Dewey
B.C.
1st Nov 1915

My dear Mother,

I am writing to let you know that I am quite well and am making out life more or less satisfactorily.

I am spending the winter trapping fur on the Bowron River. I have got some Beaver, Mink and other fur now on hand and I think that in the Spring I will have a little money ahead.

I have a dug-out canoe and a silk tent, which I got as a present from a Surveyor in Prince George whom I had interested in some gold mine prospects in the Bowron river.

I do not as a rule work for wages or salary, as one can never get any money ahead so.

All summer I was with a Prospector in the mountains here without striking anything to write home about.

The country here has been the scene of some considerable gold excitement in the past. Did you ever hear of the Carriboo gold rush in 1861? It was this locality that continued to be the greatest gold producing center in N. America, until the richer discoveries were made later in the Klondike and other Alaska fields.

Like all new countries the life here is very hard and rough.

I have filed on a piece of land here but do not know if I will have the patience to hold it until I can get the Crown Grant. It is seven miles from the railroad, on the Bowron River. There is no wagon road yet and when I go in and out I have to use a compass.

The Post office is 12 miles. Land will be valuable here in a few years, as the Grand Trunk Railway has been completed and there is enormous influx of settlers along this line in Central British Columbia.

I have been engaged in many different occupations since I left home, but have not succeeded in making any money. The war has destroyed all professional work here in the west and sometimes I feared actual poverty.

I have often been tempted to join the colors and go back, if not to home at least to Europe and the old friends and society.

The loneliness here is sometimes terrible.

Do you think I should qualify as a Range-finder or for some Engineering position in the Army (which I can easily do as I have not altogether neglected my studies) and go right to the front, as anybody worth while seems to have gone there?

I have developed physically to an enormous extent since I left home I am not perhaps much fatter but as I have accomplished much manual labour I am much more muscular.

Here are some feats I have performed:

Walked 183 miles in seven days (four times)

Packed 100 lbs on my back when prospecting.

Poled a canoe 100 miles up a river through two canyons

Excavated 2000 cu. Yards of clay and rock in making a ditch to drain my homestead

With my physical health improved so also my mental health, and morally I am not at all degenerate as I have no vices, and a man here in this desolate bush, where there is neither bell, book, nor candle, to swear by, is not liable to go far astray.

I have met very few Old Country people in this part of Canada one man Mac Cormich from somewhere in Glencloy and a school mate of Warren's the son of a Church of Ireland clergyman, whom I encountered in Prince Rupert on the Pacific Coast, when I was stopping in the winter there.

I often wonder how you and Dorothy are living now.

Had it not been for this accursed war, I could have been home now with a little money as I was started in a fair way with a Survey party to make some. When the war broke out it was disbanded.

I believe that the war will last for years yet so there is no hurry to go to the front Of course I will not go there anyway without your permission unless they resort to compulsion.

How are you all at home?

I want Dorothy and you to write to me to Prince George P.O., as I will be in that town in time to get a reply.

Before the railroad was completed I had great trouble to get any mail but now I think we can resume correspondence

Well, I am going as I have said before into the Bowron River country to rap, this winter.

I have to get there before the river freezes up, as I travel by canoe, and when the season is over I come out with a dog team.

It is a fine and sportsmanlike life but rough and trying

For some good descriptions of life in this western country I should advise you to read Jack London's "Burning Delight"

The author is familiar with the country and the men he writes of.

I, too, am familiar with the life, and its bitterness and sweetness, the struggle for existence and the very joy of being alive at all. Such then is my life, like that of an antique Greek more than an Irishman, like him who performed the twelve labours before he returned, or like him who wandered forth into lands of night and solitude to bring back the golden fleece.

I should have liked to have sent you a little help but I am pretty scare of money myself Clothes and food cost much and the war has depreciated fur in value. I can not say when I shall be out from the trapping but I believe I can arrange to get my mail all right

So write, and Dorothy write to me and I will be overjoyed to hear from you again.

You will be glad to know that I still remain,

Your affectionate son
Willie