QUICK REFERENCE ENTRY:

Sage Birchwater deserves a medal, maybe the Order of Canada. Nobody else in B.C. has so dauntlessly served the people of a particular region--in this case the Cariboo-Chilcotin--with such avid, social serving, literary loyalty, helping so many people tell their stories, or telling their stories for them.

As a long-time resident of the Chilcotin, Sage Birchwater has written several books about the area including Chiwid (New Star, 1995), the second volume in the Transmontanus series edited by Terry Glavin. Born in Victoria in 1948, Birchwater was involved with Cool Aid in Victoria, travelled throughout North America and has worked as a trapper, photographer, environmentalist educator and an oral history researcher. Sage Birchwater continues to make an enormous literary contribution to the Cariboo and Chilcotin, having served as the Chilcotin correspondent for two local papers for 14 years while raising his family south of Tatla Lake. He has also lived in Taklayoko, where he was a freelance writer and editor, and later Williams Lake where he was a staff writer for the Williams Lake Tribune until his retirement in March of 2009. His other books include Ulkatchot'en: The People of Ulkatcho (Ulkatcho: Cultural Curriculum Development Committee, 1991); Ulkatcho Stories of the Grease Trail: Anahim Lake Bella Coola, Quesnel Anahim Lake, B.C. (Ulkatcho Cultural Curriculum Development Committee, 1993); Ulkatcho Food + Medicine Plants (Ulkatcho Publishing, 1996); Williams Lake: Gateway to the Cariboo Chilcotin (2005). With photographer Stan Navratil; Gumption & Grit: Extraordinary Women of the Cariboo Chilcotin (Caitlin 2009). Editor, with Gloria Atamanenko, Pam Mahon and Karen Thompson; Double or Nothing: The Flying Fur Buyer of Anahim Lake (Caitlin 2010) with D'Arcy Christensen; The Legendary Betty Frank (Caitlin 2011), Fly over the Cariboo Chilcotin Coast (2012) with Chris Harris and Corky Williams: Cowboy Poet of the Cariboo Chilcotin (Caitlin 2013) and Chilcotin Chronicles (Caitlin 2017).

There are several superb books about aboriginal women. The Days of Augusta (1973) came first, a tribute to the hard life of Mary Augusta Tappage, born at Soda Creek in 1888, followed by During My Time: Florence Edenshaw Davidson, A Haida Woman (1982). Carrier woman Mary John's memoir, Stoney Creek Woman (1989), co-written with Prince George social worker Bridget Moran, was for many years the bestselling title from Arsenal Pulp Press. Published more than 50 years after her death, Mourning Dove: A Salishan Autobiography (1990), recalls the ground-breaking literary achievements of American-born Okanagan writer Mourning Dove. Shirley Sterling retold her experiences in the Kamloops Residential School for a children's book, My Name is Seepeetza (1992). The first autobiographical portrayal of a Kwakwaka'wakw matriarch, Paddling to Where I Stand (2004), recalls the life and times of storyteller Agnes Alfred.

But the most memorable portrait is the shortest, Chiwid (1995), by Cariboo journalist Sage Birchwater, in which he profiles the Tsilhqot'in woman who lived outdoors for most of her adult life.

Chiwid (also Chee-Wit, or "Chickadee") was widely known as a crack shot who moved her solitary campsite according to the seasons, protected only by a tarp. Rumoured to have spiritual powers, she was born as Lily Skinner, daughter of deaf and mute Luzep, a Tsilhqot'in from Redstone, and Charley Skinner, a white settler in the Tatlayoko-Eagle Lake area.

Chiwid married Alex Jack and they had two daughters, but her life changed irrevocably when her husband beat her mercilessly with a heavy chain. Remorseful, Chiwid's husband drove several head of cattle to Chezacut and sold them to Charlie Mulvahill to raise money to send his beautiful wife to Vancouver for treatment, but thereafter Chiwid left her husband in order to roam the Chilcotin, from Anahim Lake to Riske Creek, sometimes with an old horse and a dog. Many people tried to assist her, offering firewood, food or clothes, which she gratefully accepted, but Chiwid maintained her independence, fearing she would become sick if she remained too long indoors. Ill, aged and going blind, Chiwid eventually consented to spend her final years in the Stoney Creek Reserve home of Katie Quilt, where she died in 1986.

FULL ENTRY:

As a long-time resident of the Chilcotin, Sage Birchwater has written several books about the area including Chiwid (New Star, 1995), the second volume in the Transmontanus series edited by Terry Glavin.

Chiwid (pronounced Chee-weet or Chee-Wit) was a Chilcotin woman who kept to herself and lived entirely outdoors in the Chilcotin Plateau during much of her life. A crack shot, Chee-Wit, or 'Chickadee', was sometimes rumoured to have spiritual powers. With only a tarp for protection, she moved her solitary camp according to the seasons. Born as Lily Skinner, she was the daughter of Luzep, a Chilcotin deaf mute from Redstone, and Charley Skinner, a white settler in the Tatlayoko-Eagle Lake area. She married Alex Jack and they had three daughters, but he once beat his beautiful wife mercilessly with a heavy chain. Remorseful, her husband drove several head of cattle to Chezacut and sold them to Charlie Mulvahill to raise money to send his wife to Vancouver for treatment, but thereafter Chee-Wit left her husband in order to roam the Chilcotin from Anahim Lake to Riske Creek, sometimes with an old horse and a dog. Many people in the Chilcotin tried to assist her, offering firewood, food or clothes, but Chee-Wit maintained her independence and feared becoming sick if she remained too long indoors. Ill, aged and blind, she spent her final years in the Stone Creek Reserve home of Katie Quilt where she died in 1986. Birchwater's book about her largely consists of reminiscences by Chilcotin oldtimers.

Born on September 27, 1948 in Victoria, Birchwater was raised with a different name. [See Christine Peters entry]. A former self-described hippie, he was involved with Cool Aid in Victoria and he has travelled throughout North America. Birchwater has also worked as a trapper, photographer, environmentalist educator and an oral history researcher. He took over the trapline of Bert Hamm in the West Chilcotin and lived and trapped martens and squirrels for many years with his partner, Yarrow (Christine Peters, a self-published author). He once remarked that they were likely the closest inhabitants to Mount Waddington, B.C.'s highest peak in the Coast Mountains.

Sage Birchwater continues to make an enormous literary contribution to the Cariboo and Chilcotin, having served as the Chilcotin correspondent for two local papers for 14 years while raising his family south of Tatla Lake. He has also lived in Taklayoko, where he was a freelance writer and editor, and later Williams Lake where he was a staff writer for the Williams Lake Tribune until his retirement in March of 2009.

And there was the time a rancher was driving his D9 Cat down the highway and he passed out, drunk, and fell off... As recalled in Corky Williams: Cowboy Poet of the Cariboo Chilcotin (Caitlin $24.95), the rancher came to his senses and followed the track on the road to find his rig. Not sure of the direction his bulldozer was heading, he asked a passing tourist if he'd seen his Cat. She asked what colour it was. Trying to help, she started calling, "Kitty, Kitty!";

It just one of hundreds of tales that Sage Birchwater has diligently collected from the Texan emigre Corky Williams who came to the Chilcotin in 1971, buying the Corkscrew Creek Ranch near Anahim Lake. Not your average redneck, Corky Williams liked the counter-culture kids and had a background in theatre.

A near fatal outhouse accident at the Anahim Lake Stampede in 1985-when he was sober-required an emergency flight to Williams Lake, then onto x-rays in Kamloops. "The doctor showed me the x-rays and the shoulder blade looked like you'd hit with an axe." Unable to ranch, Williams met Ian Tyson at the Chilcotin Inn for an audition that same year.

When storyteller and songwriter Ian Tyson mounted twenty-sold out performances of his Cowboyography show at Expo 86, Corky Williams was prominent in the cast. The rancher-turned-thespian soon got an agent and appeared in tv shows such as The Beachcombers and Bordertown. Williams enjoyed an impressive career as a touring stage actor in the U.S., based out of Texas for fifteen years, until the Chilcotin called him home.

"I just had a wild hair up my ass to get up and come back to Canada," Corky says. After tracking down the invaluable and ubiquitous local historian Sage Birchwater, the "cowboy poet" Williams commenced an extensive memoir. It includes first-hand input, gathered by Birchwater, from Anahim Lake notables such as Bob Cohen, Big Fred Elkins, Bernie "Burnt Biscuit" Wiersbitzky, Mike Holte, Ollie Moody, Mike McDonough, Susan Hance, Bella Leon and George Leon.

And then there was the time Big Fred suggested they should blow up some of the beaver dams and sandbars in Corkscrew Creek. The old dynamiter Morton Casperson set a three-minute fuse, which gave everyone time to retreat, but Morton's mutt refused to follow. They kept calling the dog, to no avail. Corky was certain he was headed for the big doghouse in the sky. Boom. "Well, would you look at that," said Big Fred. "That dog is going as fast as I have ever seen one run. The only thing is, he can't get any traction 'cause he's twelve feet off the ground." Miraculously, the dog survived the blast but didn't come home for five days.

For Sage Birchwater's Chilcotin Chronicles (Caitlin, 2017), he says "The people and stories of the Chilcotin are linked together like the mycelial threads of a mushroom colony." The individuals who inhabited the sparsely-populated broad landscape, stretching 450 km from the Fraser River to the Central Coast, were seemingly all larger than life. Stories of their whereabouts and happenings were kept alive by the great oral tradition of this place, told around campfires and kitchen tables. "Some of these tales were true," Birchwater says, "and some were blatantly fictitious; and through it all runs a deep sense of place." His collected stories from the leeward side of the Coast Mountains include characters such as Eagle Lake Henry, Bullshit Valleau, Pete McCormick, James Lee Holt, Trapper Annie Nicholson, Benny Franklin, Nancy Swanson, RC Cotton, George Turner (rumoured to be a member of the notorious Dalton Gang) and his wife Louisa One-Eye.

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Talking to the Story Keepers: Tales from the Chilcotin Plateau by Sage Birchwater (Caitlin $24.95)
Review by Alexander Varty:

It’s a tribute to the immensity of the BC landscape that the Chilcotin Plateau, located in the geographical middle of our province, is largely unknown to most urban or island residents. Many even consider it northern rather than central—an allowable misunderstanding, given that it’s separated from more populous regions by jagged mountain ranges and relatively free of touristic amenities, fine dining or opportunities to shop. It’s a world of sweeping grasslands and majestic (although shrinking) glaciers, grizzly bears and bighorn sheep, and hardy people of both Indigenous and settler heritage, or some mix thereof.

Even in the urban south, some of those figures are nearly legendary. Think of Tommy Walker, the UK–born wilderness guide and pioneering environmentalist; Nuxalk knowledge keepers Andy and Lillian Siwallace; and Chiwid, who lived a largely traditional Tŝilhqot’in lifestyle right up until her death in 1986. And a large part of the charm of Talking to the Story Keepers: Tales from the Chilcotin Plateau is that the Chilcotin frontier days are so close to the present time that these legends were still alive when author Sage Birchwater, a ’60s back-to-the-lander and would-be trapper began to record their reminiscences.

These are, admittedly, not entirely untold stories. Walker, for instance, outlined his own life in the highly readable Spatsizi (Antonson, 1976); and Birchwater published Chiwid’s story in Chiwid (Transmontanus 2, New Star Books, 1995), the imprint edited by journalist Terry Glavin. Birchwater’s new addition to the “regional library” adds a couple of key elements, however—chief among them an arguably more nuanced understanding of the interactions between Indigenous residents and settlers, coloured by an increasing awareness of the near-genocidal effects of the residential school system.

Whether it’s due to his own kind heart, his training as a social-services outreach worker, his time spent in journalism, or his own lonesome hours in the deep bush, Birchwater is a great listener, with an ability to reach across cultures to get at another person’s truth. This is less common than it might seem, but it’s an essential component in creating oral history of the kind created by Studs Terkel and Barry Broadfoot and then—later and closer to home—expanded on by Harbour Publishing’s exceptional Raincoast Chronicles series.

Some readers might take exception with Birchwater’s decision to open Talking to the Story Keepers with a chapter on “Thunder Bert and the Troopers of Williams Lake,” which is set not on the shores of some trout-spangled lake or in the shadow of some majestic mountain but on the meaner streets of a hard-bitten mining-and-logging town. The “troopers” are a loose band of dispossessed Indigenous people, many battling addiction and all suffering from the economic and social consequences of racism. There’s nothing romantic here, but Birchwater quickly draws us in by allowing each Trooper their own measure of personal dignity. Many, in fact, free themselves of the street life by connecting with some aspect of the natural world, even if only temporarily.

And Birchwater imparts a gentle but necessary lesson: the Troopers aren’t suffering from some supposedly genetic or cultural propensity for drink but from a clash of worldviews in which settler fences have shut them out of an earlier and highly functional social order.
Writing about the former boxer Baptiste Meldrum, Birchwater reports that the Tŝilhqot’in elder “had an understanding of the country that preceded colonization, and he knew where the various Tŝilhqot’in families had lived across the broad landscape before they were pushed out and displaced by settlers. This concept of living in the whole territory was completely new to me and foreign to my way of perceiving the world.

“‘Nen gagunlhchugh deni nidlin,’ Meldrum said. ‘We live all over this land.’”

That’s a great point to remember when considering First Nations land claims and the Indigenous concept of belonging to the land, not owning it.

Suitably schooled, but not lectured in the least, we can then move on to a selection of portraits of Chilcotin residents both Indigenous and non. In general, the settlers Birchwater depicts share their neighbours’ concerns and show their country similar respect; if there are cowboys here, they’re on horseback, not wearing camouflage and gunning ATVs. And while the author is unflinching in discussing the losses that Indigenous people have suffered, his informants include some of the Tŝilhqot’in elders responsible for preserving traditional ways and traditional language through the darkest days of the potlatch ban and the Sixties Scoop.

Most inspirational are Nuxalk elders Andy and Lillian Siwallace, and it’s fitting that Birchwater ends Talking to the Story Keepers with their observations. Under the tutelage of Andy’s mother, Margaret Siwallace, the two worked tirelessly to revive the endangered Nuxalk language, maintain their artistic and ceremonial traditions, and live generous, happy lives despite their own brutal experiences of residential school. The Siwallaces are gone now, but their actions live in the ongoing revival of Indigenous culture, and their words shine brightly here.

9781773860800

Alexander Varty is a musician, writer and forager living on unceded Snuneymuxw territory.

(BCBW 2022)

BOOKS:

Ulkatchot'en: The People of Ulkatcho (Ulkatcho: Cultural Curriculum Development Committee, 1991)
Ulkatcho Stories of the Grease Trail: Anahim Lake Bella Coola, Quesnel Anahim Lake, B.C. (Ulkatcho Cultural Curriculum Development Committee, 1993)
Chiwid (Transmontanus 2, New Star Books, 1995) $16 9780921586395
Ulkatcho Food + Medicine Plants (Ulkatcho Publishing, 1996)
Williams Lake: Gateway to the Cariboo Chilcotin (2005). With photographer Stan Navratil
Gumption & Grit: Extraordinary Women of the Cariboo Chilcotin (Caitlin, 2009). Editor, with Gloria Atamanenko, Pam Mahon and Karen Thompson
Double or Nothing: The Flying Fur Buyer of Anahim Lake (Caitlin, 2010) with D'Arcy Christensen
Corky Williams: Cowboy Poet of the Cariboo Chilcotin (Caitlin, 2013) $24.95 978-1-927575-18-5
Chilcotin Chronicles (Caitlin, 2017)
Talking to the Story Keepers: Tales from the Chilcotin Plateau (Caitlin, 2022) $24.95 978-1773860800

Review of the author's work by BC Studies:
The Legendary Betty Frank: The Cariboo's Alpine Queen
Flyover: British Columbia's Cariboo Chilcotin Coast. An Aviation Legacy

[BCBW 2017] "Indianology"