From: Neil Flowers <flowersneil4494@gmail.com>
To: info@saltspringarchives.com

Hello!,

I lived on Saltspring from 1974 until 1979. I didn't live in the valley but up the mountain on the other side near Musgrave Landing. I was the caretaker for Frank Smith's place. He and his wife had a three-room log cabin and several outbuildings, including a round-roofed barn. His place was beautiful. It had a nice meadow around the house and he had left the old-growth cedars standing that surrounded the meadow.

I became interested in that remote side of the island and read as much history of the place that existed (not much). I do have some documents of Mr. Smith's. Perhaps you would like them?

Also, I discovered that the daughter of one of the Smith brothers (there were three of them: Frank, Walter and Arnold) was still alive, so I wrote to her. She replied with a substantial letter (July 7th, 1976) sketching what life was like on the mountain during the 1920s before the logging started and also during the early logging period of the 1930s. If you would like this letter and a typed transcript of it, I'd be happy to pass it along to you as well.

Best regards,

Neil Flowers, MA, MFA
Writer/Editor/Script Doctor
Supervising Language Editor
Educator/Interviewer
Editor-in-Chief, <http://cinexxus.com>cinexxus.com
A brief bio is available at:
<http://elevatedifference.com/reviewer/neil-flowers>http://elevatedifference.com/reviewer/neil-flowers

"We're going to live like we're telling
the best story in the whole world.
Are you ready?"
- Penelope Stamp (Rachel Weisz) in
"The Brothers Bloom"

Dear Ms Davidson,

Thanks for your prompt reply to my inquiry.

I will send the letter along from Arnold Smith's daughter. There is a problem with the letter inasmuch as it stops at page 6. Somehow I must have misplaced the rest of the letter during several moves over the last 20 years. It's possible that I still have the missing pages among my effects. I intend to go through those effects over the next couple of months. If I find the missing pages, I'll pass them along to you. Nonetheless, I think you will find the six extant pages of great interest.

The documents of Frank Smith and his wife, Nell, are in a trunk at my sister's house in Peterborough, Ontario. I can no longer recall exactly what I have, but I will ask my sister to fish out all the documents pertaining to the Smiths and send them to me. When I have them, I'll pass them on to you.

I notice looking at a map of the mountain side of the island that there is an area referred to now as Mill Farm Park (or something like that). The Mill Farm designation, you may know, comes from Frank and Nell's place. The Smith brothers, Frank particularly, was intellectual and an inventor. (He was also a Rosicrucian.) At the back of the place, on the stream right at the bottom of the meadow, there was a giant water wheel of wood that Frank built along with his brothers. The wheel was not working and somewhat wrecked when I lived there, but that is the wheel that gave Frank and Nell's place the name of "Mill Farm."

When I was living at Frank and Nell's place, I was very much into photography and post cards, so I took a picture of their 3-room cabin and made a post card of it--about 250 of them as I recall. I have one left, which I will gladly send you if you want it. If you do want it, I ask only that if you ever publish it, either in print or online, that you credit me. The year of the photo is 1976. Through the Saltspring grapevine, I heard about a year after I left (1980) that the cabin burnt down, so this post card may be the only surviving image of their cabin. I was going to pass the card on to my son, but I think it's better that it be with the Saltspring Archives. I wrote a note to my son that is on the back of the card. You will see in the note that it refers to a "card below". This was another post card that was in the album of photos for my son. That photo was not of Saltspring. Unfortunately, I wrote on the front of the card in the margin a note to my son to look on the message side for the explanation of what/where the cabin is and how I got there. I wish that I had not written on the outside of the card, but too late now. I also have a number of other photographs of Mill Farm and the wheel. I'll send all these along to you sometime soon.

You may know that there is a big house on the side of the island where I lived, not a cabin but a very big finished house built in the 20s, I think. but I couldn't swear to the construction date. It's right down near the narrows slightly north of Musgrave Landing at the very end of the mountain road. I was in the house once. When I lived on the mountain, the house was owned by some Americans from Seattle who were involved in the U.S. military industry, which always made them very suspiciouis to me as this was the time toward the end of the Vietnam War and so I couldn't help but think that they were war profiteers. I remember two of them quite well, two brothers, and the wife of one of them, with whom I used to go riding and show her the back trails (the old logging roads) all over "my" side of the mountain. And yes I did have a horse when I lived up there.

The reason I mention that house is I knew slightly the daughter of the man and woman who owned the house in the late forties and fifties. Her name, I believe, was Cleo and her father's name was Miles. I can't recall their last name. They were British. He had served in the war as a major. He and his wife and kids emigrated to Canada in 1946 or thereabouts. He wrote a book about his life that was published and he talks about living on the remote side of the island. They had a launch to go back and forth across the narrows. I had a copy of that book, and probably still do. I think it must be with my sister in Peterborough. Are you familair with the book? If not, and you don't have a copy, I'll send that along when I find it.

Must run. Have a million thing to do today.

Best regards,
Neil Flowers