Prairie Seas, Mountain Harvest

In 1956 Alice Marlatt bought a car, packed her suitcase, and drove over 2,000 kilometers to a new life in a Vancouver Island logging camp. She was 53 years old. In Saskatchewan, she had family and friends, she was healthy, energetic, and had a newly updated teaching certificate. She could have worked the remaining years of her middle age in familiar surroundings, close to her children and grandchildren, and close to the prairie homestead that had been the home of her heart since 1906. But she did not. In that isolated logging camp she became the teacher in a one room school, and from 1956 to 1964 she had in her charge up to fifteen minds in which to instill, not just the expected skills, but the attitudes, responsibilities, and obligations of future adults in a swiftly progressing era. She became a valued member of the community, involving herself in camp life, and becoming close friends with many fellow residents. Some might have known her story and the reason for her defection from prairie skies to a mountain clear-cut, but few truly understood. This is Alice's story, from before her birth in Ontario in 1903 until her senior years, and it is also the story of a life in a 50s logging camp, and how Alice's dedication, humour, and convictions made a life-long impression on her students in that one-room school.