Chris Horn sits in his comfy chair by the window looking through a stack of old photos just handed to him by Helen, his wife of 63 years.
They are halfway through calving season, and these folks are really busy, but they graciously offer me tea and cake and patiently answer my questions, as if they had nothing else to do that day. Their son, Gus, who handles the lion’s share of the work on their large cattle ranch, is walking and talking earnestly with guests outside, and I passed another ranch friend going out their driveway as I came in.
Life is never dull for the Chris Horn family, yet the welcome mat is always out. Always has been.
Chris looks up from the stack of yellowed photos in his hands, and with a wide grin and an obviously happy memory twinkling in his eyes, he says, “Them was the days!”
Several of the pictures show a lively looking group of young people standing in broad daylight in the middle of the main street – the only street – in Lone Butte.
“That’s Helen on the far right,” Chris points out. “These were taken after a dance.”
“But it’s broad daylight,” I say, confused. “Dances are usually held at night; these must have been taken before the dance.”
“Nope, after the dance,” Chris replies. “We danced all night, and this was in the morning after the dance.”
Today, Chris is almost 89, Helen is 87, and they have been ranching together steadily since their marriage in 1948. They have seen things, lived lives, endured immense hardship, and understand things that we can only imagine. Times were hard and so very different back then.
Chris was born to Hartwig and Anna Horn in Ashcroft, the nearest hospital to Lone Butte, in June of 1922. When mother and child were strong enough, they headed home by stage to 70 Mile, where Chris’s dad met them with two horses. They then rode the rest of the way home, some 30 miles, with Chris in his dad’s arms.
Chris grew up the youngest of four boys, and they did the usual things young boys do, especially delighting in the gift of air rifles one Christmas.
The boys were inspired by the idea of collecting enough skins to make their mother a fur coat. They shot mostly grouse and rabbits, and trapped squirrels and weasels to get some money.
“We got 50 cents a weasel skin,” Chris says, “And 75 cents to $1 for a muskrat skin.”
As he grew older, Chris worked for Jack Skaday, then his uncle Gus, and then Ed Higgins. In 1938, Chris helped build the original Skaday Bridge at the west end of Horse Lake on what is now Horse Lake Road.
100 Mile House was not a town in those days, just a stage coach stop. Lone Butte was the town and the centre of everything.
The Pacific & Great Eastern railroad figured very prominently in the lives of those living in Lone Butte in the ‘20s and ‘30s. The locals called the railroad various names – the “PGE,” the “Pig Going East,” and sometimes the “Prince George Eventually Railroad.”
The roadbed was built only as far as Lone Butte by 1914, when the First World War stopped further progress. After the war, work on the line resumed, and the PGE tracks made it to Williams Lake by 1922.
The railroad was a major source of employment in Lone Butte, and helped provide clientele for Anna Horn’s business, the Lone Butte Hotel. The hotel was famous in its day and more than a welcome sight for those who arrived in the country after a long dusty trip by rail or horseback.
Meanwhile Helen Granberg was growing up in both Lone Butte and Roe Lake. The daughter of Ellis and Bertha Granberg, Helen was born at the Granberg homestead, two miles west of Lone Butte.
As the eldest of five children, she was the family babysitter, watching the others while her mother did chores outside. Caring for others was to become a life-long skill. Eventually her father started a grocery store in Lone Butte, and Helen worked for him in the store.
Chris’s parents had gone their separate ways not long after Chris was born, and Anna, known as a competent, fair-minded business woman, continued to run the hotel for many years to come. It was not an easy task, especially with three strong-minded boys to raise at the same time.
Interestingly, right next door to the hotel was the Granberg Grocery Store where young Helen Granberg worked, so Chris and Helen knew each other as young people. They had even briefly attended the same school.
Then the time came when Chris began to see his friend Helen in a different light. He was living outside of town at his Uncle Gus’s ranch and working for his uncle at the time. Courting Helen meant that he was forever riding back and forth to town, so he often joked that he “killed a horse chasing after her.”
Chris and Helen were married in June of 1948 and immediately started ranching together, something they have done steadily to this very day.
You can’t ranch for 63 years and not have hardship. Early on, they had to sell all their cattle and buy a sawmill to make ends meet. One year, it rained so hard they couldn’t get any of their crop of hay harvested. Another year, Brucellosis wiped out their herd.
The worst had to be the time Chris was severely burned by electricity. He was changing irrigation pipe, tipping up a pipe to shake out a gopher nest, and the pipe he was holding hit a hydro wire.
It was a very close call, as he was unconscious for most of the time it took to get him to hospital in Vancouver, and he carries the scars to this day from each place a metal shirt button was touching his skin.
The Horns have had a lifetime of happiness as well.
“We love this ranch and we love ranching, always have,” Chris explains.
Helen says with a smile and a little sigh that the saving grace has always been “having a good sense of humour.”
Their constant gift of themselves to the 100 Mile Community and further afield is renowned. The Horns are always busy, but never too busy to support some agricultural enterprise, to give a hand, tell a yarn, or bake a pie for a worthy cause.
Just like in the old days, people are constantly dropping by, and the connection with friends and neighbours always comes first.
At this very moment (I know because I just called them), Chris and Helen are in the kitchen sharing the task of making cookies. He mixes and she bakes. Hmm, think I’ll head over there right now to show them what I have written.
Sherry Stewart has been writing pioneer stories for the 100 Mile Free Press since 1969.
