Joan Richard was a young girl living near Hazelton, B.C. when she got her first bike in the late 1940s. Actually, half a bike. She had to share the whole bike with her older sister Ann.

Joan is now a retired nurse and champion bridge player, not to mention mom and grandma. She was at home recently about to have a chicken soup dinner when I spoke with her.She was receiving some TLC from her sister Cathy and daughter Cathy after she stopped her treatments for cancer. “I’m being treated like a Queen here,” she said. Joan’s niece, my wife Nadine, had told me about the half-a-bike story, so I asked Joan to share it. Ann has also added some memories.

Joan: My sister Ann and I wanted bikes but money was a bit tight just after the war ended so we started saving. It wasn’t going to get us two bikes anytime soon, so the plan was to share one.

Ann: We saved by sawing logs with a crosscut saw — I think for one cent a log. My parents were happy to give us the job because they supplemented the home heating with firewood. You needed a good stock of firewood because it got pretty cold in Hazelton in the winter. The bike was going to cost us twenty-four dollars, and our parents would pay half, so we figured we went through about 1,200 logs to get the twelve dollars.

Joan: We ordered the bike through the wholesaler Marshall Wells, which served Hazelton. My dad was an engineer and the manager in the Silver Standard lead-zync mine about 8 miles from town.

The bike was an ordinary one-speed with pedal brakes and we just had to share it. Most of the time one of us would ride it and the other would run alongside, and maybe the dog would tag along too. The bike was made by CCM but had some other brand on it which I can’t recall, maybe related to the wholesaler.

We lived in the mining camp so it wasn’t like there were a lot of flat spaces to bike around. It was quite rugged — lots of bumps and humps. You couldn’t go too fast but it was fun.

Ann: Our parents Harry and Mary Gilleland had a nice two-bedroom home at the mining camp, with a basement that had a trap-door entrance. Our younger sister Cathy was about six years younger than Joan. We had to host some guests from time to time, including some of the big mining bosses from Vancouver who needed a place to stay when they visited. So we added a third bedroom at some point. It was a nice home given that we were basically living in the bush.

Joan: The next year, we made a plan to get bike number 2, and we had a deal. We would save for it together and place our order. The bikes came in red and blue but you couldn’t special-order your colour choice. So we agreed that if the bike was red, it would be mine. If it was blue, it would be Ann’s.

Well the bike was red so I was lucky and Ann kept the first one. Sibling rivalry? I don’t remember too much of that.

Ann: We did have our occasional spats. One summer we were sawing wood and Joan was wearing shorts. As the result of some kind of altercation, which was likely partly my fault, Joan got nicked by the saw teeth and ended up with three scars.

Joan: I would have been about 8 and Ann was 10. There weren’t many places to bike around the mining camp but there was an isolated road that ran about 8 miles to town, mostly downhill. We would get on our bikes and a couple of friends might come along, and we would all woosh down the road to Hazelton together.

Of course, it was uphill on the way back so we could usually get a ride home. We would throw the bikes in the back of a truck and catch a ride.

We were like street urchins. We were outside almost all summer. There weren’t many kids our age but I don’t ever recall being bored.

We had our bikes and the run of the place.