Something Missing

Enderbush lies about seventy miles to the east of Kemloops. In 1952 there are around 5,000 people in this little river bottom community, built where the Salmon Creek flows into Shoeswich Lake. Jack first sees the town in late evening, coming down the Ply Hills on the gravel Trans Canada Highway. Mr Frank, the Thompson riverbank friend from Kemloops who is driving, says enthusiastically, "Look, Vick. Isn't that a pretty sight? See all the lights on the bottom slopes of Mt Ika there?"

"Yes, it's like a fairy tale!"

And a pretty town it is. The approach from the east gives even more of a post card view. The drop is steeper, and the whole valley is visible below, with the river meandering between dairy farms and fruit orchards to the left, curving away up around the conifer covered flank of the reputedly volcanic mountain, Mt Ika. To the right the intensely blue five fingered Shoeswich Lake with a thousand mile shoreline; and right in the town McGuiche Lake, lit up at night with a brightly shining rainbow colored water fountain, a little jewel of a landlocked lake with big goldfish, lining the manicured park like hospital grounds.

It is said McGuiche Lake is connected way deep down with Shoeswich Lake, but Jack finds that difficult to believe, since the water level in the small one is at least thirty feet higher than that of Shoeswich Lake, only about a hundred yards away, and the shore of the larger lake slopes so slowly and gradually into the water that the maximum depth for hundreds of feet can be no more than the height of a man.