Chaunigan History Continued

Hello Everyone

Continuation of last Chaunigan history blog.

My father contracted a surveyor from Williams Lake to survey property adjacent to the lodge. He flew him into the lake and back out again after the job was done, staying at the lodge with the permission of then owner Les Johnson. Les was a dentist from Centralia, Washington. Johnson was near retirement and his seasonal transportation onto the lake was a six wheel drive Army surplus truck with a winch on both ends. He had adopted two native children whom he and his wife brought back and forth seasonally.

In 1954 fishing from the lodge boats and staying there overnight with Johnson's permission, he realized in bad weather that trolling by that first point a mile down the lake was great fishing as well as marginally weather protected. It also provided great protection from the weather for the airplane which was now a 1954 Cessa 180. He put the lots that were surveyed by the lodge up for sale and resurveyed two lots plotted by the point. One he purchased and the other he leased to the Gibbon's family. The law was that the land had to be improved within five years. The purchase price was really just the cost to have it surveyed and improved. Within a year the law changed so that no more Canadian (Queen's) land on waterfront could be sold, purchased, improved or gained title of forever more.