The Halliday house from the road
The dented beer can growled and barked above the tinkling bearbells fastened to our shoelaces. Half-filled with gravel it shattered the peace inherent under the tall firs. Our boots crunched over the dry roadbed. Though pricked for noises from the bush, our ears detected little but the annoying clatter from the can. We stopped to listen. My eyes traveled down the length of my husband's finger. Locked in a rut, a huge paw print appeared, its edges casting black shadows across the caked mud.
"There's grizzlies around all right," Kirk muttered.
"OK, I'm going to sing!" And, though I never sing where people can hear, I belted out a few rounds of `Amazing Grace.' Kirk, also a reluctant singer, tried `Bow Down to Washington' Together we managed a labored `Yankee Doodle.'
We'd passed through a deserted dryland sort. Though small alders and dusty salmonberry brambles lined the road, beyond them natural golden meadows stretched to the river course. On the left, dense forest climbed uphill. We walked on with some trepidation, each daring the other ahead.
It's hard to estimate how far we traveled, perhaps a mile or more, singing, can shaking, pausing to listen. But then we spied moss-covered buildings in a grove of trees on the meadow side. Could this be the original cabin site? No, that was further upriver.
For years we'd heard of the Halliday family of Kingcome succeeding at dairy and cattle ranching in this remote, isolated river valley. Lately we'd run into locals who talked of a logging company purchasing the now abandoned homestead.
"Better get up there before they bulldoze the place," they'd warned.
So there we were, with no directions, just a cryptic scribble on an old chart. Now that we'd stopped, the quiet seemed overwhelming. Bear sign polka-dotted the road.
"Just us and the bears," Kirk said, turning to look about. "Hey, wait a minute, what's this?"
Just beyond, to the west, a driveway led between tall firs. A roof and white rimmed windows beckoned above lush undergrowth. "It's the house, " I cried, barely believing we had found it.
In the fall of 1893, Ernest Halliday, his brother William and brother-in-law Harry Kirby, rowed and sailed northwest from Comox to scout viable ranch land. Though headed for Cape Scott, they were stormstaid in Alert Bay. Ernest's grandson Alan Halliday believes it was Alert Bay's Reverend Hall who suggested they explore the head of Kingcome Inlet. There they found natural meadowlands. After sampling the soil, the men decided to take the chance. Two other Halliday brothers preempted land there as well.
Ernest hired the small steamer Coquitlam, already employed in ferrying stone from Haddington Island for the provincial government buildings at Victoria, to transport his family and household goods. Nearing dark, they off-loaded Lilly Halliday, two children, a dog, belongings and supplies by rowboat. The oxen, cows, and bull swam ashore and were staked on high ground. But in the morning, unaccustomed to Kingcome's tides, Halliday found half of their belongings awash, some never to be recovered. Undaunted, the family held on. When a scow delivered lumber from Vancouver, they built a 17X28 foot house where they were to live for more than twenty years.
The Hallidays weren't the only people in the valley. A busy native village lay just three miles upriver and a settler named Clifford Smith, brother of both timber cruiser Eustice Smith and famed bounty hunter "Cougar" Smith, had preempted not far away. The fertile soil fattened cattle and nurtured produce. Building dikes, farming, milking and a million other chores gobbled the days. In the snowbound December of 1896, Lilly helped Ernest row and sail 150 miles to Comox for the birth of their third child. The icy trip took two weeks.
The natives proved friendly and helpful. Four more children were born; the herd of cattle grew rapidly. Nearby logging companies offered markets for beef, produce and dairy products. During this period the neighborhood changed. About 1900, a hard- working Scotsman named Alec McKay moved onto property south of the village. His land was later taken over by Bob Jackson, an old sailor who remained until his death in 1933. William Halliday relocated to Alert Bay where he became Indian Agent. And though Merle Halliday proved up on his preemption south of Ernest's bottom dike, he did not remain on the land. Baron Granville Lansdowne arrived but soon learned much of his preemption was unsuitable for farming and moved on. In 1906, Lawrence Lansdowne bought out Smith. Both well-educated, Lansdowne and his wife raised ten children.
View from the living room windows
When the Smiths left Kingcome, Mrs. Halliday took over the post office from Mrs. Smith. Though Hallidays were "getting along," they still showed no profit. By 1908, they too, thought of leaving. But a rumor that "something was coming into the area" lent them encouragement. The following year, vanguard work for the Powell River Company began. By 1912, the company was fully involved in logging the valley's vast forest reserves for a pulpwood plant. With it came many loggers and a reliable, close market for Halliday meat, dairy products, produce, even waterfall-generated electricity. Once one of the largest and best equipped camps in BC, it had "boxcar houses" and a "reading room." But more importantly, a few married women arrived with the company, bringing families. A school opened which operated until about 1940.
Though two sons died of TB, the ranch prospered. Halliday and Kirby made regular trips to Alert Bay for mail and supplies, at first a four-day roundtrip by rowboat, and eventually by gasboat. Alan Halliday is certain that lumber arrived from Telegraph Cove in 1917, and the following year the family moved to a grand new ten room house nearer the head of the inlet. And though the Powell River Company pulled out in 1924, the lively Lansdowne family provided good company as did campwatchers, visitors and smaller logging outfits. Eventually most of Kingcome's settlers died or moved away. Only the Halliday's persisted on their 900 acre homestead.
We stood staring at the Halliday house. Slowly, churning the noisy can, we made our way up the drive. Elderberries and salmonberries blocked access to a front porch of gracious proportions. But bears had trampled an easy avenue past raspberry bushes, still dangling fruit, to a wide covered walkway between what may have been the creamery and the back porch.
Shivers fingered my spine. History whispered around us. Perhaps those walls had watched as a dignified but hardworking Englishwoman turned out endless pounds of butter. The back door stood open. Vandals had left their mark but were powerless to erase the innate charm of the old home. Designed as an "English house," there was a pantry for storage and a "scullery" for washing up. We peered into the commodious old room lined with cupboards, counters and bins. First aid tips and recipes remained taped inside open cupboard doors. Next door, a mammoth steel stove and towering waterheater presided over the kitchen/dining room. How many thousand meals had come from that oven?
Captivating views from both kitchen and living room overlooked meadows and river bed to an immense cleft in the mountains and a snow-topped hanging valley. Here the Hallidays had served gracious teas to the many people who found the way to their doors: neighbors, a young Kingcome schoolteacher who returned to marry their son, the faithful Anglican missionaries and doctors, logging company officials, camptenders, passing boaters. Here Ernest, the son of a schoolteacher, had built long shelves to house many books beside the angled fireplace. Here he had once shown his "beef and butter book" to authors Robert and Kathrene Pinkerton, explaining how it had taken seventeen long years to show even a penny profit.
The main entry off the front porch held more shadows of the past. Among coathooks stood a rack of open postal cubbyholes governed by Halliday family members for exactly eighty years. Names indicated long-gone logging outfits and people. Pamphlets, flyers, envelopes littered the floor.
Handcrafted bannisters and posts led up to a windowed landing overlooking the back yard, then more stairs curved around to the second story. Waterstains flowed down bedroom walls; green moss brightened a floor. Hardware and switchplates, even doors, had vanished. But the old house was solidly built. It seemed to us that it would take little to make it a cozy home once again. Back outside, with can a-rattle we walked the bear-matted trails past old tractors and various outbuildings to a fairly new barn, where empty stalls and ceiling-high haybales awaited long- gone cattle.
The sun sank behind the tall trees; the tide had turned to ebb. Slowly, we retreated from this once-vital place. Along with his sons, Ernest Halliday had worked the farm until Lilly died in 1955. Then, oldest son Reginald and his schoolteacher-wife assumed leadership. Though the fertile soil could still produce wonders, ready markets became more scarce as changing technology and job opportunities drained the coast of its people. Finally, on December 16, 1986, after ninety-three years of continuous residence, grandson Alan left this remote and isolated paradise, but not without regret.
We walked down the road subdued, under darkening shadows. The can and tinkling bear bells increasingly clashed with our somber mood. A hundred yards ahead a black blob appeared in the center of the road. The blob crystallized into a black bear, which lumbered off into the bush; we passed without incident. No longer did singing seem so appropriate. We realized we had seen history passing.