Memories of My Brother Pat by Ted: The Trapper, the Entrepreneur and Ultimately the Prospector: As a kid growing up on the farm Pat was always more interested in trapping and hunting than playing hockey or doing farm work. I recall helping Pat skin many squirrels and a few rabbits. I never reached the trusted skill level of being allowed to handle a precious weasel or mink, of which Pat caught several each winter. Muskrat were plentiful in the marshes and creeks on and around our farm. I recall Pat having nicely prepared about 6 muskrat skins and placed them on stretchers to dry in our granary. Unfortunately the buck saw was hanging near them and when the door was opened to get grain for the cattle, the wind would move the saw and, of course, it did great damage to those hard-earned skins and resulted in very little value. I helped Pat wrap many packages of furs in brown paper saved from Xmas parcels and mailed them off to SIR (Sidney I Robinson) and Soudack Fur Auction. I also remember Pat cashing many of his cheques during the family penny-ante poker games, and Mom saying to his older brothers and Dad, “You shouldn’t take Pat’s hard-earned money.” I don’t believe my brother Joe ever skinned an animal but I think he did skin a trapper once or twice! I didn’t have much influence on the cash flow of the poker games in those days because the only pennies I ever had were usually the ones that I would find on the floor - they would slide off Joe’s “shy piles” when someone bumped the table! Pat’s entrepreneurial spirit dawned at about 15 when he conceived the idea of “growing mushrooms” for commercial sale. He spent about $20.00 on mushroom spawn and had me help him develop several planting beds throughout the bush around the farm. We planted the spawn and then Pat started planning how we would market all the mushrooms. We were going to have to get up at 5 o’clock every morning during the month of June to pick all the new mushrooms, box them and haul them to the train station in Altamont or Babcock and then get the team of horses back to the farm for Dad to use in the field! I remember Pat being so excited about this whole thing that he couldn’t sleep so it seemed. He’d wake me up in the night and we would get dressed and go outside with the flashlight to check the planted beds to see if any mushrooms had popped up. Mushrooms normally break the soil surface during the night and must be picked before sun-up to ensure the best quality. Well, I wasn’t sure what we were looking for but we didn‘t see anything poking through the soil - not that night and not for the next several nights! In fact the month of June came and went as did July and August - but no mushrooms - so no early picking or hauling to the train station - Dad figured the seed company sold Pat “mouse dirt” rather than mushroom spawn! Pat was pretty disappointed and tried to get his money back from the seed company but no deal! Pat taught me how to ride a bike the day before I started Grade 5 and then he had to tow me half way to school because I was not big enough to reach the pedals very well on the large hand-me-down bike that had belonged to my 16 year old brother Jack. We got a piece of barbed wire off Hassett’s fence for a tow line. I recall considerable laughter at school when we arrived and more when we started for home at 4 o’clock. We had also removed the seat from the bike and I sat on the back fender - which also contributed to the hilarity of it all - but it worked - and then my legs grew! The final year Pat was in school was 1949-50 and that winter was terrible for snow. We had got an old “cutter” made from a car chassis from Mr. Olsen. It was “heavy metal” and open and very cold! We hitched Old Topsy (Dad’s 20 year old mare) up every morning and drove to school. One morning in mid-February, and because we were a bit late, we decided to follow the main road instead of taking the detour through Leo Brunel’s farm. Well that proved to be a big problem - the snow drifts across the main road were so hard and so high that the cutter got jammed in one of the valleys about half way through and Old Topsy couldn’t budge it, even with Pat and I lifting and pushing it - so we unhitched Old Topsy and lead her back to the farm - no school that day. And we didn’t see the cutter again until spring when the snow melted! When school finished in June 1950, Pat went to Winnipeg to start out on his own - getting a job with CN Telegraph and then went to CMHC. He joined the John Deere Plow Company in the fall of 1951 where he worked for 6 years as a Dealer Coordinator for consignment equipment and dealer promotions, putting on John Deere films all over Manitoba throughout the winters. During these years I recall Pat always having a second job in the ‘food business.” He worked at the Winnipeg chain of Salisbury Houses serving “nips,” etc. on weekends and evenings. He also worked in the very popular up-scale Town and Country Restaurant. Pat chose to leave Winnipeg in October 1957 and head west - to Vancouver. A year with Finning Tractor and then his entrepreneurial spirit came alive again - no, not mushrooms! He bought his own restaurant called Seven Seas at 11th and Main only to have it burn down a year later. Then he operated the “Spaghetti House” for a year before starting his own refrigeration repair and sales business known as “P K Refrigeration” which he ran for 40 years. Pat has done a lot of prospecting for gold throughout BC and the Yukon. He never staked a major find but he does have awards for being the best gold panner at the Dawson City Klondike Days. My belief is that is where Pat would like to have his ashes rest.