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Distances
West of Calgary, past the places where the rocks first come out of the ground but before the true foothills begin is a small creek called Old Fort Creek . It begins its short life in a cirque behind the Yamnuska-Goat massive and comes to rest not many miles distant in the Bow River. Over the eons, the hungry creek has cut a deep canyon into the limestone. On the south side of Highway One-A and a little to the west of the creek is Beaufort lake. For a number of years, Camp Chief Hector stood on the eastern edge of the lake.
I spent two weeks of every summer at that Y.M.C.A. camp, working my way up from Chiniki -the juniors- to Pioneer -the big guys. In those days, canyon hikes were a big deal. We would walk across the highway and splash our way upstream between the dark rock walls. The canyon was a place of shadows and dappled sunlight: the slippery water smooth rocks and current threatened to up end us into the cold water. These were momentous, exciting expeditions for kids who spent the better part of there lives in urban canyons.

In a time which too us seemed far distant, the Calgary Banff stage coach used to overnight at the edge of the creek. The remnants of the old stage coach house and a wooden the bridge that crossed the creek were still there in the first summer I spent at camp. The story and a half log building leaned to the east no doubt because of the strong chinook winds that blew through the Bow Corridor.
We crossed the bridge, now half rotten with great gaping holes in its wooden deck, threw stones into the creek, laughed, and ran through the tall grass. I was the odd one, always I have been the odd one. I was the pudgy, pigeon toed kid with the thick glasses. I was the kid that read to much, I was always reading, and used to many big words.
Attached to the back of the stage coach house was a rickety lean-to an after thought, perhaps intended as a kitchen, sheathed in shiplap and graying cedar siding. It was there that I met Moses Jimmy-John, a tall lean man, as pliable as a willow switch, but old, old beyond the imagining of a ten year child. He seemed to crackle like old parchment. I feared that he might collapse under his own weight. His face was the colour of mahogony shoe polsish still in the tin. At the door of his small house, was a stack of freshly split fire wood, poplar and spruce, and smaller pieces of kindling. His ax rested, edge down, in the top of a battle scarred chopping block.
We knew

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