RICHARD ALLEN SCOTT - Through the Years

RICHARD ALLEN SCOTT
THROUGH THE YEARS
This is the view coming out of one of the tunnels.
Spectacular. With the sun setting over the mountains in
late afternoon, we were pretty much in perpetual gloom,
even more so when the weather was bad. Once again, I
befriended one of the local restaurant owners and for
$35 a month had my meals there. Many suppers of
chicken-pot-pie and strawberry ice cream for dessert.
Many were disturbed by calls though, so had a hot plate,
toaster, and small fridge in my room to ‘tide me over’.
While alone at the Detachment, I was scheduled for an
inspection by the Section NCO. Well, it happened that
during the rainy night before, a car had left the road and
gone over the side into the canyon. A family was in it.
Recovery efforts were lengthy, and the Section NCO, on
his way up to see me happened across the accident
scene and had to stay and help direct traffic while we
pulled the wreck up. While on the scene, another vehicle
came barreling around the corner, even though we had
flares out, saw us, hit the brakes and skidded over the
edge, barely missing me as I was standing behind the
police car. Took all day and he never did get to do his
inspection.
As well as doing all the ‘police work’ I was responsible for the administration of the office, which
meant monthly reports on every single activity in the office. And to top it off, and I’m not
complaining, ‘cause it was company, the Highway Patrol boys from Hope would come up for
part of shift a few times a week and conduct enforcement…that meant that when they were
done, they’d drop off books and books of tickets for me to process (which meant a file folder and
index card for each one, a ledger entry and a diary date entry so they could be tracked – a
mean amount of work – all on a typewriter).
In the summer of 1969, we had copious
numbers of tourists to Hell’s Gate, now
equipped with a cable car to the bottom. It was
about a 500-foot sheer drop from the highway
to the river below, and the only access to the
fish ladders down there was a restricted gravel
switch-back road that only Fisheries people and
us could use. No guarantee though that a
police car would make it back up the steep
grade. Even though there was a fence to
Old CN Rail ‘jigger’
prevent people from falling, they’d hop over and
down they’d go. There was no end to the body count that summer. Had to recover the bodies
by taking a railway ‘jigger’ along the tracks from Boston Bar. The CN passenger train stopped
in Boston Bar to change crew. Often, I had to go onto the train to remove unruly passengers,
travelling from Vancouver, as well us drunks off the Greyhound bus.
June 2017
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