Terrace oldtimer

. At the age of 91, Terrace resi-
dent. Harvey Doll is as
Charismatic and as energetic as
ever. As a regular visitor to Mills
Memorial Hospital, Harvey has
_acheerful smile for the staff and
patients there, and as a.frequent
visitor to local schools he always
has an encouraging word. to
brighten up the students.

by Brian Gregg

Some patients credit Harvey
for making them suddenly well;

some students credit him for -

Hervey Doll is 91 years young and
Still going strong. He is looking for-
' ward to the 60th Anniversary of Ter-

face, which aiso marks his own 60th. -
anniversary in this community. -
. Harvey is still active visiting patients. .
at Mills Memorial and students at -

schools in Terrace. He always has an
“encouraging smile for all those peo-
“ple who'need cheering up. — .

helping them to pass their grades ‘

when they were slipping behind:

' Harvey is the second oldest -in”

‘his family, born Dec. 21, 1896 in
Haysville, Ont. His older. sister,
Hilda, still lives in Stratford. His
younger sister, Mabel Hoben-
shield, lives: at the Willows in
Terrace, ee
He met his wife, Carrie, at an
auction and it was love at first
’ ‘Sight. He likes to joke that he
found his wife at the auction —
she was a widow who was selling
cows and horses and he offered
‘to help her mend 4 leaking pail.
Back in those days, Harvey
‘remembers, wages were low and
prices were outrageous, Sugar
~ was as high as 20 cents a pound;
‘but potatoes were selling at
about $3 a bag; and hay went
’ from $4 a ton to $60 a ton (hay

was as important then as

_ gasoline is today). At first they
burned straw stacks but later
‘sold them for $10 a load.
A few years after he was mar-
tied Harvey left the family in
Alberta while he sought a new
life for them in B.C. He met a
. colonization agent named
Ledfelt who was looking for set-
tlers for Northwest B.C. Ledfelt
and his assistant, a man named
Nelson, in Prince Rupert offered
to make Harvey a partner in
some land they wanted cleared
at Woodcock. He and _ his
. brother-in-law moved there in
1923, while Carrie and the
children stayed behind in Alber-
ta until they got settled. They ar-

“fived broke and without a.

grubstake until they spotted a
hen which his brother-in-law

killed with a stick, and that was hi

all they had to eat for a few
days.

Their job was removing 160
acres of stumps at Boulder
Creek. The only road ran from
Woodcock to Cedarvale; there
was no highway, and the only
means of transportation was the
Tailroad,

The house they lived in burn-

potatoes

ed down. That, and the schools
in Terrace, prompted them to
move here in 1927, “They had a
jail at Meanskinisht, but they
tore it down when we moved to
Terrace,"* Harvey jokes, The
Dolls were helped by a Salvation
Army missionary named
Tomlinson, . the Coopers, and
the Clives and the Littles.
Harvey recalls a humorous

“__ ‘adventure crossing the Skeena in

a boat. Near Cedarvale there liv-
ed an 80-year-old man named
Gray; across the river the Han-

‘son Timber Company. had a
boom camp. The poles would
come down the: river from

Hazelton to the camp. The
workers pulled them from the

iver with a small donkey and

the horses would haul them to
the rail spur, says Harvey. Gray
offered to take him across in a
row boat tied at an eddy.

They got in the boat and Gray
bailed the. water out of it as the
boat moved slowly up stream.
Then he poled the boat across

| the river until he could no longer F
teach the bottom. He took up
-the oars and started up Streama #
little way, says Harvey. Next he 4
headed for mid-stream into the §

 Tapids, keeping the nose up |

stream. They moved towards a
whirlpool where a few of the

Hazelton poles were being suck- f

ed to the bottom.

:. '*Now sit still’’, the man told

Harvey,. ‘‘that’s where Wilson
Creek drowned and Wilson
Creek nearby ‘is. named’ after

him.”? Harvey was beginning to §
think .the guy lost his marbles. : |
“You see where those poles |
, come.out of that whirlpool?” he:

said to Harvey, “That's where |

‘we. -are.. going .in.’’ Even .so,

Harvey still had some con- §
fidence.in him since he was a real :
-Fiverman, The old man was real- ff |

ly showing Harvey what to do

should he find himself in a ff

similar situation accidentally. As
they went into the whirlpool the
riverman pulled on one oar and

kept the boat turning the same #
way as the pool was turning. §

Getting his speed up Mr. Gray

began moving faster than’ the 5
‘pool was rotating. When he got |
into high gear, Gray lifted both §
oars high (about 45 degrees) and

the boat jumped out of that

pool. ‘‘I can still see in my mind §

that boat going skyward and we

‘landed in calm waters”, says 7

Harvey. .
Harvey has often rowed

across the Skeena since, but he §
wisely has avoided rapids and
whirlpools in hauling family, |
and chicken feed |

across.

Having lived in Terrace for }

most of the past 60 years,
Harvey is looking forward to the
city’s Diamond Jubilee anniver-

sary: The town boundaries in |

those days were Eby Street to the
west, Keith Road to the south,
Walsh Avenue to the north and

_a line near the wooden bridge to

the east. The Reeve in those days
was Mr. Halliwell,

A man devoted to serving the |-

Lord, Harvey credits the pro-
vidence of saving several
people’s lives to his habit of
looking up. In 1931, during the
Depression, George Dover had
ired some men to drill and blast
ditches in town. Harvey happen-
ed to glance up and saw the ditch
bank. cracking and sliding
towards Dover, and pulled the
man away just in time,

After the 1927 flood the
Braun’s Island bridge was out,
so he and Carrie. took a boat
across. On the other side he

looked up just in time to see a

tree falling towards his wife. He
pulled her away just in time.
That same year he was skid-
ding logs for Car] Pohle. They
had to load the high skidways by
hand. At night the foundation
froze, in daytime it thawed out.
They were starting their last load
when Harvey looked up to see
logs start to fall on Mr. Pohle

and Harvey warned him just in

time.
Harvey was also alert the day
his son, Gordon; was working

-with his other son, Stan, for

Clare Giggy. Gordon was taking

the sheet metal from the pile and

Stan was putting them up. The
sheets came down on top of
Gordon at the pole yard near the
comer of. Keith and Kalum.
With a nurse present Gordon
was still fighting to get free, even
after he’d-been rescued. When
Harvey arrived he told everyone
to let Gordon alone until his

‘youngest son calmed down and
stopped fighting. When he was

” Terrace Review —

going strong at 91

calm they were able to take Gor-
don to the hospital.

Aside from his natural ability
to get along with everyone he
meets, Harvey has also been
gifted with tackling any problem
with success, Greig Porter own-
ed the blacksmith shop - where
the Evangelical Free Church is
now located on Park Avenue,
Harvey dropped in to give him a
hand one day and Porter. ob-
jected to the way Harvey used
the forge. But Harvey persisted

and the blacksmith finally saw

the wisdom behind his method
and hired him.

In 1941. Harvey moved to
Prince Rupert to work in the
CNR shipyards as a foreman for
five years. He called his Park
Avenue house his home from
1938 to 1969, when he and Car-
rie moved to Scott Avenue, Car-
rié passed away on July 10,
1977; and Harvey recently mov-
ed into the home of Anne ‘Hackl.

Harvey has been limber

Wednesday, August 5, 1987 15

enough to swing his foot up onto
the top of the refrigerator until
his recent knee injury, which has.
slowed him down only a little.
At any of the Sacred. Heart
dances the casual observer
would never know, since Harvey
enjoys dancing with the young
people because older people
can’t keep up to him.

Mrs. Hackl says that many of
Harvey’s old friends don’t know
he’s moved yet. She encourages
them to drop in to visit Harvey
at her home, Harvey would also
visit the schools and the hospital
more often but his knee has
forced him to retire his car and
he now relies on rides from
friends, If you can assist, give
him, a call at 638-0737, —

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