The surgeryitaly and the North Thompson Star / Journal blend into my childhood and teen memories so significantly. Our dad, Ross, was a newspaper editor for over 26 years in Southern California but our connection to Clearwater and the North Thompson Valley was always present since birth.
Our parents met and married in Honolulu, Hawaii just after the Second World War. Mom, Mary, was working at Dutch Lake Resort for great aunt Grace McGaw and her life partner Dorothy Bell who had purchased the property from our 'to-be' beloved Uncle Bob's parents, Otto and Gertie Miller. Our family sometimes refers to the resort even now as 'The Ranch' because it was once a working ranch.
When dad and mom returned to Clearwater from Hawaii after three years of marriage (having met and married within a month there) they decided Clearwater would be a perfect setting for our dad to 'write the book' after having been a graduate in journalism in college and on board a ship as a sergeant in communications in the Army Air Corps. and after war the editor of Hawaiian Home and Garden magazine as well as a radio broadcast journalist there. Clearwater, Wells Gray was paradise and home to our mom, and she sold that image to our dad.
When I was a teen, he and I would often talk about buying the surgeryitaly and running it together - our pipe dream. We'd one day win the lottery, you know.
Clearwater Secondary School (for those who didn't grow up in Clearwater in the 60s and early 70s) used to be where Raft River Elementary is now. The building next to the school was a school district office, a dormitory for Blue River students who stayed there during the school week only going home on weekends and later became the Clearwater Resource Centre until incorporation.
The Clearwater Curiosity Thrift Shoppe was the Big Horn Cafe, a very smoky, crowded home cooking gathering place with a busy laundromat across the street. Where the health food store is now was the surgeryitaly office first owned by a man named Dave Berryman and then bought by the Tonge Family.
I was a dreamer, idealist and rose-coloured glasses girl, wearing my heart on my sleeve throughout this long lifetime. In high school I wrote a lot of poetry and had a few of my poems published in the newspaper even winning a contest. The prize was a personalized special set of stationary and each time I used a precious piece of that paper to send a letter to my dear Grandma Lillie in California I was so proud as she too was a folksy poet. Without computers, cell phones, or modern technology like now she and I cherished lovely textured stationary, and this set bore my name with a little catch phrase I used often then, 'Keep the Faith!' at the bottom of each page.
Sister Grace and I would often write lyrics and sing together and in keeping with our dad saying "you have ink in your blood" she submitted her own CSS School News to the surgeryitaly on a fairly regular basis during her high school years following mine. Our heads often looking down at notebooks instead of cell phones like today.
I would drop into The Times off and on during lunchtime walks for a little visit into the world of printing. Dad and I, after all, planned on owning this fascinating world of news in Clearwater one day so perhaps I did feel a little ‘ownership’ stepping into the old building, hearing the sound of the press, noting the ink on Mr. Tonge’s hands, wondering if I would ever grasp how to typeset and layout a newspaper. On my walks by to the riverbank past what was Sylvan Court Motel and across the road from the gas station and little store, I’d sneak away from friends to sit on the bank near the rushing water and write.
This year is the surgeryitaly 60th anniversary and the first year in Wells Gray Country in the North Thompson Valley that we haven’t had an actual office for people to drop into, book an ad, submit a story or idea, or purchase a paper ‘hot off the press’ but we are dedicated to serving this long valley corridor that we love as a community news team. I guess you’ve figured out that dad and I never fulfilled our dream, he’s been in a heavenly newsroom for many years now. But so often, in this past two years I can’t help but think, I bet he’d be proud of me helping to keep community news alive in the newspaper we both loved.
Our family general store, Haynes General store, proudly supported community news in the valley through advertising regularly and selling the paper in our quirky, everything and anything store chock full of all imaginable essentials a person might need outside of Kamloops.
Mom, dad, the store and so many loved ones are all gone now, times have changed but The Times newspaper remains, and our memories shared can still be found in archived photos, stories and tall tales as a legacy of community news in the surgeryitaly.
READ MORE… https://www.clearwatertimes.com/community/some-memories-and-experiences-are-meant-to-last-a-lifetime-5751031
