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Good evening ladies and gentlemen, this is an opportunity I wouldn't miss for anything. I'm going to talk about a good friend of mine that I met when I first came to the Okanagan in 1925 but I'll go back a little further.

In 1924 I landed in here on a train from Sicamous and I got a job working up here at Ashton Creek. And in that camp, where I was learning to make, fall trees and to make ties, I met Harry Garret and Hilliard McGonegal. But during that five months winter I heard an awful lot about Wild Bill Beadle. So to give you a little sketch on Wild Bill Beadle.

To begin with, William Beadle , he was 6 feet tall and he was nicely built. A big strong man, he was about 62 or 63 in 1925 and he didn't back up from anyone and I was a young fellow then, about 20, 21, and you know I travelled up various different parts and you admired a man that could protect himself. Now, statistics or whatever, as long as he used his head and I don't think Bill ever took a licking in the Okanagan.

Now we'll go down to what, so far has been hearsay. From now on, they are facts. In this world today you get a lot of hearsay. He was known by everyone as Wild Bill. When I mentioned Dolly, that was his wife. He went to the first World War in 1914 to 1918 and when he returned from the war he came first to northern Ontario and then out to the Kootenays to Nelson. And he got a job, he was a good bushman, and he got a job working in the bush near Nelson. And later came to the Okanagan to find a place. East of Glenn's property, out in Quilakwa, up on the hillside he got 160 acres. He got a cabin built there.

And then he went back to Northern Ontario where he had known a family of Pennsylvanian Dutch that came up from the states to settle on Northern Ontario. There was two brothers and a sister operating a dairy farm and he decided it should be an ideal person to bring out into the Okanagan so he married Dolly and brought her up here on the hillside.

On the homestead that he got, the government didn't give him any access, so he had to come in through Glenn's barnyard to get to his homestead up on the hills. And in the night Bill used to go town and you know he was a jolly fellah, friendly with the boys. And he'd come home late at night and pass through Glenn's barnyard and forget to shut the gate. When Glenn would get up in the morning there'd be dairy cows missing. And they didn't appreciate that, but it actually didn't bother Bill because when the Armstrong municipality gave him an access he'd be alright, but until they did he'd use Glenns barnyard. Am I getting to you?.

Now we'll go along to 1925 when I got acquainted with Bill. I got a job working on Andy Glenn's thrashing outfit and Glenn thrashed all the way from Sandy Grant's at Armstrong to Yupper Davies at Sicamous. Little stacks and little peels and what have you. So I got a job peel-pitching and the first day that I went there was a field right close to where Glenn lived and when I walked out in the field they gave me a pitchfork, I noticed teamsters with their wagons all around, standing on the racks. This was something new to me, something I had never heard of.

I'd spent seven years out in Alberta and Saskatchewan harvesting grain and grain was the main product, and here these men were all standing on the racks, looking, you know. And so I noticed this old gentleman. I went up to him and I said "Are you gonna load up". "Oh ya, I'm all ready". So I said O.K. I'll start loading you. And where I came from in the Prairie, when you went to work in the thrashing outfit, they gave you a team of horses and a hay rack and a pitchfork, you loaded your own load and you delivered it at the elevator. Here in the Okanagan this teamster stood on the load and waited for someone to hand him the sheets. So I said to Bill when he went and tried to get the fork, I said "Never mind. I don't know what your name is but", I said to him, "do you live around here?" "Oh yeah, I'm Wild Bill, I live up the hill." So anyway I said now you just drive the team and I'll put your load on, so I did that. And during the course of the conversation as I was loading Bill, we became good friends.

Now he used a gravel box, a lot of you won't know what that was, but in the old days he used a gravel box with wings on it and end gates to haul sheaves and Dolly had lined the inside of the box with gunny sacks. So Bill went home each evening from the job, unloaded the wheat that had shelled out and came back in the morning. Now, this upset the farmers cause they thought he was stealing something. You know what they were doing, they were driving up and down the fields seeding that right back in the ground. They did not realize it was falling through, but old Bill and Dolly were smart enough to conserve that.

Well then, in the winter of 1925 and '26, like I say I was working at Glenns. And I lived in the grainery because they didn't get up early enough in the morning and I was only getting 10 cents a tie and I would have starved to death so I got up early and lived in the grainery and then Andy Glenn bought me a 100 pound sack of flour and I went on making it into hotcakes that winter and I went on making ties.

Well, Sunday morning, er Christmas morning, Andy Glenn came and he rapped on the grainery and he says, "Charlie, would you direct Dr. Keith up to Bill Beadle's place." Apparently Bill's had an accident. So when Dr. Keith came I got up and started up the hill and on the way up the hill the doc says, " Look, there's barefoot tracks in the snow." Apparently one of Mrs. Beadle's shoes weren't doing its stuff and her toes and the ball of her foot had got a cold going up the hill. Anyway, when we got to the clearing she was out there to meet us, and she didn't want us to think there was any foul play in the least. So she showed us what actually happened. Bill got up and he had a horse that he called Patty, an old stallion, he got on his back to water him about a hundred yards away, and the old horse bucked him off and he fell on a big stump. Somehow, he was a big man, 200 pounds, Dolly dragged him up to the house and put him in his bunk.

So she explained this all to us and then she took us in, and there was old Bill lying with his face to the wall, groaning, so the doctor, when he got his breath after climbing up the hill, he felt him over and then he said, "Bill, just a moment, he stuck the tape on there and then he put his knee on him there and he pulled like this, to tighten it down cause he broke two ribs. Then he said he'll have to go into the hospital. So I had to get the old team out, old Frank and old Patty, out of the barn and harness them up and hook them on to the front bob of the sleigh. He put a string on it and the mattress and then loaded Bill onto it and covered him with 2 horse blankets and then started for the hospital. Well, we got part ways down the hill and we went over a little bump and Bill said whoa and the team stopped like that and I had to laugh and get 'em going cause when he told them to stop they stopped.

So after a while we got down to the hospital and I drove right up to the steps of the hospital on the snow and Miss Bowes was waiting for us. So Bill pulled the horse blanket off his head and says,"Merry Christmas!" Well anyway we went and one got on each side of him and we helped him in and we got into the room and Bill could see the bed turned back and those sheets there and he had this superstition of people dying in sheets and he said,"I won't get in there unless you take those sheets away, I just want plain gray blankets."

So I got him in there and then about four days after that I was chopping, making ties up in the bush and here comes old Bill down through the snow to thank me for my efforts. And so I said that's fine, you're welcome Bill. And then I guess when I run out of muscle making ties I had to take the shortcut to Polly's Pass, then get back.

Well in about three weeks Bill had 3 great big trees up in Deep Creek, he had a little piece of land, and he wanted them sawed down. And this home..... that we got to hadn't been lived in all winter so Bill said don't take your hat off or your jacket or your boots or anything just put a blanket over you and crawl in as we were. And I noticed when we went in I could smell signs of bushtail rats and there was mice everywhere. Anyway we got in there and we got the trees sawed down and sawed up into logs and got back to Glenns.

Then there was an interval when I didn't see much of Bill. I moved up to Ashton Creek, back up that way and then the next time I came down I rented Johnston's place, it was close by. And then I was back close to Bill again.

And you know he went into town and somehow got into problems with Bob Bailey. Bob Bailey was a famous character in those days, he was a policemen. He wanted to lock him up in the city hall and Bill wouldn't go. So he got more men and he tied Bill face down and put him in the lockup. Well now, the corner is like this, and up there was Doc Keith here, there was Bill Morris' garage there and Walker's newspaper place and Sam Polsons' Hardware, or no, a second hand place there. But anyway, Bill roared, "Poor little woman up on the hill" all night long, kept these people all awake. So the city father set a meeting the next day, and well Bob Bailey never put him in there again.

So next time Bill got kicked over the traces they took him up to Gerry Smith. Gerry Smith was the Provincial Police at that time and a very reliable man. He was married to a sister of Mrs. Bill Morris, they were related. But anyway, when he took them up there Bill started the same old bellowing you know. So Gerry Smith took the hose and hosed him up and he shut up. I guess Bill shivered all night.

Now when I came back from overseas, I was with the force before and I came back in '43 in September or October. First man I met on the street was Wild Bill. Then I was away again and when I came back in '45 they had a party, a welcome home to the soldiers in Enderby. I enjoyed that very much.

And then I went to work for Hoover Sawmill on the West side, and in about 1952 or '53 I got a parcel in the mail from Dolly and it was Bill's filing tools. Bill apparently passed away and she sent me his filing tools and an invitation to build myself a home up there on the homestead and live next to her. Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen.

Charlie Carey
Okanagan Historical Society 1984