Our big school used to be heated by burning coal in the early 1960s. Coal was shipped to Lejac by railway and the trains used to drop off a coal car down at the train station below the school. Then some of the older boys would have to shovel the coal into one of our work trucks and bring it up to the school. There the coal was dropped off and left on the ground below the church where they had the furnaces. Boys would then have to shovel coal sometimes in the morning before school started. They stopped using coal by the late 1960s after they built brand new furnaces and a boiler room next to the root cellar.
I went to residential school for 8 years. One thing I could never get used to while there was the clanging radiators at night.
There were steel radiators in every room throughout the whole school. And these radiators would all begin making a loud clanging noise as they began to heat up from the steam coming from the boiler room. And they were loud! It took me years to get used to the noise especially at night.
But the thing that scared me the most were the trains coming though at night. First time I ever heard a train was in 1963 while in Junior dorm. It was at night and we were all asleep. All of a sudden I woke up and all I could hear was this great big noise and the whole dorm seemed to be shaking. I didn’t know what it was at first, I was so scared! I learned later that it was the night train coming through. I can’t believe how much noise it made.
The rail line ran from Prince George to Prince Rupert on the way delivering coal to Lejac. Occasionally people used the train to travel to Lejac either from Vanderhoof or Prince George as well.
Later, as we got older, we used to go for walks often using the railroad tracks to get to Two Mile Encombe or One Mile Encombe. Quite a few times, we would be walking the tracks and a train would come along. Of course we all cleared the tracks, standing off to the side with our Supervisor, and watching the train go by, from just a few feet away! (photo courtesy of Jim Callanan, edited by Verne Solonas)
I went to residential school for 8 years. One thing I could never get used to while there was the clanging radiators at night.
There were steel radiators in every room throughout the whole school. And these radiators would all begin making a loud clanging noise as they began to heat up from the steam coming from the boiler room. And they were loud! It took me years to get used to the noise especially at night.
But the thing that scared me the most were the trains coming though at night. First time I ever heard a train was in 1963 while in Junior dorm. It was at night and we were all asleep. All of a sudden I woke up and all I could hear was this great big noise and the whole dorm seemed to be shaking. I didn’t know what it was at first, I was so scared! I learned later that it was the night train coming through. I can’t believe how much noise it made.
The rail line ran from Prince George to Prince Rupert on the way delivering coal to Lejac. Occasionally people used the train to travel to Lejac either from Vanderhoof or Prince George as well.
Later, as we got older, we used to go for walks often using the railroad tracks to get to Two Mile Encombe or One Mile Encombe. Quite a few times, we would be walking the tracks and a train would come along. Of course we all cleared the tracks, standing off to the side with our Supervisor, and watching the train go by, from just a few feet away! (photo courtesy of Jim Callanan, edited by Verne Solonas)
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