My friend of 42 years, Harry A. Wright, recently passed away at his home in Chemainus, B.C. Harry was born on October 14, 1942 in Nanaimo, B.C. and spent nearly all his life on Vancouver Island.
His father George worked for Hillcrest Lbr Co. and as a kid, Harry was taken by the geared locomotives of Hillcrest and nearby Western Forest Industries. When he graduated from H.S. in 1959, he went right to work firing for George Grant on Climax 10. When we met in 1967, smaller sister 9 was out of service and the 10 did all the work including that of WFI just up the line a couple of miles. In the last couple of years, Hillcrest was running on Tuesdays and Fridays. I'd be remiss here if I didn't share a story about Harry & the 10 spot...we had made our second trip from the mill @ Mesachie Lake to the E&N interchange in Lake Cowichan and were running light back to the mill late in the afternoon. It was payday & Harry was looking forward to taking me to the local pub. Well, between the One Mile Crossing and the mill, he stops the Climax out in the woods and out of sight from anything with the rear footboard sitting out over a small bridge that was spanning a little creek. The 4 of us sat on the footboards for about 40 minutes looking at the trout & killing time while the 3 crewmen related logging tales. This was termed "intercoursing the canine", but you've heard the other version. We got back on the engine and headed for the barn. As we passed the company office, Peter Stone the owner, came running out and stopped us asking why we were so late. Harry told him he had to get underneath the engine to adjust brake shoes. Turned out, we had more work and had to run up to Honeymoon Bay and take a couple of their loads down to Lake Cowichan. In a machine as rough riding as the 10, our fast trip was a real adventure, but we did make the pub before it closed.
Harry and I had similar careers as we both ran large steam plants. His Canadian license made him more schooled than I and we both enjoyed what we did. He also had a Millwrights certificate.
Harry recently was running the narrow gauge rod engine at the B.C. Forest Discovery Centre in Duncan and was looking forward to doing it again this year.
Harry was many things; thoughtful, generous and well read. We could talk about nearly anything including politics as he respected others views.
He came down to the States to visit sometimes and we got on locomotives together again, including the 10.
I shall miss him, he died much too young.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/2009 05:00PM by Tom Moungovan.
