There wasn't a lot going on around Lac la Hache in 1948, when young sisters, Carolyne and Elaine Wilkie, moved from Chilliwack to Wright Station with their parents, Carl and Louise, and older brother, Harold.
It was a small community near Lac la Hache, which served as a railway stop with a water tower for the steam engines, and it was a location for bush mills, their employees and families.
By necessity, children at Wright Station learned how to make their own fun, and looking back now, Carolyne and Elaine wouldn't change it for the world.
When their home in Chilliwack was flooded during the great Fraser River flood of '48, their dad vowed never to put his family through that again, so he packed them up and headed north to start a planer mill business with an army buddy.
The move involved two painstakingly slow days of travel on the old Cariboo Wagon Road that was narrow and unpaved, with segments of wooden platforms cantilevered from rock walls high above the Fraser.
The family travelled in a car behind their friend's large truck which was overloaded with their possessions.
"Our mom was really scared to see her furniture hanging over the edge like that. It was all she had," says Elaine.
Their new home at Wright Station was one of the several mill camp shacks that filled the remote little community. It was basic, with no electricity or running water, but before long, Carl bought an old hay shed from the Wright family, which he converted into a house of sorts. It was more spacious than the mill shack, with a barrel heater in the living room for heat and a sawdust-burning cookstove in the kitchen, but no insulation in the walls. That first winter, the temperature dove to -72 Fahrenheit (-58 C), and every one of the many previously unnoticed cracks filled with frost. For the rest of the frigid season, family members slept in the living room, close to the stove.
Children from the camp typically attended school in Lac la Hache, but the one-room San Jose School at 133 Mile was in danger of closing due to an insufficient number of students, so Elaine was chosen as one of a few to attend school there, much to her dismay. The school, later renamed Enterprise School, normally served children from Grades 1-4 who lived between Twilight Lodge on Lac la Hache and Enterprise Road.
Elaine remembers it well, with its little cloak room at the entrance and four rows of wooden desks. There was a wood stove at the back of the room and outhouse behind the building.
At recess, she recalls climbing trees, picking wildflowers, and lying in the grass to gaze at the sky. In winter, during lunch, the teacher would often make soup or hot chocolate for the students to savour. The school was built in 1938 and closed in 1956, before being moved to its current location at the 108 Heritage Site.
There was plenty of simple fun to be had outdoors at home as well, with so many families living near the mill camp. The community was tightly knit and people regularly got together for tobogganing, ice skating on the lake, bonfires and weenie roasts. Otherwise, children busied themselves with simple activities, such as skipping rope, hopscotch, playing with balls and marbles and exploring the woods.
Harold liked to fish in a certain spot and made friends with a wild mink that would visit every time he showed up and steal minnows from his catch. The boy and his friends also had a clubhouse where they would skin squirrels they had trapped and roast potatoes and fish on a fire outside.
Huge sawdust piles near the mill provided opportunity for some of the best fun, as children would roll down the long slopes laughing, but then, "itch like crazy", says Elaine.
A beautiful bay at the north end of Lac la Hache was their favourite place to swim, but the sisters say it was later filled in with earth to become a sawmill site.
In the summertime, there were berries to be picked and Louise would store away jars and jars of canned strawberries, gooseberries, Saskatoons and raspberries. The garden supplied the family with vegetables that would be eaten fresh, and also stored in the root cellar for winter.
Carl and Harold shot a moose each year at freeze-up and the carcass was hung in a shed where pieces could be cut away as needed throughout the winter.
At times when money was scarce, Carl would hunt for anything that could feed his family, and nobody was picky, except the day he brought home a rabbit.
The children were told the meat was chicken, but earlier in the day, Elaine had spied on her mom and dad as they discussed eating a rabbit Carl had just caught. She refused to eat it because she thought they'd cooked the Easter Bunny.
"You weren't fussy unless it was bunny rabbit," says Carolyne, backed up by Elaine who comments, "We never knew we were poor, or that when we had macaroni and tomatoes, that's all there was."
While fancy food was scarce, the children could usually count on being treated to fresh baking, fresh out of the oven when they returned home from school each day.
In winter, food supplies were ordered from Kamloops and delivered by train, arriving packed in large, round cheese crates. At other times of the year, the family would make monthly trips to Williams Lake for groceries and supplies.
The highway was still unpaved, but the drive was worth all the dust that was kicked up along the way, as a lunch of hamburgers and Orange Crush was usually their reward.
Bathing was done just once a week in an aluminum tub, and everyone would share the same bath water. Children went first, one at a time from youngest to oldest, with additional hot water added as needed. Then it was Louise's turn, and she was followed by the men.