, it turned out he was considering selling it. Perhaps my parents were tired of the road trips, or were irritated by the public campgrounds, or found my brother and me too unruly to camp with. Perhaps they’d planned it all along? I was told later they paid $425; our house in Vancouver was worth perhaps $15,000.

After so many hours in the hot car gazing at scenery or rereading memorized comic books in the back seat, Paul and I thought the lakefront cabin was heaven. At the end of a rutted, single-lane dirt track, this simple frame box with a low-pitched moss-covered roof and an uncovered front deck stood on stilts in a cottonwood grove on the edge of the beach, midway between the lake’s high- and low-water marks. By August, 50 yards of white sand separated it from the shoreline. A few floats and docks extended into the water and a few rowboats were pulled up onto the sand. Behind the cabin stretched mysterious, explorable forest. I remember card houses built by the light of the hissing Coleman lamps, hinged windows that latched under the eaves to let in the afternoon breeze, pancakes cooked on the woodstove’s griddle, and the icebox chilled by ice dug from the sawdust in an old icehouse that the local people filled with blocks cut from the lake each winter. We got our water in bottles each week in Salmon Arm, and bought fruit and vegetables from local farmers.

There were no urban diversions, nothing to keep us indoors except heavy rain. A powerful, battery-operated radio provided the only link to the outside world: newscasts on the local station at dinner time, a Top-40 radio show for an hour in the evening and, on clear nights, B.C. Lions football games broadcast from Vancouver on CKWX, or was it CKNW?

We bought a rowboat and a few airmattresses and spent endless hours rowing and swimming. I was the sort of child who identified with the Indians in western movies, and stealthily explored the woods, dressed in a breechcloth and moccasins with a feather stuck in my headband. Mosquito bait. In the evenings, I carved and painted bear claws and other regalia with my pocketknife and paintbrushes.

One reason the place was so affordable for my parents was that we, along with the other cottagers, were exploiting the real Indians, members of the Shuswap band whose land we were leasing for an annual fee of $50 per lot. Slowly, in heavily-laden station wagons and sedans, we cottagers trundled down the potholed road from the highway to the lake, lumbering through the real Pierre’s Point--small, government-built bungalows with low-pitched roofs, pink siding on the lower half of the walls and stucco above, a hayfield bisected by the CPR mainline, a pole and plywood barn sheltering a couple of horses, old bicycles and broken-down cars strewn about, children playing in the dust. When my parents replaced the ‘54 with a powder-blue, 1959 Impala convertible with huge tailfins, our arrival must have shouted “city slickers.”

The other cottagers were, in the main, folks from Salmon Arm. The Glens next door owned the sporting goods store, and had a 14-foot fibreglass speedboat with an 18-horsepower Johnson outboard motor. As difficult as it is to imagine now, when 200 horsepower skiboats are de rigueur, a boat that size was adequate for pulling everybody but one fat relative, who nearly dragged it over backwards. Their well-endowed daughter wore a bikini, a matter of some comment among adults and binocular-toting boys.
In the next cabin lived the Magees. He was a contract logger, with a portable sawmill, a logging truck and a V8-powered work boat used for towing log booms from the far reaches of the lake. Beyond a thicket stood the cabin of the Gorses, who had a coal business in Salmon Arm; in the 60s, they were among the first to rent the sort of houseboats for which Shuswap Lake is now well-known. The town’s electrician and family occupied the next cabin. We came to know a handful of other children further along the beach due to the elaborate games, usually variations on “hide and seek,” that occupied us many afternoons and, following the banged frypan summoning us to dinner, through until twilight. If rain ever persisted, the jigsaw puzzles were put away and a game of Monopoly would begin, sometimes continuing for days.

The Magees’ two children, Susan and Nigel, became our steady companions, joined occasionally by the Glen’s boy, Randy. Nigel was my age while Susan, a slender, dark-haired, pretty girl, was a year or so older--almost my brother’s age. As we grew up, I developed a heartrending crush on her, reinforced by Nigel’s absence much of the time, working with his father, and Paul’s trips each summer to a YMCA camp. Susan and I spent endless hours swimming, rowing, talking about pop music, movie stars and the mindless fashions of the time, or playing cards--”Snap” and “Fish” in the early years, gin rummy and cribbage later--on the covered porch of her cabin. Meanwhile, my mother puttered happily along, sunbathing and reading Perry Mason novels, never obviously lonely or bored. When Dad came up from the city, he would manage a morning’s relaxation before the leisurely lakeside pace got to him and he sought something to fix--in slow years, he was reduced to raking leaves from the sandy trails that ran around the cabin and out back to the biffy. We thought he was crazy.

Although they steadfastly refused our reasoned yet passionate arguments on why we needed a waterski boat, my parents eventually bought a very used five-horsepower outboard, perhaps to help get Aunt Ruby out to better trolling grounds. Meanwhile, however, a more up-to-date, affluent group of vacationers had discovered Shuswap. Even by the mid-60s the air was alive with the buzzing of outboards and the shrieks of waterskiers as they zipped along the beachfront. Many were from the commercial resort, Sandy Point, a mile closer to Salmon Arm.

Sandy Point had a convenience store and a steady parade of campers, notably girls, who passed through during the summer. As we shuffled into teenagehood, its comparatively bright lights beckoned. For the first time, a note of disapproval crept into mother’s voice. She had always been tolerant of our exploring, our swimming, our trips in the rowboat way out into the lake, somehow certain that the combination of our common sense and the benign world would keep us from harm.

The electrician neighbour came by one summer, trying to sign my parents up for a scheme to bring in a power line from the highway. They couldn’t see the point in it, but enough others did. The electrician had his cabin wired, like a display suite, and installed a television that attracted the small-town children like wasps to a cherry pie. Soon, there were no evening games and fewer family campfires and sing-alongs. I began to hear amplified music as I walked along the beach.

As quickly as it began, our cabin idyll ended. Concurrently, my mother became ill and could only spend a couple of weeks away from home. We no longer got into the lakeside pace, and the 1966 Lovin’ Spoonful song, “Summer in the City,” took on a real meaning. Late that summer, Susan’s boyfriend came out from town; the following year, immediately after high-school graduation, they married. Her parents announced they were moving to Salt Spring Island, where there were good logging opportunities and a better climate for retirement. Nigel went to Alberta to look for work. Randy grew his hair past his shoulders and joined a rock band. Paul had a summer job at the dam site near Castlegar and was returning to university in the fall. Left behind that hot August, I just drifted, hanging out at the beach parties at Sandy Point, with the harvest moon glowing orange in the forest-fire smoke. This, I recall thinking, will be my last summer at this dull place--next year I’ll get a job in the city.

Dad sold the cabin the following year, ostensibly because the lease rates were about to triple. But, in reality, everything had changed and there was no going back.

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From Bill Suckling, Blind Bay, 2011:

Pierre's Point cabins near the Glen Echo end, about 1953

View from out on the lake, 1950s

Classic view across the lake to Engineer's Point, on the right, looking up the arm toward Sicamous.

At the Skelton Cabin at Pierre's Point, about 1947

View of Salmon Arm in the early 1950s

I just read your article on the Shuswap Pierre's Point experiences [above]. I must say it brought back many wonderful memories I had long forgotten. It is almost a carbon copy of my experiences while growing up spending summers there. Thinking about it I really must share a few thoughts.

So may descriptions of time spent are parallel .. reading comics on the porch when it was raining ... the after-supper games of what we called 'kick the can'; There were no rules – you just kind of ran around pretending to hide and I really don't remember how they ended ... I do remember seeing the Dominion or possibly the Canadian rounding Engineer' Point and waiting for it to come by the cabin .. which signified bedtime by the way.

Our cabin had planks as a floor with cracks between which is where we swept the sand tracked in ... we had an ice box and Mother made ice in milk cartons at home - we still had milk delivered in bottles but could request cartons if desired which were brought out weekly. We also had a Dumb Waiter of sorts built into the sand which operated on a pull rope pulley system kind of like a small elevator ... the cabinet sunk down into the sand about three feet and served as a cool room. Access was from the kitchen. My daily chores included stocking the wood box and making kindling plus rowing to the spring to get fresh water. I suspect it was designed to use up some time during the day but I still have great memories of visiting that little spring below the Bedford cabins and tasting that clear cold water. Funny how such a simple pleasure is so fondly remembered.

We also played long and hard with our immediate neighbors the Jameson (sp?) clan. There were 5 children – Sue, Mary, Larry, Nancy and JoAnne. Their Father Rollie had a sheet metal plumbing business in town. Mrs J. (Marge) had a large cow bell and it ruled the beach in our group. Swim time was 10AM for 1 hour and again at 2PM for 2 hours. When that bell rang you had best be getting out of the water if you wanted to swim next time around. Pavlov would have been impressed. Beach activity followed building sand castles and whatever else the plan dictated at the time. No texting, no TV and no phone – not even any power but somehow we all survived.

Not sure about your beach time but we had this rule about not going swimming for an hour after you ate or you would get cramps ... you ever get cramps?? My mother came clean many years later telling us it was a way to keep us out of the water for a while requiring less supervision. I have a notion that story was used many time. I have never met anyone who got cramps from swimming immediately after a meal.

One of the best memories was Fridays. Because my Dad worked in town during the week, he would drive out on Friday after work ... he brought fresh ice, vegetables from our garden and frozen meat but best of all he brought a brick of ice cream. We always had a big lunch on Fridays so that we could have the ice cream when it arrived because it was usually so hot it would not survive long. No supper as such that day but later on in the evening we had a camp fire and ate some marshmallows and sometimes even a hot dog. The marshmallows came in a kind of package/box called campfire and they were always rock hard so it was a trial and error to get them on a fresh cut willow stick.

Another exciting time was all about water skiing. Of course none of us had a boat with a motor ... I remember well a family friend of the J's came to spend a week. He brought a tent and joined our clan .. Bob Jeglum and family (sp). He brought a boat, not a huge one but it had a 40HP Evinrude. WOW! We all got to water ski. We each had a turn and some twice. We were in heaven so to speak and in the “big times,” so we thought. Such> simple pleasures were a daily happening throughout those carefree summers back then.

Mosquitos Mosquitos Mosquitos – I must share this .... as you are well aware I think, Pierre's Point must have been the mosquito capital of the world. At least it seemed like it at the time. One particular summer one of the local cabin owners who had an orchard in the South Broadview area, BIll McDermot, used his tractor to pull his orchard sprayer out to Pierre's and they sprayed from the point to the Glen Echo end ... I can well imagine what the chemical was but it sure worked. After the tractor and sprayer noise was gone the air was so quiet and no mosquitos. I suspect it was DDT and diesel fuel mixed with water.

Some of the other local Family names of cabin owners were Bob Harvey, Herb Elliot, Spence Tatchel, Dick Cousins, Albert Bedford, Harry Absen, Bill McDermot and Sam Miller to name a few. Spelling not necessarily correct.

I recently sold my 23-foot pontoon boat as the lake had become a total lawless playground for the current players who seem to think they own it and can do what they please whenever and wherever ... particularly in July and August. There is some effort to “enforce” the issues but typically manpower shortages, legal issues and general societal mindsets are restricting the success. Gone are the days when you could go on the lake for a pleasant cruise, find some quiet shore (no stereos) to rest a while and perhaps enjoy a picnic. I am so thankful to have had the “Shuswap Experience” at a time when your word meant something and a handshake sealed a deal.