Friday, October 6, 2023
My name is Steve McLain and I am Lees son-in-law.Lee passed away this week the same way he lived, with quiet grace, strength, and dignity. Lee was an amazing man. My family and I loved him dearly and feel his loss deeply. I could write pages on my admiration, gratitude, and respect for him.Lee was first and always a family man. He worked his whole life to support them and was a kind, gentle, devoted, and utterly faithful husband, father, brother, cousin, and grandfather.Lee was a very quiet and modest man and was usually comfortable to let the others around the table do most of the talking. Over the years, and always from others, I learned what an epic individual he actually was. His life reads like an adventure movie in many ways and the more I learned of him, the more he surprised me. As a young man he commercial fished Turtle Lake with his family for whitefish destined for fine eateries in New York City; and they even had their boat sink once. Fortunately, they were rescued by local Indigenous fishermen and he spoke of them with gratitude. He logged the big trees on Vancouver Island with hand buck saws and carried dynamite across log jams in a backpack; once getting spun right around by a branch but not losing his balance. Whether it was the time as a young man when he took the train across Canada while doing odd jobs like picking fruit, to being the first recreational parachutist in the first parachute club in the country, to when he and his brothers filled every seniors care home freezer in Northern Saskatchewan with moose meat in the late 50s, or to hooking up the horse team in winter as a small child to take his siblings to school, I have to admit to realizing my mouth was sometimes a little ajar while listening to others talk about this exceptional human being. As well as being a master carpenter, Lee was a consummate outdoorsman, superb rifleman, and was equally at home walking, quadding, sledding, or riverboating in the wilderness. When I hunted with him, I could see he put on the forest like a comfortable old coat and just plain belonged there. Over his life Lee harvested 12 elk, 100 or so moose, plus around 50 deer. These 50 years of hunting were all non-guided, often solo hunts, and most were on crown land. In his late 60s he walked up a mountain in the Kootenays by himself and came down with a mountain goat in his pack. This is a hunting record that I have never seen equaled, and he often used these skills to feed seniors or families needing a little extra food. Lee could catch fish through the ice when no one else was, and Lynne has very good memories of ice fishing at the dam as a child. Everything that my sons and I know about ice fishing, and our love for this strange sport, was learned from Lee.And boat? This man could read a river like no-one else I ever saw! Lee was one of the original River Rats and started riverboating when people built their own out of plywood. I think he ran every river north of Prince George at one time or another and usually further and shallower than the other boaters did. I remember another local river-boater telling me how he followed Lee back to camp once on the Muskwa River in the dark. Brian said that all he could see was a little bit of white wake at the back of Lees boat and that he guided them back without hitting a single rock. He said it gave him the shivers and he never figured out how Lee did it. Lee became a resource for the local community for all things boating over the years. BC Hydro used his skills for tasks like repainting the depth markers inside the Bennet dam. This means that Lee was one of very few individuals to pilot a boat up the diversion tunnels almost to the turbines inside the dam itself; and was usually also the one called for boat work around the penstocks. Lee also helped local search and rescue and the RCMP over the years and was often the first requested to help in emergencies and where a clear, calm, and expert head was needed. On one sad occasion Lee and the RCMP recovered a drowning victim from Dinosaur Lake. Lee demanded that the body be treated with respect and dignity and brought into the boat as respectfully as possible. This incident hurt Lees gentle heart and remained with him for the rest of his life, often coming back to him in dreams while he slept. Lee was quietly generous with his time, belongings, and skills. Whether taking holidays to build someones garage, teaching his grandsons how to shoot, boat, and fish, showing me many, many of his favourite hunting and fishing spots, or just generally investing his time in his friends and family, Lee was always exactly where he should be, doing exactly what needed to be done. Lees handshake would make your knuckles pop, his heart was huge, his word was unbreakable, and when he told you something you could bank on it being true. He came from a generation and background that was never emotionally demonstrative. And although Lee might never have been comfortable telling people he loved them, or wearing his heart on his sleeve, he showed them every day. I could see it in his smile and when his eyes lit up when he spoke to Lynne and his grandsons and I always knew that their love for him was returned unreservedly and completely. I treasured and am immensely grateful for my time with Lee and will remember and miss him every day. I hated writing this tribute because my words are not even slightly up to the task of describing this man, my respect for him, and what he meant to me and my family. Some people just leave a hole when they leave us behind.
