Mountain Man

Teddy was about as local as you could get, he was born at Hotchkiss to a family who floated down the Peace on a raft to homestead the Peace country in the '30's. His father was a scrappy little Welshman, and he carried on the tradition. When I knew him he was thirty five, and many more in life stories.
He was about five foot four of bandy legged sinew with a bushy beard and brown stained teeth, all topped off with a big Stetson hat, which he never removed, even to hit a lady. If half the stories he told were even half true, he had had an adventurous life. He'd been a cat skinner and truck driver at Fort McMurray when the oilsands were opened, he had been dam building in India, with no passport or papers, flown in and out on a private jet. He had been in more rolled rigs than most people in a lifetime, and walked away. He had driven logging trucks in the mountains of B.C. when the test of manhood was to stay off the "Jake Brake" on a down mountain run. He had run oilfield supplies to Rainbow Lake in the winter when he had to chain the front wheels to stay on the iced up winter roads. He'd trucked propane over the ice bridge at Fort Providence during Spring breakup. He had faced down mother bears with only a soothing voice, and once rolled out of his sleeping bag to shoot a bear that was licking his toes. He always carried a .38 long barrel when in the bush and could shoot the middle out of a dime every time at a distance which was unbelievable to me.

When he got a cold he smoked hand rolls and mixed the tobacco with Vicks Vapo Rub. He could walk through a field of crisp leaves without making a sound. His skinning knife made a razor look dull and when he was peeling a beaver hide and got a nick he'd stick his hand in a bag of salt to prevent tulerimia.

Party time was anytime in the North of his youth, and it started when the job at hand was done. Hotels motels, airplanes, wherever you were. He took over the controls of a helicopter just to say he'd done it. His buddies and he cleaned out the "Zoo" at Fort Mac. more than once.

He epitomized the frontier spirit of Northern Alberta in the boom times, he lived fast and hard and died way too young. But it would have been hard to imagine him as old, or even middle aged.

R.I.P. Teddy, you were a hell of a man.

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