Lund Lake near Wistaria is a clear little cup of water sheltered by rolling hills and a mountain that seems to rise straight from its north shore. The towering peak, originally called Dutchman鈥檚 Hill for reasons long forgotten, never looks the same. It changes attire with the seasons, dressing in gold during autumn, and lime green velvet when spring turns to summer.

The rugged beauty of the place, evocative of Norway, must have been the reason that Norwegian Jacob Johan Bernhoft Lund and his father chose to homestead there in 1910, building a cabin part of the way up the mountain. The structure, which began with one room, gradually acquired three additions that served as storage space and not living quarters. The two men kept almost everything they owned, including dynamite, in the adjacent rooms. When fire broke out in the rambler structure after Jacob鈥檚 death, the resulting explosion was of such great force that it shook the mountain to its basalt foundation.

The elder Lund, who some say was called Silas, while others claim he had the same name as his son, was a fine, gentle old man who spoke no English. He had previously been a cooper, and could fashion most anything from wood. He made wooden buttons for clothing, and once presented a fellow settler with a handmade wooden butter bowl. He could make or mend almost anything, and even repaired shoes for his neighbours.

Unlike his father, Jacob, according to those who knew him, could converse equally well in both English and Norwegian, but in his youth had a disposition not unlike the dynamite he so carefully stored. Born in Norway in 1880, he was a handsome man famous for his strength. When roads in the area were nonexistent, he regularly moved twelve hundred pounds of supplies from Houston to Wistaria by wheelbarrow.

What he couldn鈥檛 trundle, he lifted. Short of money but needing cattle, Jacob once hired on at a mine in Alice Lake, where he regularly carried two-hundred pound loads of ore up a vertical mine shaft to the surface. On another occasion, he grabbed a grown bull by the horns and threw it to the ground.

Edgar Blackwell, who homesteaded not far from the Lunds, worked on the road gang with Jacob. Years later, he told his son Alan two stories that had both men shaking their heads in wonder.

鈥淓veryone used to work out their taxes by working on the road,鈥� said Alan in 1987. 鈥淪o Jacob is working on road, and Arthur Shelford was the foreman. They were putting in a bridge at Jacob鈥檚 Creek. They had a team of horses there that they were pulling the logs out of the bush with, but Jacob, he goes into the woods and cuts a log and puts it up on his shoulder and packs it out. Arthur saw him doing that, and Arthur went over and he really called him down for packing log out when they could pull it out with the horses. Old Jacob just stood there with the log on his shoulder all the time that Arthur was calling him down for packing this log out, and then he just brought it out and threw it on the ground by the bridge. My dad was working there at the time, and he really thought that was something.

鈥淎nother story they tell about Jacob involves Dunc McGibbon, another old bachelor who used to be here,鈥� Alan continued. 鈥淭hey were working for some mining company on the Whitesail/Ootsa Lake portage, which was about a mile (in length), and they had forty-five gallon drums of gas to pack across. So Dunc McGibbon put a drum of this gas on a pack board and packed it across the portage, but he still had it sitting upright. They say Jacob Lund had to go one better, so he put his (drum of gasoline) on cross ways and packed it across the portage. Well, you can image what that would be like, with the gas slopping from one end of the barrel to the other.鈥�

A forty-five gallon drum of gasoline weighs in excess of three hundred and twenty pounds.

Jacob was allegedly as tough as he was strong. One of his contemporaries recalled that the younger Lund once had all his teeth pulled and then went on a hunting expedition.

鈥淛acob stopped a dentist traveling along the road and demanded that he pull his teeth,鈥� the hunter said. 鈥淭he dentist reluctantly pulled sixteen teeth with anaesthetic while Jacob sat in his car. We then went up to Whitesail Lake, and on the way, shot a huge caribou bull. Jake walked up to it, picked it up off the ground by a horn, and slit its throat.鈥�

When the caribou鈥檚 horns went missing during the night, the hunter explained the disappearance by saying Jake was so rough and tough that he ate the antlers for breakfast, even without his teeth.

While known to be hot headed and prone to fighting in his youth, Jacob was, like his father, fond of socializing. Many of the area鈥檚 early settlers remember being welcome at the Lund farm. If they arrived around mealtime, the Lunds willingly fed them. Old man Lund, who did most of the cooking and household chores, would fill a cast iron frying pan with eggs, and while they fried, feed his visitors great slabs of homemade bread topped with freshly churned butter. And if you needed a place for the night, Jacob and his father were happy to accommodate. The Lund home may not have been spacious, but it contained several wooden trunks filled with clean sheets and blankets for overnight guests.

Jacob was to marry a nurse residing in Stewart, but she died at the age of eighteen. He never married, and after his father died, lived alone except for a cat that thought it was a watchdog. The cat would hide in the cabin rafters and launch itself, claws extended, on anyone who tried to enter the premises. Not even Jacob was exempt from these attacks, and had to poke a broom through the cabin doorway to distract his self-proclaimed security guard before going inside.

The Lunds raised cattle and sheep, and some of them were as feral as Jacob鈥檚 cat. In January 1957, the Review newspaper reported that after three years of living in the wild, the last of his cows had finally returned home.

鈥淭hree years ago, they were rounded up and corralled for shipping, but three managed to escape and took to the woods,鈥� stated the newspaper. 鈥淚t was only when the snow became too deep and hunger drove them in that they would return in mid-winter to the ranch for feed鈥� This year, the weather being milder than usual, it was January when Jacob spotted them at his barns. With the help of some friends from Decker Lake, they were shot and butchered. So ends the story of a herd of cattle that were wilder than moose.鈥�

Jacob 鈥榬etired鈥� in 1954 and moved down to the south end of the lake that now bears his name. He regularly entertained anglers who arrived in search of trout, rowing them around in a small boat because he was convinced that outboard motors would scare the fish.

Around 1963, the man who was a friend to many sold his property. Not long after, he fell ill and was admitted to the Women鈥檚 Missionary Society Hospital in 亚洲天堂 Lake.

He never left. Jacob Lund died in hospital April 21, 1966 at the age of eight-six. The 鈥榳ho鈥檚 who鈥� of Ootsa Lake, a group that included Alford Harrison, Jim Van Tine, Jim Nelson, Charles Priest, Patrick J. (Paddy) Carroll, Fred Spicer, and many others, buried him four days later in the tiny cemetery adjacent to Wistaria Community Church.

He was survived by a niece in Norway, Mona Bendiktsen, who subsequently purchased an advertisement in the Review to thank the men and women who had shown her uncle such kindness over the years.

Not that they needed thanking. It was, as one person later said, the least they could do for a man of his calibre.

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Do you have a story or a photograph of Jacob Lund or his father? Help us improve our archives by sending us a copy at Box 266, 亚洲天堂 Lake, BC V0J 1E0, or ldmuseumsociety@gmail.com.

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