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STORIES - Music Culture of Bralorne & Pioneer Mines
Jul 11th, 2007 THE MUSIC CULTURE OF THE BRALORNE AND PIONEER MINES IN THE 40's, 50's and 60's I was asked at the 2002 reunion to write my version of the "music culture in the Bridge River Valley". People said that my mom and dad where a large part of that culture and the more facts I gathered the more I really appreciated what they had done along with many other names that began to pop up. The more I wrote, the more people came to mind. All kinds of music were in this valley and a great friendly mix of all nationalities formed because of it. Here are their stories. I think the best way to write this is to start with mom and dad and let the story unfold from there. Arnold Howard 1896- 1982 Dad originally played with a band in Vancouver. He was employed as an electrician by trade. He met Winifred "Winnie" Tansley (my mom) in a music store in Vancouver, where she worked. They married in 1933 right after the depression and thought that 2 salaries where better that 1. Little did they know that their son Ray was in the making and he was born in 1936. Times were tough in those days especially with a new baby and Dad needed a steady job so he hired on in Bralorne in 1938. He moved us up there in 1939 and we lived in the upstairs suite of the BRX living quarters in BRX. Dad finally got us a duplex in Bralorne next to the mine office, George Ford, his wife and his family Teresa and Lyman Ford lived in the other half of the duplex. That duplex is where these two musicians began their musical life. He played piano in Bralorne with a great band called the Benny Stone Band in the early 40's. Included in this band where Archie Ford bass fiddle and violin, Fred Kenny saxophone, Koby Davis spanish guitar, Pat Lynne electric guitar. These were the days when Bralorne and Pioneer had great hockey players and baseball players. The dance halls were full every Saturday night. Dad liked to play the music of the day and his first tunes in the Bridge River valley, were played on a piano at the bordello in the original 2 story Gold Bridge Hotel that was just up the hill from Bean's bakery. Just like the movies with smoke, cards, liquor and women. That's what the miners wanted and dad was right in there just a plinka plinka on the old ivories (come to think of it maybe that's why mom moved up there, he was having too much fun) dad worked for George Ford of the mine electrical crew in the daytime and made extra money at night playing piano. He was also found playing the piano in the lounge of the ship that carried us from Squamish to Vancouver when we went on holidays. The PGE railway did not go all the way to Vancouver until later so every time we traveled to Vancouver old "twinkle fingers" would end up playing in the lounge with all the poker games going on. He never played poker, he couldn't keep a straight face when he had a good hand. "Howard's Hotshots" came into play (pardon the pun) in the 40's and 50's, some names that I can remember were Jimmy Lyons saxophone and clarinet - plumber by trade; Harry Brown on the drums - plumber by trade; Rita Cameron on the drums - mom to Marilyn and Stuart; Leo Bitz was a popular trumpet player- Red Piercy tells me that Leo Bitz was teaching him how to play the trumpet and he was doing pretty good at it until Cy Guest, a good pitcher for the Bralorne ball team, hit him in the teeth with a baseball and took out his two front teeth, that was the end of Red's trumpet lessons from Leo. Al Lachance trumpet player - barber by trade and still cutting hair in Kamloops in 2005, playing pool and driving a fancy car was Al's hobby. He told me he lost the fancy car in a poker game. Bill Bentman was a trumpet player in those times as well. Ross Martell, guitar - mill mechanic by trade, Alex Ford banjo player - mill worker by trade; and I'm sure I've missed a few. These guys played every community dance and school dance and when they played for the school dances it was for free. What a thrill to have big time music at a school dance that included jive, waltz, rock and roll and then some slow slow closing time music, Sandy Carson (Miller) remembers a tune called "west and nest and you dear" (mushy stuff) that had everyone dashing around looking for that favorite person for the last dance. It was hard to be a teenage son when your father ran the band, he saw my every move, but it was all great fun and drugs in school did not exist. Mr. Jack Buller and his associate teachers kept a sharp eye out watching us, while they were dancing their own cheek to cheek with people they eventually married. Jack Buller, are you out there, what was that gorgeous nurses name? Community dances were different and so was a legion dance different from a community dance. Community dances would bring out 300 to 400 people and very few people stayed home. There were always more men than women of course because a lot of the miners were single and in those days there were a lot of immigrant miners who came here after the war. German, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Latvian, Polish, Dutch, Austrian, Norwegian, Italian, Swiss, Spanish and Mexican. Remember the Cisco Kid? He used to dance by himself and buzz around the dance floor on his own. He had some good moves as long as he was dancing alone. A lot of the European men all knew how to waltz, fox trot, rumba you name it so mom and the rest of the wives really enjoyed dancing with these guys. They used the excuse that their husbands couldn't dance because they were playing in the band. Ya right!!!! Sooner or later around 11:30 at night a great fistfight would break out for reasons unknown but usually caused by booze and jealous boy friends or girl friends. Any excuse to let off a little steam was good enough. This fight would usually start with 2 people then 8 more would jump in and pick sides so the fight was fair. The battles usually took place outside the community hall but every now and then a big one would start in the hall. The band loved this part because they knew if they stopped playing all hell would break loose, so they played right through the fight, dad and his band used the opportunity to try out new tunes and Jimmy Lyons would always break out his clarinet right about then because he was still a little squeaky on it and needed to practice and what better time then right then? And the band played on….. Fights usually ended on a good note because these guys all had to work with one another on Monday morning A short note on the immigrants that worked in the Bralorne and Pioneer Mines- we all had one basic set of rules so we could all get along. Try to speak English at all times, don't form little communities on your own, and be a bralornite or a pioneerite. Teach us some of your culture and learn ours. These rules all came into play in everything we did. Amateur night was a big thing, Pioneer and Bralorne joined together to produce a show with a lineup of miners doing a "can can dance", some of them had gorgeous legs when they got those net stockings on. Ken Scorse was a knockout. I remember guys like Patty Miller and Delbert Coghill and their friends doing German "shoe schnacking/smacking" with their little short leather pants and suspenders. These guys learned all this from some of the German people, Frank Radfux was one of them. Dad and mom, played at these amateur nights. The big dances of the year where the New Years dance, and the Snow Queen dance, the school Christmas pageant was also great. Christine Knee remembers these events as a young girl, going to them with her parents. Dad's music also gave him the opportunity to become the organist and choir master at the united church, he loved putting on Christmas music that had lot's of Halleluiah's in them, the choir was large with lots of ladies and about 8 men in the group. Dad promised all the girls in his choir that he would play at their wedding and he had the pleasure of filling that wish many times as the girls went their separate ways and met new people. I can still remember the look of pleasure on his face when the phone would ring and it was one of his choirgirls on the line. He enjoyed driving members of his choir to church on Sunday night in his '52 ford, his son Ray (that's me) was 17 then and had just received his driver's license and he wanted to jazz up the family car a bit so he went out and bought fender skirts and a dual exhaust system for the car. Dad knew I was putting this stuff on the car but he didn't know the mufflers gave a deep rapping noise when he let his foot of the throttle. I still remember dad returning home after church one Sunday coming down the "big hill" with those twin pipes just a crackling' and dad grinning behind the wheel. The ladies had a slight polite smile. He played the church organ. It had to be pumped with his feet. It could also be pumped with a handle that was inserted in the side and a helper could then do the pumping, guess who became the helper at some of his choir practices….me. The church eventually got an electronic organ with a booming base, thanks to Bill Shaw, he delivered wood to everyone for their furnaces in the winter, and Don Matheson, a highly respected mine manager, between the 2 of them they collected enough money in 4 days to purchase that organ. Dad also played in the Pioneer church on occasion and I think it was Mrs. Rose who also played the organ there with their own choir, one service was early and the other service was late and a lot of the choir did both services in the 40's and 50's After the mine shut down all this tapered down and dad remained involved up to the early 60's. He gave it all up after mom died and eventually moved out of the valley and lived in Victoria with his son Ray. He then moved to Langley and then to Nanaimo. He suffered with Alzheimer disease in the last few years and couldn't remember his son or his grandson but he could still play the piano. What a horrible ending after making all that music. He died in Nanaimo in 1982. Winifred (Winnie) Howard 1910-1963 Then there was mom. Winnie to all her friends. Winnie Howard was a completely different person, raised in Birtle Manitoba and Davidson Saskatchewan. She came to Vancouver in her early 20's to meet the man of her dreams, and hopefully become rich and live a life of luxury. I quess she liked the characteristics of dad enough to marry him but that was the end of riches and luxury for her. He liked contemporary music and she liked classical music, what a team. I wonder what she must have thought to be plucked from downtown Vancouver and the next thing she knew she was on a porch in BRX with a 3-year-old kid. She hung in there and found her niche in life in Bralorne by becoming one of the music teachers of the valley. There was only one person she did not want to teach and that was me. I went to Mrs. Radcliff and Mrs. Enemoto for my lessons. These ladies also taught people to play piano in the valley. Mom taught many, people to play the piano and some of them went on to be good pianists. At our 2002 reunion Brian Radcliff laughingly remembers mom telling him he was wasting his parent's money if he didn't try harder, Brian persevered and plays a great piano today, it's in his basement today. He said he and Doreen Lyon's could play a mean duet when they were in the mood. They both went on to the high level of grade 11 in the Conservatory of Music. Way to go you two, I know Mom would be very proud of you both. She had recitals every year and students progressed through their grades of music. I always remember mom's recitals because my room was full of girls on that day and I was embarrassed. She took a trip out of the valley once a year and usually went back to visit her parents in Saskatchewan for a visit and then some sort of music training. She attended a class put on by the late and great Irving Berlin at one point, and talked about that for years. She was a non-smoker and drank very little. She did a lot of knitting, crocheting, and metal craft work to keep her busy when she wasn't teaching music. She was pretty good at playing bridge (don't know if she played poker….). She liked to play with the C.P. and Patti Ashmore. Mom played at many school functions such as plays or concerts and was a wonderful classical pianist. She was the one that was responsible for picking the piano tuners who would come into the valley. She would ask that person to play something. If it wasn't good classical music that person wasn't hired. She had a circle of close friends such as Humphries Gertie Jackson, Mary Manning, Margaret Humphries, Patti Ashmore to name a few, and made her mark in the community as the music teacher who was a little stern at times but always had open arms and a warm heart for her students. I later became an instructor in the mechanical trades at Camosun College in Victoria and I carried her standards with me till I retired. My students thanked me for that teaching style when they went to work in the Heavy Duty Mechanic Trade. Mom noticed a lump on her shoulder one day and realized that it wasn't healing, she waited to long to get medical attention and the tumour spread into her lungs and eventually brought her life to an end in Bralorne hospital in 1962. She was a very brave soul and she knew that I was in the middle of my mechanical apprenticeship at Finning Tractor in Vancouver and she didn't want anyone to tell me that she had cancer for fear it might disrupt my training. I received a message from a friend of mine to phone Dr Don King who had been the Bralorne doctor years earlier and had his practice in Vancouver. Dr King was surprised to learn I was unaware of her sickness and said she had little more than a week to live and he wasn't very far off on his guess, she died with me at her side, she was a feisty woman from a proud little town called Bralorne. Lot's of people brought music to the valley in different ways. How many of us can remember Mr. Richardson firing up his bagpipes at #2 town site getting ready for Robbie Burns Day or any other function that required the bag pipes. You could hear him at the ballpark when he practiced in his house but he was a necessary part of our culture and he was always strutting his stuff in the full Scottish dress and tradition. The Ross and Eileen Martell Jazz Group with Harry Brown on drums could play some pretty fancy stuff and Ross used to get right into that guitar of his. They played a lot at the legion and the occasional dance as a change of pace from Howard's Hotshots. Lot's of good memories about these two people. They left the valley in 1960 and Ross went into business as an optician and had a partner who was an optometrist. They called themselves London Optical. London Drugs was around Vancouver then and they started an optical department at the same time called London Optical. When they learned that Ross already had that name London Drugs was forced to call themselves London Drugs Optical Department. They later bought Ross's London Optical business. Ross and Eileen have both passed away now. The Valley Vagabonds led by "Vic" Teasdale and his trombone played in Pioneer back in the late 30's at their annual Pioneer Mucker's Ball. It was the miners and muckers night to howl and they had a little verse to go with it. There's joy in a glass of wine, my friends, or a maids seductive glance- But the best of all and the zest of all Is the PIONEER MUCKERS DANCE! The Guitar and Piano Players There were quite a few, how could we ever have a party without them, they were always at our parties and we always had music and singing at these things. A vast difference compared with today's music and boom boxes. Russ Clarke had an influence on all the girls in the valley, he was the Elvis Prestly of Bralorne and wore his hair slicked down and sang just like the king himself. Don Corwin and his brothers Ray and Eddie were guys from the Fiji Islands and came to Bralorne looking for work. We gave them their start in this country by allowing them to work no questions asked. Don and Eddie got this immigration stuff sorted out many years later but that's not the real point here. The point I'd like to make here is these guys brought the music of the Fiji Islands with them and could put on a swishy grass skirt and wiggle their rear as good as any woman could. Don and Eddie can be remembered as 2 guys who brought a lot of happy music to our parties and some time during the night they would break out into song in their native tongue and we didn't know if they where singing nice songs or off color songs (pun intended because these guys where from Fiji) they were always smiling. Don had a booming voice and when he worked underground he used to yell "fire" as a warning before setting off a blast of dynamite. You knew what was going to happen after that. Don's theory was – if you can't hear him you're at a safe distance. Len Mason was about 18 when he came to town from Vancouver to work at the mine. He could play a guitar so fast that his hands and fingers were nothing but a blur. Len was with our parties for a couple of years and then he took his music on the road across Canada for a while. He ended up settling in Nova Scotia as a teacher. Bob Chisholm was one of the gang and he took his guitar to every party. He also sang and it was fun when we could get all these guitar people together for a great time. Bob is also remembered as the guy who bought a brand new 1956 Pontiac convertible with all the horns and whistles and his payments where very reasonable perhaps $120 a month over 24 months but what Bob forgot was in order to do this with low payments there had to be a final payment to finish off the purchase price, that last payment that Bob had to make was something like $600 (which would easily be $6000 today) He was stunned and didn't speak for 2 days, I remember he was so shocked he lit a cigarette with his lighter, waved it as if it was a match and threw it out the window….what a laugh. He worked as a hoist man in Pioneer. Bob passed away 2002. What a guy. All these guys would play at our "Speedsters Shack Parties" This was a shack at the end of the road in P.E. above Pioneer. We did all our partying there, off the road. The girls would dress up in high heels and Donna McMillan, Georgie Wilkins, Maryann Illidge, Janet Whitehouse and Bonnie Warrington and all those other great kids (I know I've missed someone) knocked my eyes out one night when they changed from a 16 year old kids to gorgeous women in black patent leather high heel shoes oooooeeeeeee nice legs. Our parties had the blessings of the RCMP and a lot of the parents like Mr. and Mrs. Okranick would often join us. Yes we drank and partied but we stayed off the streets and had fun. Then snuck home at 2 am. John Bett still plays his guitar at parties even today and if you ever want to get a party started you invite Dr. Phil Ashmore (for his humour and singing) and John for his singing and guitar plucking (sorry Phil) and the party is on. Phil can also be remembered at my parents house at Christmas, Mom and Dad were good friends with Phil's parents Patti and C.P. Phil was around 19 and was home for Christmas from his studies at university. He could play a piano with one finger and you know what??? It was pretty good stuff. John Bett can be remembered as a kid playing his guitar on the front porch of his house in #2 town site with his dad who played a great fiddle. John says the neighbours used to come over with cookies every time he and his dad started to play. It didn't take them long to realize if they needed dessert they went out on the porch and played a few tunes. Other guitar players should also be mentioned here such as Sneva Brown, Verna Smith, Lloyd Smith and I'm sure there's more to this list. A lot of them where Norwegian people and a guitar seemed to fit right in at a party. Dick Dragon played guitar as well. He played in a band 1962-63 with Rita Cameron (drums) Jim Lyons (sax). Dick bought his guitar from Les Ponds, (remember him, from Bradian? he played a lot like Les Paul as I remember it). Do you remember Gary Kreller getting all upset one night in 1962 at a party at the little gun lake point, he got so mad at his guitar that he threw it in the bonfire!!!!! Dorie Geiger used to play for house parties in the town sites and some of the regulars that met on a lot of Saturday nights were Norm Gibbons and his red headed wife (Norm was with the North West Mounted Police that later changed to the present RCMP), Norm McGeachy and Alice ( Norm ran the radio station VF6B and Yalakom was VF6A) Charlie Geiger (the store manager),Jim and Elaine Miller (Jim was the accountant) Bob and Margaret Humphries( payroll), Rolly Allaire (fur trapper and assay sampler)and his wife Noel, (school teacher). Helen Railton (husband Sid who ran the "stage line" to Shalath) played piano at house parties also. She could also play a great mouth organ, I remember her playing my mouth organ at our house one night, in those days lipstick was a big deal, so imagine my surprise the next time I played it, my lips had lipstick on them and I had no idea where I got it from. Joe (Gieseppe) Dotto who came to Bralorne in 1954 from Italy and his brother Pete (Pietro) arrived in 1956. The two brothers took up residence in Coconut Grove and soon became good friends with Charlie and Evelyn Cunningham. They both worked underground at Bralorne. They both had a great love for music and formed a band and the Cunninghams named them "the Reitman Boys" Pete on drums, Lugie (Ranato) played the violin and saxophone, Mino Cheurato played guitar and accordion and Fred, who was German played the violin and mandolin. Big brother Joe took the bookings and they played a wide variety of music at functions in Pioneer, Bralorne and Lillooet until 1959 when they moved on to city life. Sue Olson (Merl and Sally's daughter) bumped into a guy recently in Fort McMurray Alberta who is 93 years old now and still ticking over. His name was Bill Morris. Bill played in a band in Bralorne from 1936-40. Bill played the fiddle along with Casey De Haan on the banjo, Oliver Edmonson, on saxophone, was also the band leader. Does anyone remember the Drum and Bugle band around 1961? It was started by Ed Hall and Garth Elliot. Rick Olson (Merl and Sue's son) remembers them and we'll add more detail here if anyone can come up with the names of those people in that band. Nora Ashmore gave me the next bit of information. Vic Stauffer (Teasdale?), a miner from Pioneer, played violin and trombone at all the dances in Pioneer in 1936. He had the distinction of working with Jim Harmer (UBC Rugby player) underground and the two of them set the record of loading the greatest number of ore cars (by hand) in one shift. Vic joined the RCMP band in Ottawa and played the trombone, brother Fred often said he'd never met anyone who loved music as much as Vic. Summary Many times now I think back to those days and realize how lucky we where to grow up in a town like Bralorne and Pioneer. I'm sure that music had a great deal of influence on everyone who lived there. The people of the Bridge River Valley were a close- knit group that helped each other survive through the long winters and sometimes hard times but always good times. The music these people brought with them will never be forgotten and those at the reunions always have these people's names in their conversations. Speaking as one of the people who grew up in this valley I am proud to say that this valley's culture made us all honest, trusting, hardworking people who liked each other's company and still do to this day. I'm glad I was part of that. Ray Howard (Dixieland Jazz Lover) PS I know I have missed important people that should be mentioned here so if you have any additions or corrections would you please e mail me at rayhoward@shaw.ca or phone me 250 592-5238 I'd be glad to include them. If you would like a copy of "Music in the Bridge River Valley give me your mailing address. My address is 1751 Denman St, Victoria BC V8R1Y
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