David Milton McGowan

Knowing What Matters I’ve put a collection of ten of my poems on a CD and should have them available in a week or so. The titles of those items on it are as follows; Education, A real Man, Inclusion, The Road That Couldn’t Be Done, Hiking Mountain Ranges, Your Peace River Home, Native Sons in WWI (posted here a few weeks ago), Knowing What Matters, Just Feelin’ Good and An Old Rancher’s Christmas. Here is “Knowing What Matters” along with a few pictures of Western Canada. I’ve also been recording a collection of short stories for an audio book, but since it is about 50 thousand words and I’m also recording voiceover work, it might be awhile before I have that available. Enjoy!

 Research and Writing I’ve been working on a story that has a “crime baron” operating in New Westminster, BC in 1881. I’ve found the research interesting, due to the great changes that were taking place at the time. However, more about that in a later post. For now, I was just looking through some of the material I collected for “The Making of Jake McTavish” (or Jake) and “Gunfighters, Thieves and Lawmen” (GTL) and thought I would post some of those items. The building of this Fort St. John jail and barracks by the NWMP is mentioned in “The Making of Jake McTavish”. The top picture is how it appeared in 1927 and the bottom, how it appeared when I worked on the surrounding ranch in 1964. In 1909 it was maned by the British Columbia Provincial Police (who actually had jurisdiction) and then abandoned in the late 1920s when the Hudson’s Bay Company moved about 2 miles north and up out of the Peace River Valley to what was called the “Fish Creek” area and is the present site of F...