Voyagers of the Chilcotin

In 1928, an eighteen-year-old Elijah Gurr left his home in eastern Utah to help the Mecham family move their belongings to a remote valley in British Columbia. Upon their arrival in Vancouver, they would board a steamship to take them 300 miles north to the Bella Coola Valley. Elijah’s parents knew it would be a difficult journey but expected him home in about a month. Elijah never returned. Eventually, letters arrived telling his parents about a beautiful valley that was nothing short of a paradise with 40-pound spring salmon, bald eagles, moose and giant grizzly bears. It was a place Elijah could not bring himself to leave. He had found a rare treasure, the jewel of the Pacific Northwest. Almost four decades later, other family members came in search of what Elijah had found. They too would come to cherish the Bella Coola Valley. Voyagers of the Chilcotin by Carolyn Foltz is her thrilling memoir of how she and her city-bred husband made a life among the grizzlies, moose and lumberjacks. What would it be like to live in the wilderness? Carolyn Foltz grew up in California wondering that very thing. When she met and married the love of her life, a man born and raised in the Bay area of San Francisco, she quickly convinced him to leave behind their comfortable lifestyle on the West Coast and embark on what would become the adventure of their lives. But both soon found that stepping into Bella Coola, British Columbia was like going back in time a hundred years! Told in warm, engaging prose, Foltz paints an indelible picture of a life far from the complexities of the modern world. Besides dealing with wild animals, Foltz and her husband had to learn to live without running water and electricity. They used a hand-ringer phone which had a party line with 24 other people. But what Foltz learned was far greater than just how to survive in an isolated community. She discovered that valuable lessons could be learned from a simpler lifestyle and that following your heart could lead to unimagined riches. This is a tale so high-spirited that excerpts ran in Canada’s Coast Mountain News to great acclaim. Unforgettable, funny, and gorgeously written, Voyagers of the Chilcotin is a Valentine to the great outdoors and to the pioneer spirit.