Built From Scratch

It was my mom’s dream to live in a log house, and my dad decided to make that dream come true.

He began with a practice house; it was tiny and ended up being our shelter while waiting for the school bus at the end of the driveway. Once that was built, Dad began the long and arduous journey of building a beautiful log home. This was no easy undertaking. 

The building of the house required so much work and so much preparation. We lived in a trailer at the farm, and the house was being built ¼ mile from there. Dad set up a shed that he could lock that stored all of his tools and gear. He also created a bit of a seating area where we could eat lunch and snacks.

My cousin came to Alberta from British Columbia to help peel the logs. When the logs arrived, they still had all the bark on them. It was my cousin’s job to peel all the bark off by hand with a log peeler. He was there for the entire summer and became one of my favorite humans. When I was 4 years old, I would ask Mom for a bucket of homemade cookies and head out for the long walk up to the building site to visit my cousin and Dad. 

My cousin could see me coming for hours.

I was so excited to go visit and very much welcomed the attention I received. Dad had set me up an area with coloring books and crayons so that, after I brought them snacks, I could hang out while they continued to work.

One cold and dark night, thieves came in and broke into the shed. They stole everything that wasn’t nailed down, including all of Dad’s tools and equipment. The most devastating thing of all though was that they stole my coloring book and crayons.

What type of thieves could do such a thing?

The tools and equipment were covered by insurance and quickly replaced, but insurance did not cover my coloring book, or my crayons. I was heartbroken. I felt violated. I couldn’t believe that someone could be so heartless and, even when a new coloring book arrived, it was never the same. 

The building continued, and we arrived at a point where we could finally move in. I was five years old, and it was May. May in Alberta can be a bit of a bitch with the weather, and you never really know what you’re going to get. At this point, the log house was solidly built, but we didn’t have glass in the windows yet, nor did we have a furnace. There was plastic covering the holes where the windows were meant to go, but we figured the house was safe to move in. 

The night we moved in was one of the coldest nights I have ever experienced.

We slept in sleeping bags in front of the wood stove, with toques on. I was frozen!  In the morning, there were over 3 feet of snow on the ground. It was one of the most intense snowstorms Alberta had seen in years.

Even though I was frozen, I had so much fun in that snowstorm! There was so much snow that drifted up against the barns that we could climb up to the roof of the barn and jump into the snowbank. The one and only time I’d ever jumped off the roof of a barn. That house, and the building of it, was one of the most profound experiences of my life. It showed me how hard working and determined my father was, and how dedicated he was to his family. His strength and resiliency would stick with me for my entire lifetime, despite the events that were to occur. I will never forget how powerful he was.