Contributed by Doug Van Tine
During the flood of Ootsa Lake, by Alcan, in 1952, the house was moved to a small piece of land (one-third of an acre) that Mom bought from Alcan. Mom used all the money that she got from Alcan to move our house; $10,000 for 80 acres, Lot number 327, that she owned. Dad had already left for Vancouver, so she was on her own, with Jim and me.
First, she hired two guys from Prince Rupert to move it: Fred Murray and helper Cory Rudsvick. They helped Jim, Pete and I while we did most of the heavy work, replacing the foundation logs, cutting more timbers for skids, removing the porch, and finally, jacking up the big house with 15 small screw-jacks, four inches at a time. Then we would block it, and raise it again, four more inches. It weighs nearly 100 tons.
Fred Murray hired two bulldozers from Alcan to hook up and pull the house; they moved it a few feet until it got stuck in the dirt, pushing dirt up to the windowsills. Fred Murray and Cory Rudsvick took Mom鈥檚 $4500, and left, telling us that the house couldn鈥檛 be moved. My brother George said the same thing and told us to just burn it.
Jim, Pete Anderson, and I jacked up the house again, greased the skids, hired four bulldozers from the Alcan work camp and tried a second time. This time, we got it as far as the swamp across the road before it bogged down and got stuck. We waited until freeze-up and then we finally hired six TD-24s cats from Maddox Ltd, the primary contractor for Alcan, and moved it out of the swamp and to its present site.
It still stands today, one of the only original houses of Ootsa, above the flood plain, on what used to be one of the most beautiful chains of lakes and rivers in the entire world, that I have ever seen or heard of.
