The Long Courtship

Hester Spriggs (1905-2003), daughter of William Spriggs and Alice Hayward, was raised in Acock’s Green, near Birmingham, England. In 1915, when Hester was nine, the family immigrated to an apple farm called Edgemere in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley. The farm was not profitable and shortly after World War I, the family moved to the quiet little college town of Baie d’Urfé, near Montreal. In October of 1926 she met a young man at a McDonald’s College social. He was a handsome 26, English, slight of build, with impeccable manners, a firm grasp of the King’s English and fun. With him were his two brothers Geoffrey (19) and Maurice (23). The three boys were taking an agriculture orientation course designed to encourage young Englishmen to establish roots on the Canadian prairies. Hester was taking a course on what today we would call Home Care Support. In short order, Frank began dating Hester while Geoffrey dated Hester’s older sister Alison.

The agricultural course ended in the spring of 1927 and dutifully, the boys left for the prairies to try their hand at farming. Farming held no appeal for any of the boys but during the years which followed, Frank and Hester stayed connected by post. Then in 1936, ten years after leaving Baie d’Urfé, Frank proposed marriage to Hester. The catch was that Frank was working as a purchasing agent at a gold mine in the British Columbia wilderness. Hester would have to be okay with mining camp life.

She boldly accepted. In April of 1937, she travelled alone by steam train to Vancouver on the West Coast. From there she took a ferry to Squamish where she caught the  Pacific Great Eastern Railway to Lillooet. On her eighth day of travel she bought a ticket on the motorized stage which took her on the last leg of her journey to Pioneer Mine. The gravel road wound up and up into the mountains and at last she arrived. Frank was there to meet her. This is Hester’s account of her arrival at the mine and of her life there with 494 men and 6 women in the heart of the depression.

A Brief History Of Pioneer Mine

During the winter of 1859-60 about 10000 gold-seekers stopped at Lillooet to pan the creeks which fed the Fraser River. In 1865 a government sponsored party explored the Bridge River region and reported paying amounts of gold could be had in the creeks there. Over the next almost 80 years, multiple attempts at profitable mining failed on the Pioneer Mine site. Then came  mining engineer David M Sloan.

“At the request of Wallbridge and Bull he examined the mine. Convinced that the troubled property, which had failed to enter production after more than a quarter of a century of exploration, would yield a profit, he tried to interest a prominent mining investor. This financier’s associates examined the Pioneer and advised against it. Undaunted, Sloan assumed Wallbridge’s and Bull’s option and tried to raise a small amount of operating capital. For all of his efforts he and his partners managed to raise only $4,000, and Sloan sold one-half of his 50 per cent interest to J.I. Babe; between them they obtained a further $4,000. Cautiously seeded, this money proved to be the winning difference and the Pioneer Mine at last entered production. In 1928, after Babe sold out to Colonel V. Spencer, Pioneer Gold Mines of British Columbia was incorporated.

That same year the first school in Pioneer Townsite and a post office were opened, and the first marriage was performed. 1930 saw the construction of more houses, No. 2 bunk-house, a store and machine shop. In 1933 a twostorey, 80×50-foot recreation hall was built, and offered employees their choice of restaurant, barber-shop, poolroom, library, dressing-rooms, theater, and 4,000-square-foot dance-floor on the upper storey. Four years later the Bank of Toronto opened a branch in Pioneer, Pat Boyle manager. That summer the camp experienced considerable excitement when an attempt was made to rob the refinery.

The following summer, Pioneer was plunged into mourning by the death of General Manager David Sloan in a plane crash. 2 B.C. Ghost Town Series – Bralorne Mine Earlier, the mine had experienced its first strike, which lasted almost three weeks, and the Bank of Toronto had been robbed. H.T. James, Sloan’s successor, was further promoted to managing director in the summer of 1936 after General Duff Stuart died in an automobile accident.

By the end of the year a hospital, church and more homes had been built, and the skating rink enlarged. In 1940 the mine was struck for five months; in 1942 the Bank of Toronto was robbed a second time, the lone bandit escaping with $2,000 after tying up Manager E. Rush. Search parties and a tracking dog followed him south, toward the P.E. Mine, but the credit for his capture went to a Pacific Great Eastern Railway crew who picked him up while he was walking along the tracks.”

Source: TW Paterson, “British Columbia Ghost Towns Series #2