Hearkening back to homesteader history
Keeping the Books: The life and times of a Peace River Homesteader’s Daughter
by Ross Peck
Cranbrook: Wild Horse Creek Press, 2025
$21.95 / 9781069794703
Reviewed by Kenneth Favrholdt
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Keeping the Books is a family history par excellence, the best of its genre that I have read, which traces the life of Alene Peck, a homesteader’s daughter in the Peace River district of British Columbia. It was a colourful life that Alene has chronicled and saved through a trove of letters, notes, and photographs that upon her death were bequeathed to her son, Ross Peck, who lives today in Skookumchuck, in BC’s Kootenays.
Alene’s long and rich life is captured in this book’s 230 pages, replete with countless images and endnotes to each of thirteen chapters. It is a perfect example of how a family’s story can be revealed and preserved for future generations.
Alene’s journey began with the trans-Atlantic immigration of her ancestors from Northern Ireland to Canada in 1886. Alene’s mother Margaret was born to Daniel and Catherine Donaldson. In 1892, the Donaldson family moved to Vancouver.
Margaret worked in some mining towns including Phoenix, BC, where she met Ross Darnall, an American, whom she married in 1917 in Vancouver, Washington. In 1920, they were residents of Emmett, Idaho, where they decided to raise a family. Alene was born in New Plymouth, Idaho, in 1921, the first of four children. After the birth of their children the Darnalls moved to Chelan, Washington, where they heard about the homesteading prospects in BC’s Peace River country—they relocated in 1928.
What is homesteading, some readers may ask? It is a self-sufficient lifestyle with resilient people, characterized by isolation, hard work, and many challenges including the difficulties of transportation and obtaining essential services. Starting in 1872 in Canada, homesteading involved claiming free land for farming under the Dominion Lands Act. Homesteading in the Peace River district of BC began in earnest around the First World War.
The Peace River Block, as it became known, was a 3.5-million-acre (14,000 km square) area that was part of the compensation for the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1880s. The land was surveyed and bountiful crops of wheat and oats began a homesteading rush in the next few decades. The Darnalls were part of an influx of settlers in the 1920s.
Ross found a quarter-section (160 acres/ 65 hectares) north of Fort St. John. After two months of travel, they arrived at the site of their new home. Margaret reminisced in 1974,
…when we were first clearing the land I would sit and watch Ross slashing bush and burning it and we would always have a pot of coffee on the fire or a hot drink before going to bed. … I still say that some of the happiest days of our married life were spent on the homestead … I think the homestead was a wonderful place to bring up children and it was a healthy place for all of us. The hard work never hurt us.
They proved up the homestead and received title to the land in 1935.
Transportation was an important part of the Darnall family’s life. In 1928, their truck was one of the first in the area; by 1941 Ross went to Edmonton to buy a one-ton truck body to convert into a passenger bus. His bus service was immediately in demand and kept the farm going.
The fourth chapter of the book focuses on school days. In the summer of 1941, Alene, then twenty years old, attended Normal School in Vancouver where she received her teacher’s diploma, returning to Fort St. John the following year. The nearest school to the Darnall homestead was a log structure in Fort St. John near Fish Creek (now Stoddard Creek) where Alene taught Grade Two.
Alene changed her plans during the Second World War and applied to join the Royal Canadian Air Force. She shared a house with Gladys Skinner, a public health nurse, and the two became inseparable.
Ross Darnell was an avid fisherman and the Carbon River, a tributary of the Peace River, became a favourite summer destination for the family. A wilderness expedition they made in 1944 had a lasting impact on the family. But Alene could not go—she was embarking on basic training with the RCAF. But her friend Gladys did go on the trip with a fellow nurse, Nain Grumett, who kept a diary of the 10-day expedition. Ross bought a freight boat and also a cabin on the Carbon River. For the next 20 years the Darnalls would spend most of their summers there.
In 1944, Alene signed up with the Women’s Division of the Royal Canadian Air Force where she learned accounting, a skill that served her well. She spent a little time overseas after the war. Returning home Alene applied for a relief position at the Charlie Lake School near Fort St. John, then gained employment at the elementary school in Fort St. John, followed by a position at Haines Junction, Yukon.
It was around this time that a resident of Hudson’s Hope—trapper, guide and cowboy Don Peck—a high school friend of Alene, proposed to her in a letter. Alene then planned to join him following her teaching commitment at Haines Junction and by fall of 1949, Don and Alene had agreed to marry.
Don in 1950 had purchased Trutch Lodge at Mile 200 on the Alaska Highway. Born on a trapline near present Tumbler Ridge, Don became an avid outdoorsman and later ran a successful guide outfitting business in the Tuchodi River area of the northern Rockies. Son Ross Peck was born in 1951. With Alene ‘keeping the books’, the Lodge became a bustling operation, including an air strip, an annual rodeo, a school, and tourist traffic.
There is a short mention of the relationship with the Prophet River First Nation which made Trutch Lodge their centre for fishing, berry-picking, and dry meat-making. Don started buying the furs and hides the Indigenous people brought in.
After 13 years, Don and Alene felt it was time for a change and they left Trutch Lodge in 1963, buying acreage at Mile 49. Nothing is left of the Trutch Lodge today.
The Site C Dam on the Peace River southwest of Fort St. John was first proposed in the 1950s, as part of a plan to produce additional electricity to the province. Progress was afoot in the 1960s; not surprisingly, Alene and Don were opposed to the changes they predicted to their lifestyle.
Sadly, in 1980, Don suffered a heart attack and passed away. But Alene, with her organizational and accounting acumen, continued to hold the family company together, named Don Peck Holdings Limited.
The Province newspaper reported in 1981:
An angry widow, the mother of four, is taking on B.C. Hydro in a battle of farmland versus Peace River Power development.
Alene Peck owns almost 364 hectares (900 acres) on the north side of the Peace River and if the proposed Site C dam is built by Hydro, some of her land would be flooded. And she would be barred from using the river for irrigation.
Site C was shelved multiple times, including in 1982 and 1989 when the B.C. Utilities Commission determined the province didn’t need the extra energy.
Alene decided to retire in the early 1990s. After 30 years living on the Alaska Highway, Alene, then in her early seventies, felt she was ready to move into town—Fort St. John. “Peck’s Place” store was donated to the North Peace Historical Society Museum; the Charlie Lake property passed on later to family members. Losing their battle against BC Hydro Site C, son Ross and his wife Deborah left their home in the Peace and moved to the East Kootenays.
Alene passed away in 2017 at 96 years.
This book is the work of Alene’s son Ross, a retired guide outfitter and wildlife biologist, and many others who helped. Including almost 200 photos, maps, newspaper clippings, poems and other archival materials, the title of the book in my reviewer’s opinion is less about bookkeeping (which Alene excelled at) than about the preservation of the family history.
Ably published by Wild Horse Creek Press, Keeping the Books is a very personal but relatable story of family life in BC’s homestead heartland.
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Kenneth Favrholdt is a freelance writer, historical geographer, and museologist with a BA and MA (Geography, UBC), a teaching certificate (SFU), and certificates as a museum curator. He spent ten years at the Kamloops Museum & Archives, five at the Secwépemc Museum and Heritage Park, four at the Osoyoos Museum, and was past archivist of Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc. He has written extensively on local history in Kamloops This Week, the former Kamloops Daily News, the Claresholm Local Press, and other community papers. Ken has also written book reviews for BC Studies and articles for BC History, Canadian Cowboy Country Magazine, Cartographica, Cartouche, and MUSE (magazine of the Canadian Museums Association). He taught geography courses at Thompson Rivers University and edited the Canadian Encyclopedia, geography textbooks, and a commemorative history for the Town of Oliver and Osoyoos Indian Band. Ken has undertaken research for several Interior First Nations and is now working on books on the fur trade of Kamloops and the gold rush journal of John Clapperton, a Nicola Valley pioneer and Caribooite. He lives in Kamloops. [Editor’s note: Kenneth Favrholdt has recently reviewed books by W. Keith Regular, Dr. Jennifer Grenz, k’ʷunəmɛn Joe Gallagher and John Matterson, Leigh Joseph, James R. Gibson, and Patrick Brode for The British Columbia Review.]
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Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
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