Book Review

By Derryll White

Hess, Hugo  (2020).  Hugo’s Memories – A Life Well Lived.

Hugo Hess has done what so many talk about, and then put aside.  He has written the story of his life and published it.

Born November 15, 1929, this is a long story, beginning in Romania and ending in Cranbrook. Hugo’s family immigrated to Canada, “the land of milk and honey,” in 1930.  Sponsored by the Lutheran church the Hess family arrived in Wynndel, seven miles from Creston near Kootenay Lake.

This is a book of memories, and special for that fact.  Hugo tells the reader about how little boys entertained themselves in the late 1930s while the parents were away all day working for the betterment of the family.  And with those circumstances comes freedom that most kids do not enjoy today – playing while risking drowning, hitching rides on logging trucks – freedoms now lost to expanding population and social pressures, tighter control of young people and growing parental fears.  Hugo’s stories speak of a time I also remember, a time slipped away.

Many of Hugo’s stories centre around work and how to grow and achieve some financial success.  He shares insights on the region’s early construction and logging industry. It speaks to the nature of the man to read about his focus to secure eventual success as a heavy-duty mechanic.

This volume could use some editing but it is a very worthwhile read for anyone who has grown up or lives in East Kootenay.  Really, it is a touching story of how immigrants built so much of Canada.

Keith Powell and Wild Horse Creek Press are doing a great service to the region by making volumes such as ‘Hugo’s Memories’ and Colin Cartright’s ‘A Trail That Heeds Riding’ available to readers.

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Excerpts from the book:

BEGINNINGS – …we moved to a three-room house just up the hill from the [Dutch] creek that had a kitchen and two bedrooms.  We had a cook stove which was also used to heat the rest of the house, table and chairs and a coal oil lamp for light.  We put our shoes beside the kitchen door and hung all our coats on nails on both sides of the door.  We were able to dry them all out with heat from the stove.  This did clutter up the kitchen but it worked.

WORK – Arnie’s favorite story was how he got a job with the CPR.  One of Arnie’s summer jobs was working for Joe Fiorentino in his butcher shop in Wynndel and Arnie would tell him about what he would like to do.  Joe went back to Cranbrook on weekends and one day he told Arnie that if he wanted to come back with him he could work for Crystal Dairies driving a delivery truck to take the produce to stores.

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

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