It is 1919, and you want to build a steam-powered sawmill. There is a wood-fired tractor available at a decent price, but the iron-wheeled monstrosity weighs more than two and a half tons and is six hundred miles away in Vancouver. You can have the unit shipped by boat and train to Houston, BC, but getting it the rest of the way to your house is problematic, because there aren鈥檛 any decent roads south of the Grand Trunk Pacific rail line, and a wide body of water in between.
This was the conundrum facing William (Bill) Harrison Sr. and his brother Buster in 1919. Lesser men might have abandoned the sawmill idea, or at least put it on hold until the government made improvements to the area鈥檚 rudimentary transportation system, but not the Harrisons.
Ever resourceful, confident in their abilities, they bought the steam tractor and then walked it sixty miles to Wistaria over what was little more than a winter sleigh trail.
The men had to cut stumps and build or upgrade bridges along the way. The tractor motored along under its own power some of the time, but the track was often so muddy that the Harrisons had to wrap a cable around the engine鈥檚 massive flywheel and pull it with a team of horses.
鈥淏ridges had to be reinforced to handle the weight of the tractor,鈥� Buster鈥檚 son Bob wrote years later. 鈥淒ad was the fireman and Uncle Bill was the engineer. Dad was real busy cutting wood to keep it going.鈥�
The two men also had to haul water in barrels to keep the boiler full.
When the Harrisons finally reached the mouth of the Nadina River, they made a raft from the largest logs they could find and floated the tractor across Francois Lake. The task couldn鈥檛 have been an easy one, and perhaps the name the Harrisons gave their steam engine 鈥� 鈥楤ig Dick鈥� 鈥� reflects it.
After almost two years of concerted effort, 鈥楤ig Dick鈥� finally reached its new home along Harrison Bay. The tractor provided ample power for the new sawmill, but created another set of problems for its owners.
鈥淚 wasn鈥檛 around when that happened, but my brother was,鈥� Ken Harrison recalled in 2018. 鈥淗is job was to have a bucket of water and put out the fires from the sparks coming off (the tractor鈥檚 firebox), so they kept him and some of the other boys busy in the summer time.鈥�
鈥楤ig Dick鈥� powered the Harrison Brothers鈥� sawmill for decades, and cut lumber for most of the area鈥檚 buildings before being retired in the 1950s. After serving as a lawn ornament at Grassy Plains School during the 1960s, 鈥�70, and 鈥�80s, the tractor moved to its present location atop Wistaria Hill less than a hundred yards from the community hall it helped build.
漏 Michael Riis-Christianson and the Lakes District Museum Society
