June (Anderson) Chamberland, the eldest of six children was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1932. She grew up on a farm in Chatfield near the Fish Lake area.
June married Alex Lindstrom in 1951 and in 1954 the decision was made to move to Vancouver. Her parents who lived in Vancouver drove out to Manitoba to pick them up and take them to Vancouver.
June said, "I was 22 years old when I left and I can remember the trip very well. I rode in the car with my parents, three of my siblings and our two small children Len and Gary. Alex and my brother Larry traveled in the truck loaded with all of our belongings; the plan was to meet in Vancouver. We drove south, then headed west going through North Dakota, Montana, Idaho and Washington and then north to Vancouver. Our daughter Elaine was born shortly after we arrived in Vancouver.
"We stayed in Vancouver for one year and in 1955 we moved to Prince George along with my father. We chose Prince George because a friend of my fathers invited him to move to Prince George with a promise of a job at the Moldowan Sawmill. We lived in a camp house until we moved into a tar paper shack on the Lapointe Homestead on Kelly Road; the rent was $6 a month."
Alex Lindstrom first worked in the logging industry, then for paving contractors Columbia Bitulithic and then Perini Pacific until a work-related accident took him off work for the next two years. When he recovered he went to work for the forestry service.
During this time June was a stay at home mom and they had three more children. They had six children: Leonard, Gary, Elaine, Verna, Gene (deceased) and Leona.
June said, "I have 20 grandchildren, 45 plus great grandchildren and five great great grandchildren with one more on the way.
"We had a big garden and I used to can just about everything. I loved cooking and baking for my family."
June and Alex separated in 1970.
She worked at the Prince George Hotel, the Canada Hotel, and the Brothers Inn on the Hart.
After being together for seven years June married Paul Chamberland in 1978. Paul was born in Saskatchewan and worked as a cat operator until he retired at the age of 64. During his working career he was well known for building many miles of roads for BC Forest Products over a span of 10 years.
He operated a cat for Mike Spicer scarifying post-logged areas in preparation for tree planting in the Manson and Nation River areas around Mackenzie.
June said, "I was hired on as the camp cook and we lived in the back of the camp trailer. We were out in the middle of no where and we moved our camp and equipment from site to site. On the first move I was told that since I was the cook I had to drive the truck that pulled the camp trailer to move my kitchen. The entire move was quite the experience because of the bush roads and the fact that I had never pulled a load with a truck. Common sense told me to make a wide corner going around curves and to my surprise I did it.
"I had lots of time on my hands out there in the middle of no where so I wrote poems and took pictures of all my adventures."
After that contract work Paul worked for Voyageur Contracting for 10 years and then Skidmore Contracting until his retirement 10 years later.
June took a scaling course and became a certified timber scaler in 1980. Timber scaling is the process of measuring cut and harvested timber for both volume and quality. She had to learn the metric system and said it was an easy system once she figured it out.
At the time, scalers were under the direction of the BC Forest Service. It was their job to dispatch the scalers as needed with scales being open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Over the years June was dispatched and worked at North Central Plywood (NCP), Domtar, Carrier Lumber, Prince George Wood Preservers, Prince George Small Wood Mill and the Shelley sawmill.
Scaling was privatized in 1984 and then contractors did their own hiring and dispatching of the log scalers. The BC Forest Service still checked on the scalers at random.
June retired at the age of 65, it wasn't long and she went back to work weighing trucks at Netherlands Overseas Sawmill for a short time and retired once again. She still wasn't used to retirement so she went to work for Gordon Bennett who was in charge of the scale located at the south end of the old Fraser River railroad bridge. She retired for the last time at the age of 70.
June volunteered at the Huble Homestead /Giscome Portage Heritage Society and has served on the board of directors in various positions from 1986 to present day; she was their president for eight years.
It was her affiliation with the society that sparked her interest in old buildings. She took photos and captured stories about the people who lived in all these old buildings. She had an extensive collection and wanted to share her work so she proceeded to write a book.
June said, "It took me five years to write the book that I called, From Broad Axe to Clay Chinking: stories about the pioneers in and around the Prince George area.
"The book is a who's who collection of the pioneer families who settled in the Prince George area in the early 1900s and is based upon five years of research and over 100 interviews.
"The book includes an introduction to the land settlement process by the historical geographer Kent Sedgwick, an introduction to the construction of log buildings that were typical of the pioneer homestead by the author and over 530 photographs of pioneer families, their buildings and maps showing settlement."
June's book was the winner of the 2007 coveted Jeanne Clarke Memorial Local History Award. Her book which came out in 2006 is available at Books and Company and at the College of New Caledonia.
June is a volunteer with the Weavers' and Spinners Association, a member of the Heritage Society and an active ten-year member of the Sons of Norway.
June reflected back and said, "The best and happiest times of my life were my childhood years. We used to have to go out and find the cows, bring them home and then we milked them by hand. There was no such thing as a milking machine. We washed clothes by hand using washboards, bathed in a tub, used coal oil lamps and ironed everything with an old sad iron.
"It was a lot of hard work but I loved it. I still love the land and living in the country only now I don't work as hard.
"When we first came to Prince George we hung out near George Street and Third Avenue. It was our shopping area, and a gathering place.
"Life has been tough at times but I have been happy and I tried to look on the good side of everything. When I became a certified scaler, I earned enough money to take a nice holiday every year. I have been everywhere man - from the Atlantic to the Pacific, north to Alaska and south to Florida, Norway, Israel and Hawaii and I am not done traveling just yet.
"For now, I remain busy with my family, friends and my church. I write poems, take photos and I still want to do some more traveling."
*Special happy birthday greetings go out to Israel Prabhudass who was born in Trinidad in 1933. Israel will be celebrating his 90th birthday at the end of September.
