West Kootenay Forest History Project, Interview with Mary Horton and Jeannette Carpenter, Daughters of Neilson 'Nels' Winlaw, Grand-daughters of J.B. Winlaw, Sawmill Owners.
Interviewed by Shawn Lamb and Henry Stevenson
July 21, 1993, Nelson BC
J.B. Winlaw mill, Winlaw BC, circa 1908.
Transcript for Winlaw Family
A description of Winlaw family history.
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Shawn Lamb: Nels came out when he was 17 and he worked with his dad [J.B. Winlaw]?
Mary: Yes, at Winlaw.
Shawn Lamb: At Winlaw, at the sawmill there. Did your dad talk about that much?
Mary: Not much.
Shawn Lamb: Did he have bunkhouses there?
Mary: No, not at Winlaw. Some of the men stayed in a boxcar there at Winlaw, but most of them went to Slocan City at night.
Shawn Lamb: Do you know anything about the operation there? Did they have a planer mill, or...?
Mary: Yes.
Shawn Lamb: Do you have any idea how many people worked in it?
Mary: Twenty-five.
Jeannette: Twenty-five or thirty.
Shawn Lamb: Do you remember who any of them were?
Mary: Yes, yes. Mr. Blanchard was the ...
Jeannette: He was the sawyer.
Shawn Lamb: So at Winlaw, did the train come right to the mill?
Mary: Yes.
Shawn Lamb: They had a siding right there. For shipping.
Jeannette: Yes.
Shawn Lamb: Do you have any idea what kind of wood they were cutting? Did they make poles?
Jeannette: No, they cut those big flat planks. They were stacked in the yard.
Mary: Ties. I think they made ties [also].
Jeannette: The railroad was expanding everywhere.
Shawn Lamb: What was the actual name of the company, do you know?
Mary: I think they just called it J.B. Winlaw Lumber Company.
Shawn Lamb: Did he have any partners?
Mary: No. When he got to Duck Creek they called it "J.B. Winlaw & Son."
Shawn Lamb: But with the Slocan Valley operation ...?
Mary: It was just "J.B. Winlaw."
Shawn Lamb: Was he wealthy? Independently wealthy, when he came? How could he have financed ...
Mary: I've often wondered, [all laugh]
Jeannette: I seem to remember some great astonishment of him writing a cheques for $125,000.
Mary: Yes, he had some money, but where he got it I'll never know.
Jeannette: That was quite remarkable, at that time.
Shawn Lamb: Yeah.
Jeannette: Granddad always dressed in a black serge suit. Full dress, with a foiled front, and a black bow tie, and a beaver hat - the black beaver hat. And that's when he left the sawmill, he dressed in full regalia, like we were going to see the Queen at all times. And he'd arrive in Nelson on the - this was when he was at Wynndel... one day my brother was down on Baker Street, Jack worked in Emory's Men's Furnishings at that time, and he was waiting there about where Gelinas' Pool Hall used to be - and this ambulance drove up and backed up to the curb and everything, and out of the back got Granddad. He commandeered it down at the station. They'd taken a patient down, and nobody ever refused J.B. when he said to do this and that - they did it! To Jack's surprise. Granddad got out and went into the barber shop! [all laugh]
Shawn Lamb: That's a great story!
Jeannette: And then we paid five dollars for a spaniel dog once, and I remember ever after that he was always mumbling about "expensive dogs lying on expensive rugs!". [all laugh]
Shawn Lamb: How tall was he?
Mary: He was little, and he had red hair and a terrible temper. He was maybe five-foot-eight - not very big. A little feisty Irishman, that's what he was! [laughs] Oh, dear.
Shawn Lamb: So he never married again.
Jeannette: No.
Shawn Lamb: Once was enough.
Mary: He said he tried it and he didn't like it.
Jeannette: Nobody was going to tell him what to do.
Shawn Lamb: Okay. So your dad came out at 17. Wow, that must have been something, to arrive [laughs] ...
Mary: Yes. In Slocan City ...
Shawn Lamb: With this pepper-pot dad, whom he probably didn't know that well ...
Mary: No, and they didn't get along terribly well.
Shawn Lamb: But he took him in as a partner?
Mary: Oh, yes. That was his son. [But] the way you treat them has nothing to do with the fact that they're your son.
Shawn Lamb: So Nels came out at 17, worked for his dad. And then in what year -do you know? - did the mill burn down in Winlaw?
Jeannette: That's what I don't know. They got married in 1911, Dad and Mom. It burned when we were living here, 'cause we could see the ...
Mary: We could see the glow.
Jeannette: ... the mountain there. You [to Mary] were a little girl then.
Mary: I was very little. I can remember being up in the back bedroom, watching it burn. So, about 1915. Does that sound right?
Jeannette: Well, they got married in 1911,1 know that.
Shawn Lamb: Does anybody know how it burned down?
Mary: I don't. Sawmills just burned down, there was no water, you know, to put out the fire. That was the end of that!
Shawn Lamb: Did they lose everything? Right to the ground?
Mary: Right to the ground, yes.
Shawn Lamb: And they lost everything. And he never thought of rebuilding?
Mary: No, then he ...
Transcript for Neilson Winlaw
A description of Neilson Winlaw and his work.
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Shawn Lamb: [Back to the mill business:] Did your dad like what he was doing?
Jeannette: Oh, he loved it.
Shawn Lamb: Okay, so he put up with his dad because he loved what he was doing.
Jeannette: Oh, yeah they worked along
Mary: Oh, they got along all right, except there was this dreadful... [Granddad had] a terrible temper, a quick one. But, Dad, uh, I'm not sure he paid any attention to it, to tell you the truth.
Jeannette: It's interesting, because it seemed like Dad had two separate lives. When he came home, he was an elder in the Presbyterian Church and he had his Shrine Lodge and ... All his suits in his walk-in closet up there, about eight suits and shined shoes, hats and ties, and as soon as he got home he got completely changed out of his logging clothes and read the Financial Post, and went to church, and then left again at one o'clock in the morning on the train on Sunday night.
Transcript for Fire
A description of of the mills burinig to ground.
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Shawn Lamb: Okay, so this first mill in Wynndel burned. Then they built the second. Three million feet of lumber went up in smoke!
Mary: Yes, I remember that.
Shawn Lamb: Wow! And most of the lumber had been cut, so the blaze consumed three-quarters of the lumber in the yard.
Mary: Well, it does you know. In a lumber yard - I don't know what you call it - there's a draft through, once it gets going there's no ... And there was no water to do anything!
Shawn Lamb: They said it was far away from the mill, they couldn't use the mill hose. So then - I just can't believe these people building again, another one!
Mary: They did, 'cause I can remember. I'd forgotten about all this.
Shawn Lamb: Did your Dad have insurance in those days?
Mary: Yes. Sure they did, but not lots. But some. Because I remember there was some commotion about the insurance.
Shawn Lamb: So he started again. So it says here that they operated, then it burned again.
Mary: Yes.
Shawn Lamb: Now, was that it? For your Dad?
Jeannette: You mean at Wynndel?
Shawn Lamb: Yes.
Jeannette: Oh no, there was always one [a mill] there.
Mary: There was always one there. They sold it to Wigen's mill [Wynndel Box & Lumber].
Shawn Lamb: Just a minute, what does it say here? It says, "The Winlaw era ended on Friday," this is what they say, "August 13, 1937, when the J.B. Winlaw mill caught fire and was totally destroyed, along with the lumber and loading platforms. It had been built in 1922 and was modern throughout, had a daily capacity of 75,000 feet. With a strong wind blowing, the fire swept to all parts of the mill, instantly making it impossible to fight the blaze..." So did he [Neilson Winlaw] retire after that?
Mary; Yes, sort of.
Jeannette: No, he didn't, entirely. He made fence posts and sold fence posts.
Mary: But he retired from the sawmill.
Jeannette: Yeah. Carried on his business from Nelson.
Shawn Lamb: And where did he operate in Nelson?
Mary: He had an office in the house.
Jeannette: Put an extension on the house and built-in an office.
Shawn Lamb: And cut fence posts.
Jeannette: Fence posts, and then he would go to Winnipeg [to arrange sales],
Shawn Lamb: Did he ever talk about that fire?
Mary: Never remember him saying a word.
Jeannette: He may have said it; we didn't hear it.
Shawn Lamb: So he separates then [from the company], and he never has any partners.
Jeannette: No.
Shawn Lamb: Okay, and he died in 1950?
Jeannette: Did Dad die in 1950?
Mary: I thought it was 1952, but I'm not sure about that.
Shawn Lamb: Did he leave anyone a fortune?
Jeannette: No.
Mary: No.
Shawn Lamb: Everybody thinks these people make so much money, you know.
Jeannette: No, it finally got burned up, down to the ground, and Dad was on his own selling fence posts.
Shawn Lamb: No fortune. You're not the Rockefellers.
Jeannette: No.
Mary: No, sorry about that. [laughter]
Transcript for Flumes
A description of flumes that were used.
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Shawn Lamb: This [old] article talks about this big flume they had in Wynndel. Do you remember anything like that?
Mary: That was in Goat Creek.
Jeannette: No, no this was in Wynndel, it was a great high flume, about this high. [indicates]
Mary: You remember the one that was down at Goat Creek, down Goat Creek ...
Jeannette: I don't remember Goat Creek.
Mary: 'Cause I remember Jack and I put a kitten in the flume, you know it was about this high, and while we stood - we had just set it down - the logs came down and took the kitten.
Jeannette: Aw, sheesh.
Mary: That's all I remember about a flume.
Jeannette: The Kutenai Indian Band was there, I recall. And we would have various friends, like ... the young men would take us up Duck Creek, fishing, I can remember ...
Mary: Sure, and make us moccasins and all.
Jeannette: Yes, made us moccasins. Gave Dad gunny sacks full of ducks to bring home that I had to pluck ... [both chuckle] Under duress, I must say!
Shawn Lamb: I was just going to ask, since you brought up the Indians ... I was going to ask whether your grandfather or your dad ever any East Indian or Chinese or Japanese workers?
Jeannette: Not that I remember. No I don't think they had. Not North American Indians either.
Mary: But they asked to come and see us when we were over there.
Jeannette: They lived in tipis in their place there ...
Mary: We used to ride their horses.
Shawn Lamb: Yeah, there's a picture here of the mill with a tipi right beside it!
Jeannette: I'd want to see that.
Mary: I want to see this, too!
Jeannette: We're terribly ignorant about our family - but not so bad when you start thinking it back.
Shawn Lamb: No.
Transcript for lumber
A description of selling the lumber.
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Shawn Lamb: Who bought his lumber? Did he sell most of it locally, or did he ship to...?
Mary: No, it was shipped. You mean ...You're talking about from Duck Creek?
Shawn Lamb: Yeah.
Jeannette: It was mostly shipped on CPR boxcars. The siding was right below the office there.
Shawn Lamb: So the Prairies.
Jeannette: The Prairie, a lot to the Prairie, yeah. Well, I can remember Dad going on various trips to the Prairie about his business.
Transcript for smallpox
A description of Nels Winlaw surviving smallpox.
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Jeannette: Also, Dad lived through smallpox, survived smallpox in our house.
Mary: Yes, he got smallpox from the Indians.
Jeannette: He got into a camp over there. And he got into bed in the house in Nelson, and he got quarantined upstairs. And my mother's sister Mary Matheson came to nurse him. And Dr. Arthur was the medical health officer, and he [Nels] was upstairs with smallpox. We were all confined to the house downstairs, quarantined. In fact, I can still hear that washing machine going day and night, with Aunt Mary, and all the rest of us sleeping on the floor downstairs, and we got that horse serum.
Mary: That's all I can remember. They vaccinated us all, and Jack got so sick that hewas climbing up the walls.
Jeannette: From the vaccination.
Shawn Lamb: So, a horse serum they used for it? Not the cowpox?
Mary: No, no, this was, this was smallpox.
Shawn Lamb: And he [Neilson Winlaw] survived.
Mary: He survived.
Jeannette: He did survive. That's astounding, isn't it?
Mary: Well, he got it from the Indians over at Wynndel, but I don't know when.
Jeannette: Yeah, that [family quarantine] was quite a siege, wasn't it?
Mary: Terrible. And the Indians tried to cure it, you know. They built a big thing with, uh, with I don't know what kind of boughs, trying to ...
Shawn Lamb: Oh, a sweat lodge.
Mary: Yes. And then when he got so sick they couldn't do anything, then they sent him to Nelson.
Shawn Lamb: Ahh. That's amazing!
Jeannette: Yeah, really was quite a siege, wasn't it. We were in there for weeks.
Mary: When I think about it, we're survivors. Aren't we, though?! [laughs]
Jeannette: Nobody would come near the house. [They'd leave] milk and stuff way, way up at the top of the lot up there, and we'd have to go and get it.
Shawn Lamb: And none of you got it [smallpox] ?
Mary: No, we didn't.
Jeannette: Well, that was a miracle. Our Aunt Mary never got it. The doctor didn't get it.
Mary: No, and she came from Toronto, to...
Jeannette: But you know, you always think it's so terribly contagious. I don't know how they didn't get it.
Shawn Lamb: She [Mary] must have known the right thing to ...
Mary: Well, she was the matron in the hospital while she was a nurse, but that wouldn't save you from it, really.
Transcript for Wynndel
A description of Wynndel and the mill there.
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Who did he buy that mill from over at Duck Creek?
Shawn Lamb: In this [account] it says he bought the Homesteader's Sawmill...
Mary: At Wynndel.
Shawn Lamb: ... at Wynndel, Duck Creek.
Mary: He did buy it, I'm pretty sure he bought that sawmill. I think so. In 1917? Does it say?
Shawn Lamb: Okay, it says that he bought some flat land from Paul Hagen to build a mill, situated near where the present site of Wynndel Box and Lumber is ...
Mary: Yes, that's true.
Shawn Lamb: The present site of Wynndel Box and Lumber was the site of Winlaw's lumber yard.
Mary: Um-hmm.
Shawn Lamb: He had a timber limit below Creston in the area of Riverview, and logged there to start with. Then he bought out somebody named Grady ...
Mary: Yes.
Shawn Lamb: ... and he bought timber limits up on Duck Creek. Then during World War I, cleared land for a bigger mill site on the flats. And in 1919, the smokestacks had been erected, and in August 1919 the whistle at the new Winlaw sawmill was heard for the first time. So I guess he had an earlier mill, and he bought it and built a bigger one.
Jeannette: Yes.
Mary: That sounds right. I'm trying to remember. I wasn't very big when I was over there in Winlaw.
Shawn Lamb: So was the family really upset about... like, that must have been terrible to have been burned out?
Mary: I can't remember any uproar about it, can you?
Jeannette: Well, no. We were just... we were little, we'd be kids, you know. I can remember Mother saying, "Look, there's the sawmill burning, but I don't remember any terrible uproar.
Mary: Well, I'm sure there would be a terrible uproar, all right...
Jeannette: I'm sure there was, but we were little.
Shawn Lamb: So, when did your Mom and Dad get married?
Mary: In 1911, in Toronto.
Shawn Lamb: And who was your Mom?
Mary: Alicia Elizabeth Matheson.
Shawn Lamb: And she was from Toronto?
Jeannette: Chatsworth.
Shawn Lamb: Was she someone your dad had known?
Mary: Yes, he had known her. That's why he went all the way back to get married to her.
Shawn Lamb: So she came out here, and they bought a house on Carbonate Street [in Nelson] ?
Mary: Yes.
Shawn Lamb: What house was that?
Jeannette: 719 Carbonate Street.
Shawn Lamb: 719. Did they build that, or...?
Jeannette: No, they bought it.
Shawn Lamb: Okay, and so you were all born in ...?
Jeannette: Right in the upstairs bedroom. Front of the house.
Mary: Were you born in that upstairs bedroom?
Jeannette: Everybody was born in that bedroom.
Mary: I wasn't. I didn't know you were.
Jeannette: You were.
Shawn Lamb: How many of you were there?
Mary: There's four of us. There's me, Mary, and then Jack, and then Jeannette, and then Doug.
Shawn Lamb: Your brother died?
Mary: Yes.
Jeannette: He was the youngest.
Shawn Lamb: Okay. Jack, is he still alive?
Jeannette: Jack lives in Kelowna.
Shawn Lamb: And then you, and then Doug. So you were all... You lived in Nelson.
Mary: Always.
Shawn Lamb: Did you go to Wynndel on holidays?
Mary: Yes, all summer.
Jeannette: In the summer, we'd go over there.
Mary: Grandfather used to take us and feed us strawberries until we got - what are those things?
Shawn Lamb: Hives?
Mary: [laughs] And then send us all home to Mother.
Jeannette: Well, then in those days the Lake boats were on, too, you might say. We'd sleep over on them, go down m a taxi, and get on it [the boat]. They had places you could sleep on them, it was really elegant.
Mary: Oh, those were beautiful boats. The dining rooms and so on.
Jeannette: They were grand. They had the galleries on the upper level around the dining room.
Mary: And the food!
Jeannette: They had the gallery running all the way around. It was really elegant, wasn't it?
Shawn Lamb: So, was there a house there you could stay in?
Jeannette: Well, we stayed in the office. There were several, a couple of bedrooms in the office there. And of course our Aunt Janet was there then, too - after a few years.
Mary: And Mr. Moore was the ... Mrs. Moore used to look after me.
Shawn Lamb: All right, so I guess you didn't go out on the operations, I guess your brothers did. Out to the mill.
Jeannette: We could go down to the mill, and we rode on that saw that went back and forth and cut the logs - much to our terror, but it was so exciting.
Shawn Lamb: [laughs] That must have been something!
Mary: It was something, believe me! [laughs]
Jeannette: I wouldn't want any kid of mine doing it. [laughs]
Mary: I wouldn't let any kid of mine do it!
Shawn Lamb: So your Grandpa was there. And your dad.
Jeannette: Yes.
Mary: Excuse me, but he used sleep in the office and he used to keep a shotgun by the front door, in case anybody [laughs] came to kill us! I don't know if he had it there all the time, but I remember he drove my [future] husband - drove Harrry Horton, my future husband, and Elmer Horton, his father - drove them off the property. They came you know, they were in Spokane at this point, I'll have to tell you about this.
Jeannette: They were in logging, also.
Mary: Yes, but they were Americans - a fate worse than death, according to him. But he toted a shotgun and drove them away. They came to see him, they were buying ...just to buy some lumber. That was all they wanted, [all laugh]
Jeannette: Remember the [insect-repellent] smudges outside the door with the grass on fire?
Mary: Yes, and remember the newspapers when you got to Kootenay Landing, Grandfather and Dad came down ... they used to put newspapers and then put your stockings on [to keep the mosquitos from biting the girls' legs].
Shawn Lamb: Oh, the mosquitos! Everybody talks about that. Well, people died from mosquitos over there.
Jeannette: Yes, that's right.
Mary: When you got to Kuskanook they were awful.
Jeannette: It was terrible. Sort of swampy at the end of the Lake there.
Shawn Lamb: Yeah. Wasn't it terrible for those men working there?
Mary: Awful. Awful. I don't know how they how they did it.
Jeannette: The bunkhouses were awful. Infested with insects.
Mary: I don't remember them complaining about it or saying ... But it must have been terrible.
Jeannette: A fact of life, I guess.
Shawn Lamb: Yeah. So you remember putting the newspapers and stockings under your...
Jeannette: The smudge you put by door each night before you went to bed.
Mary: Yes.
Shawn Lamb: Did you have screens on the windows or anything?
Mary: Oh yes, there were screens.
Jeannette: But I mean it was so insufferably hot, and no ventilation, if you closed the door you couldn't live in there. You opened the door, you got eaten up. Fun place to go for the summer! [both laugh]
Mary: Big hilarious feast.
Shawn Lamb: It must have been awful for your Mom.
Mary: She never went! [raucous laughter among all]
Jeannette: Granddad got his son-in-law to quit being a mechanic, in Owen Sound, and got him out there to work in the sawmill, eh? And his daughter [Aunt Janet], too, and their children. And Aunt Janet was so fed up that she had to come all the way out to Duck Creek, she was mad. Poor Aunt Janet got ordered about by her father all the time. That was a sad situation for Aunt Janet.
Mary: It was terrible for her.
Jeannette: Well, Mother - I never heard of Mother being in Duck Creek.
Mary: I don't think she ever was.
Shawn Lamb: Did you all go together, all the kids? Did your Mom get a break? Or did you sort of take turns?
Mary: No, no. Jack and I, we were the two oldest, went together.
Jeannette: And I'd go over there, but I'd been over there with Jack, and remember one time when our cousin got drowned in the pond where they bring the logs out.
Shawn Lamb: I remember reading about that.
Jeannette: They looked all afternoon for Jack and I, and we were playing on the ice up in the ice house, skating on the ice bricks up there, and they were terrified. They thought maybe we could have got drowned, too.
Shawn Lamb: Yeah, it says [referring to document] "Neil Crane was drowned, and then another man was drowned ..."
Jeannette: That's another thing made Aunt Janet really bitter.
Shawn Lamb: Was that her only child?
Jeannette: No, she had three children, [corrects mistake] four children.
Shawn Lamb: So, they lived there.
Mary: Unfortunately for them, they did.
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