A lot of exciting things happened to us while we were serving the Lord on the reserves. One man, whom we saw often, was a very agreeable person when he was sober. But when he was drunk he was as cantankerous and ugly tempered as a grizzly bear.  When he was hitting the bottle his favorite entertainment seemed to be beating up his wife or dragging her around by the hair. Often she called on us for help.

I was coming out the back door after one such encounter when a rifle slug whistled past my ear. I looked up to see him jacking in another shell, but the gun jammed.

He stopped to dig the casing out of the rifle with a hunting knife, then threw the gun down and walked toward me. I quickly turned, went back inside and locked the door.

One winter day there were kids crying at a neighbour’s house all day long. I was getting ready for a service and was tired of listening to them, so I put on my parka and picked up my Bible bag and went over to see what was going on. I crossed the bridge and started up the hill when I passed a little log house.

The kids were howling because they were cold and wanted to go inside but there was a party going on and those inside wouldn’t let them in. The path hadn’t been shoveled but there was a big area where the snow was packed and stained with blood.  I didn’t have to have anyone tell me what was happening. The guys would stay inside and drink until an argument started. Then they’d come out and beat each other up. I wasn’t too far away when two guys burst out the door and started hammering at each other until they saw me. Then they stopped fighting and ducked back in the house.

I tapped on the door and went inside. There were seven men and one or two women crowded into the little building. They were all drunk and belligerent and didn’t want me around trying to break up their fun.  One guy was waiting for me. He brought his arm around my neck, trying to get a hammerlock on me.  He was leaning my way and I threw him across the room against the log wall. He was knocked out cold.  Another fellow came at me from the other side and grasped my coat. I reached around, got him by the coat and wrapped him around the air tight heater.  Fortunately the fire was about out. He lay there without moving.

Still another, who was sprawled on the bed when I came in, jumped me. He ripped my jacket down both sides. I seized him by the shoulder and was about to hit him but I changed my mind. Instead, I caught him under the arm pits and picked him off the floor, gave him a shake and threw him on top of the other guys.  My Bible bag was swinging from my neck. I quickly reached for my Bible and you would think I had a .45 in there.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see a woman sitting on a bench by the window with a guy on each side of her. They were messing around. She tried to cover up and lit into me in Cree.

“I used to believe you,” she shouted, “but I don’t believe you any more.”

“The only reason you don’t believe me is because I caught you in your sin! “ I snapped. “I’ll have you know I didn’t come here to snoop. I came because of those kids outside. They’re cold and hungry and they’ve been crying all day.”

A couple of men, a little more sober than the rest, went out and got the kids. Then they set the airtight heater up again and built another fire. I stayed about ten minutes, gave them a little sermon and went back home.

“Man, have I ever messed up today! “ I told Cathy as we sat at the kitchen table. “That was terrible! I really blew it!”

She agreed with me. That is one thing about her. I don’t ask her a question if I don’t want a straight answer.

But, a strange thing happened the next day, which was Sunday. Every one of those guys came to church and it was the first time for any of them. From then on they were friends of mine. After a few sessions like that I decided to quit playing town cop. Because I cared for the people I tried to break up fights, but I saw this wasn’t the way to go. The Lord showed me better ways to handle these situations.

* * *

When we served at Atikameg, we hadn’t been there long until we knew most of the white people in the area, especially those who were Christians. The Christian and Missionary Alliance had missionaries living farther north. They were Clarence and Ruth Jaycox. We had many good times of fellowship with them. Later George and Delores Dunn moved into Loon Lake, Alberta, just north of us, then the Pickerings. Clarence’s brother, Larry, and his wife, Bernice, also came to work in the area. It was always a delight to have these folks stop in for a meal or overnight on their way from or to their stations north of us. We made the occasional visit to Loon Lake and Peerless Lake to fellowship with the missionaries and believers there.

* * *

We had an interesting thing happen one summer when it rained so much that a long stretch of the regular road was under water. Those of us who lived beyond the flooded area had to resort to an old trail that cut through the bush and across the corner of the priest’s land.

I drove out to get the mail and when I came back the priest was standing in the middle of the road.  He cursed me up and down and backward and 197 forward, informing me that I wasn’t going through his property. (He didn’t like it that I was preaching to the people.)

“I was just travelling on the road here.” “I know what you were doing and I’m not having any more of ill No preacher is going to trespass on my land.”

Unknown to me one of the men from the village was walking through the bush and heard the whole thing. I presumed he would take the priest’s side.  Anyway, I couldn’t turn around so I had to back slowly out. I left my truck at Nahatchicks and waded home through the lake.

I’d been home about an hour when I looked down along the lake and saw this group of men coming with axes and shovels.

After my run-in with the priest I didn’t know what was going to happen. I thought maybe it was more trouble.

They seemed so mad I went to talk to them.

“What’s going on?”

“You want a road!” The spokesman said.

I thought he was making fun of me. “That’s O.K.

It’s no problem. “

“You want a road? We’ll make you a road!” I didn’t want any more trouble, especially when it was a situation that would clear up as soon as the water went down. So I said, “No, that’s O.K.” Henry had gone to the people on the reserve and told them what happened. A bunch of them went back with him to see their priest. Henry grabbed him by the collar. “How come we can’t use that road down there?”

“You can use the road. I just don’t want trucks using it.”

“We’ve been going through there a long time before you moved here.”

“It’s the trucks I don’t like.”

At the time I was the only one who had a truck.

“If Hill can’t go through there, we don’t go, either.” They were all set to rebuild the forestry road through the bush but I put them off. They came two or three days in a row insisting that they build the road, so we swamped an old trail to the forestry road. I sure appreciated the help of the natives.  Then another native man came and asked me to go with him. “I want you to see what the priest did.”

He showed me an eight strand barbed wire fence he had put across the road that wasn’t even being used. He was so afraid we were using it that he put barbed wire across it in two places. It wasn’t long after that he left Atikameg and a more congenial man took his place.

* * *

Another time, I was riding a saddle horse through a place called Cabbage Bay when two guys with shotguns jumped out of the reeds along the lake. They were duck hunting. It was about the time Vietnam was in the news so I said, “What is this, Vietnam?”

They started calling the place where these men lived Vietnam and it still goes by that name. The shacks the people lived in were miserable. You wouldn’t think anyone could survive the winter with such poor shelter. And behind nearly every house there was a pile of mash that had been thrown out after making home brew.

I got a tractor and started hauling logs and helping them build log houses. At the same time we were having services there. Once, in the middle of a service, a guy bolted through the door and shouted, “Joe’s coming with a knife!”

You’ve never seen such an exodus from a building. It was like a tornado swooped out of no where and blew everyone away. I turned to Cathy and the kids. “Our congregation’s gone. We’d just as well go home.”

We got in the car and drove down the trail toward the road. By that time we saw Joe weaving toward us. I stopped the car and turned to the kids.  “Lock the doors.”

Joe came up to me. “I could kill somebody,” he slurred, waving the knife at me.

“Yeah, that could happen,” I said. “And you might get hurt yourself, so you’d better put that knife away.”

“Nobody gain’ to touch me!”

About this time an old car pulled up in front of me and big Fred got out. He was as big as the moose that furnished the hide for his jacket. Freddie was a friend of mine who had come to me for help when he thought he had killed three guys.  They had cornered him on a dead-end road. All three bailed out of their car and started toward him.  He pulled out a tire iron and started wielding it, breaking their teeth off and smashing their heads.  At two o’clock that night he banged on our door, the tire iron with blood and hair all over it, still in his hand. “Come with me,” he said. “I think I killed three guys.”

By the time I got dressed a car roared past our place on the way to the High Prairie Hospital. One had lost fourteen teeth and had a cracked skull. The 200 other two were hurt almost as bad.

I know he came to me so I could testify that he had injured them in self defense. They didn’t report it but we became good friends after that.  When Freddie saw that we were being harassed by this guy with the knife, he came to help us. He threw his jacket to his girl friend and walked around the car. Joe winked at me and said, “Watch this! “ He started toward Freddie, brandishing his knife.  Fred took a step forward and caught him on the jaw with a short right. He thudded to the ground like a felled tree, right in front of my car. With that, Freddie went back to his car, pulled on his coat and backed out to a place where he could turn around.  Finally Joe got to his feet, still shaking his head, and picked up his knife. When he came back to the car I said, “Remember what I told you about getting yourself hurt!”

He put his knife away. We talked for a minute or two and he stumbled off into the woods.  A few years ago I was preaching at Key-Way-Tin Bible Institute at a conference, when a big burly Indian man was sitting near the front, a crutch by his side. I knew he looked familiar but I couldn’t figure out who he was or where I had seen him. On the way out of the building after the meeting he introduced himself as Fred.

“We used to have a guy by that name up our way.

Do you come from Gift Lake?”

“No, but I’ve been there.” Then he said, “Carroll Hill—we used to have a preacher by that name up our way.”

“That was me,” I told him and we renewed our friendship.

We’ve stopped at his place two or three times and he and his wife write to us occasionally.  We’re praying that he will soon receive Christ as 201 his Saviour. Nobody could ever say that being a missionary, especially in Atikameg, was dull and uneventful. Now, next to ‘Vietnam’ is a place called Jerusalem where some of the Christians have settled.

* * *

Today many natives are trained to fight forest fires, but when we were at Atikameg there were only a few. One year there was a bad fire at Panie Bay 160 miles north of us. There was only a trail in to the place and we had to have a bulldozer ahead of us making it passable.

The radiator on my truck was leaking and it caused us a lot of trouble going up to the Bay. On the way home I had to leave the truck with the Dunn’s who were Christian and Missionary Alliance missionaries at Loon Lake, and take an old Volkswagen without a starter. We had to push it to get the engine going.

I’d been away from home two days and was driving most of that time. I was so tired I could hardly think. Finally I stopped on a little bulldozer trail up a hill. I backed up on it, figuring I could let it roll to get it started. I shut off the motor and went to sleep leaning on the wheel.

The next thing I knew, I seemed to be dreaming. I had a funny sensation that I was moving. I heard, “chug, chug, chug” as though something was running out of gas. I remembered then that I was supposed to throw the switch so I could run on the other tank.  I reached down and turned the switch. As I did so I remembered that I was supposed to be sleeping. I looked up and realized I was right beside a pickup truck, trying to pass him on the dirt road. I had the accelerator down to the floor.

I suppose his going by jarred the car to wake me enough to get it rolling and the engine started. God had to have had His hand on me or I’d have smashed up the car and myself.

* * *

Like I said earlier, Dave Wiens and his family were living at Gift Lake. We had Vince at the time but when Roger was due to make his appearance, we almost didn’t make it to the hospital. Cathy woke me up that morning and told me she was starting labor.  I jumped out of bed. It wasn’t as though we had to drive across town to the hospital. We had-a long, hard sixty mile drive in the winter time. “How often are the pains?”

“About every five minutes.”

That scared me. “Let’s get out of here!” We started for Gift Lake. Dave had told me we could use their Chrysler car to go to town and volunteered to drive, so we drove to their place to trade vehicles.

By the time we got there the labor pains had stopped. “I guess we’ll go back home,” Cathy said.  “No way. We’re going into town.”

We did stay and have coffee with them before going on. (Dave drove us in case we had trouble.) We got her to the hospital at 12:30, she had dinner and at 1:30 Roger was born.

We were in town for a checkup the day Charlene was born and the doctor told us to stay in town that night. Cathy wasn’t going to stay in town unless she had to and she wasn’t going into the hospital until she was ready. In case you hadn’t guessed it, she has a will of her own.

We did stay in town that night and we had a street meeting. We were out there singing and she was having labor pains. She went over to the car and sat down but I didn’t know what was happening.

When I finished preaching she said, “I think I’ve got to go to the hospital pretty soon. But let’s go over to Losey’s first.” (Losey was the Baptist pastor 203 in High Prairie.)

We hadn’t been there long when the pains got so bad she couldn’t even stand up straight. We left the boys there and took off. We would have rushed to the hospital but I panicked and couldn’t remember where it was. And that was sort of funny.  I was on the hospital and couldn’t remember where it was. And that was sort of funny.  I was on the hospital board at the time. We finally found it and within half an hour Charlene was born.

* * *

Cathy and I had been living in the area three years when the chief came to see me. “You’ve been here three years, Hill,” he said. “And you’ve been preaching to us but we’ve never heard a word you said.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” I told him. “I’ve been talking to you quite a bit.”

He nodded. “I still say we’ve never heard anything you’ve said. We didn’t listen.” By this time I was curious to know what he was trying to tell me. “I can understand that, but what are you really saying?”

“We’ve seen some of the Hudson’s Bay men come in and run around with our women. The forestry guys and loggers came in and they ran around with our women. Other white men have done the same thing, so we figured you would do just like the rest and we paid no attention to what you were saying. But we watched you for the past three years and you’ve been different than the others. Now, when we hear you speak we understand. “

That hit me hard. It had taken three years for me to earn my credibility with them.  There was another thing that impressed me.

They treated Cathy with dignity and appreciation.  One of the white teachers in our school was 204 raped and there were other incidents that showed a lack of consideration and respect, but in all the years we were there, nothing ever happened to make Cathy fear what they might do. We still have many friends in those villages.  The Hudson’s Bay store in Atikameg was a training ground for new staff. Bill Powell from Hamilton, Ontario, was one of these new recruits.  He was 6 feet 4 inches tall and a real athletic type. But like so many others he was running away from society. He was told when he arrived at the Bay, “Don’t go over to the Hills’ place on the other side of the lake. They’ll preach to you all night.” I often spoke to him at the store not knowing about the warning.

One day I was going to High Prairie and he asked me if I would pick up some .22 magnum shells for him.

Well, forgot all about it and-apologized when I came back. He said, “At least you are honest.” Later when he saw himself getting messed up, Bill did come over to our place. I remember he had so many questions we were up until after two o’clock before he left. After he was gone I thought maybe we had given him too much, but he was back the next night with more questions. This time he stayed until around 3:00 a.m. It was around 2 o’clock that night that Bill said, “This is what I want.” He repented and gave his life to Christ. We all were excited.  We often laugh now about the warning he had received about us preaching to him all night. He told us later that when he became desperate for help, he knew where to come.

After that he came to our house regularly and I’ve seen few with his hunger for the Word and ability to retain what he learned. He became like a son to us and later went off to Bible school. He has pastored a few churches with Village Missions with his wife, Lorna and their two daughters, Kim and Krista. Bill is an avid hunter as well as an athlete and his sportsmanship has paid off in their youth work.

* * *

I said earlier that God knew I needed a strong helpmate, one who could take hardship and disappointment without complaining. I don’t know where I would be or what I could have accomplished without her.

When we first got married and had Vince, she had to wash our clothes on a scrub board. When he started school he was the only white kid in the school of ninety students. The other kids would learn to read a little English from the Dick and Jane books but when they came back to school the next fall they remembered very little of what they had learned the year before. The second year they hardly learned anything, but the third year they began to grasp a little of what was being taught.

Our kids all knew how to read before they started school. At first we were concerned that Vince wouldn’t learn in a school where the teacher had to keep going over the basics. But he learned enough to go on after high school and get a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Education degree. He’s teaching now, so he learned in spite of the difficulties forced upon him by the sort of school he went to.

I have to give Cathy a lot of credit for that. She worked with him at night no matter how tired she was, and she did the same with Roger and Charlene. It wasn’t just the kids she worked with, but we had a steady procession of company.

When we first moved to Atikameg, we lived in a skid shack that was roughly 12 by 16 feet. On one occasion, counting ourselves, there were thirteen of us there for the night, some of which slept in our log garage. They were under the table, on the table, and everywhere else anyone could lie down.  It wasn’t only her work with our home, our own family and the entertaining she had to do. There were the ladies’ meetings, as well. She used some Cree in teaching them the Bible and the fundamentals of housekeeping and caring for their children.

She did a lot of visitation with me. Then there were the times when I was away on the trapline and we were living 60 miles from town. She had to get in water and wood and take care of everything around the place alone.

Atikameg could be lonely and frightening. There was much drinking; at times wolves came near the settlement and you could hear the coyotes howling at night. The coyotes aren’t going to hurt anyone but they can give you an eerie feeling.

And the cold weather was tough. Frost formed on the nails inside the building and there was frost along the floor. Open the door and a big fog bank came in.  She would just get the place warm and someone else would come in.

We rigged up a power plant so we had power for an old washing machine, lights and that sort of thing, but when I was gone she had to carry water from the creek.

I’ve heard some criticism of missionaries for the work their wives are forced to do, but most of those I know try every way possible to lighten the load on their wives. But if I were going to do the work God called us to, I had to leave Cathy and the kids and go out on the traplines for days at a time.  It isn’t only the hard work that is difficult for our wives.  It’s the uncertainty; the concern over what may happen.  The North, particularly in the winter, is an unforgiving place. Make a wrong step on a trail and you may cause an injury. Let a blizzard come up when you re moving from one trapline to another and you can be lost or frozen to death. Travel by plane and you can be weathered in, or forced to crash-land on a remote lake or section of woods. It may be a day, a week or even two weeks before word gets back to the wife and kids at home.  Concern for her children and husband is one of the most difficult things a missionary wife has to face. Cathy and our kids had to go through it, too.  To that, Cathy would add trying to take care of a home and family, without electricity, indoor 207 plumbing and a telephone. She also talks of the hardship brought on by the lack of Christian fellowship and the loneliness.

“I was often lonely in the evenings, even when Carroll was home,” she said. “With Randy, our Indian boy, we had four kids. Carroll would often be playing with them outside. He teased Charlene and rough-housed with the boys, throwing them in the snow and that sort of thing. It was most important that he spend time with them, but it added to my loneliness.

“I missed my Christian friends and family back home terribly, and lacked having another woman I could share my problems and burdens with. I don’t know whether a man would understand how much that means to us.

“I tried to overcome it with making myself busy. I love crafts, knitting and sewing. I was happy to have a loving husband and family and to know we were serving the Lord, but it was difficult, too.”

* *

I Can Trust God

When I think of all the ways You’ve led me,
And in all the pleasant pastures You have fed me,
It makes me wonder why I cannot see
That You can keep and guide and lead for all eternity.

If You can save my soul from Hell,
And in the hour of trial say, “All is well,”
I can surely cast my care on You,
And know for sure that You will see me through.

Our wedding day, June 3, 1961. Cathy's Mom is standing beside Cathy.	Sitting by the fire with a yound boy at our first station, Sandy Lake, Saskatchewan.

The house we built at Atikameg, Alberta.