By Elizabeth Templeman
Along the west side of the Old Highway which runs through Heffley Creek, across a rambling parking area, squats the Heffley Creek Hall. More than forty years ago, when we were new to the area, on a Saturday night we’d sometimes drive down to The Hall to attend a stomp, which was western B.C. for a dance, I’d learned. Having grown up in the 70’s meant, among other things, I didn’t go to dances of any description. Even proms. But from what I remembered hearing, the dances my parents once chaperoned for the church bore little resemblance to a stomp. Even less to the proms my older sisters went to, amid a clamour of preparation but finally sprayed and sparkling, balanced on treacherously slender high heels and enfolded in layers of taffeta.
At the stomp it was the men—garlanded in string ties, their silver belt buckles gleaming, boots pointy and polished, hats crisp and wide—who outshone their women. The bands were generally bad, but enthusiastic. And loud. The dancing was, however, exceptional: polkas in a dozen variations, and waltzes. The drinking was simpler: rum and coke in short glasses.
Later, we’d go to The Hall for other reasons—once to celebrate a marriage, and twice, death. And for a stretch of time before that, it was the place for Heffley Elementary to hold its Christmas concert. Later, the school would get its own gymnasium and newer traditions evolved which would have us crammed in folding chairs on a slippery wooden floor, to witness a shrink-wrapped, canned production of some innocuous winter theme devoid of Christian symbolism. But I cherish the image of our daughter standing up on the stage of The Hall, belting out a warbly version of “Mary Had a Baby…Yea Lord” with her first-grade class.
In one of my first years as a resident of Heffley, I served as scrutineer for the local NDP. It surprised me that no one seemed to mind, or notice, that I wasn’t yet Canadian. I had been a staunch supporter of Nelson Riis. I admired the way the man became so damned familiar, showing up at the Barriere Fall Fair, the Kamloops Peace March, a local writer’s book launch. I respected his views, and his visibility. So I offered to volunteer—my first ever political gesture.
It surprised me to get called upon, and sure, flattered me too. I arrived keen to help. But having been an apathetic American for the previous twenty-five years, I’d never even voted, and hadn’t a clue how things worked. For weeks I had watched the laneways which spill out onto what was then the Tod Mountain Road spout campaign signs. It was clear that NDP held little sway in our neighbourhood. Up and down the road signs and posters proclaimed opposition. But this is a rural neighbourhood, and such contention was tolerated. My husband, going to register in the home of the sister of the rancher we bought our land from, took a ribbing and no doubt gave as good as he got. No secrets here.
The day of that election brought friends and neighbours out. In a wide-spread area with nothing but a general store and two fishing camps to bring people together, this was an occasion. I was also quick to discern the operation of traditions that I’d be a long time learning.
At precisely three minutes before the polls were to close, to an air of expectation, the doors swung open and in glided Kay, the former Heffley Creek Post Mistress (who was the widowed wife of former Post Master, later to be replaced by her son and his wife). Resplendent in fur coat, hat and gloves, lipstick and jewels, Kay looked positively radiant.
There was palpable relief, and then a big round of applause. She smiled graciously, voted with all the elegance of the Queen Mum, then swept away, and the door and the polls closing behind her. It couldn’t have been choreographed better. The drama of our counting and recounting, the telephoning and posting of numbers, and even the radio blasting out results, paled by comparison.
In the following years, we didn’t get to The Hall, except to vote, which seemed, like other things, less of an event than it used to be. Kay had long since passed away, our neighbourhood had changed, and politics devolved into more private realms.
Then, some twenty years ago, The Hall was where we attended a wake for a friend and neighbour. For Cameron it was a perfect setting. He had been at those stomps with us back then, putting away more than his fair share of rum and cokes so that we’d have to drive him home, and then to be his guest for more drinks, boisterous stories and music that shook the walls. I know this man would have appreciated his wake, during which friends and family told his stories, drank a fair bit, and listened to the music he had loved, played too loud, in his style, by his youngest daughter who worked his old turn table into the night.
Later, Heffley Creek residents held coffee nights at The Hall. I heard stories of good times, with entertainment, coffee, and company. I never went, though—ever could reconcile myself to the idea of that place without the formal purpose of an election, a school concert, or wake, or the mitigating circumstances of inebriation and bad music.