Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

KAHBAMUIE/COLVILLE LAKE
Fifty years ago, a tiny, simple log church was built in Colville Lake. The church, and its founder, then became the heart of a community.

Bern Will Brown, now 92, founder of Our Lady of Snows Mission, sits at his kitchen table during the winter of 2008. - NNSL file photo

Building Our Lady of the Snows church began on Aug. 15, 1962. The little church was aptly named.

“We got hit by a snow storm the end of August, which slowed the building project down quite a bit. We were living in a tent,” said Bern Will Brown, former Oblate priest and founder of Our Lady of the Snows Church.

“It was a little bit rough to begin with, but once we moved into the mission itself on Oct. 10, we were all set. We were safe from the elements.”

As soon as the first logs were put into place, people started arriving.

“When we got in here, there was just one family staying here in a tent all year round,” Brown said. “Once we started building here, it attracted others, mainly from Fort Good Hope. That fall there was one group of 35 that walked out here, took them a week.”

The church also served as a doctor and dentist’s office, with Brown filling the role of each profession. Brown, who is originally from Rochester, New York, had been a priest in the North since the late 1940s.

Colville Lake's beginnings were unexpected during an era when NWT policy was discouraging the establishment of new settlements. However, in 1965, Brown demonstrated his power as a diplomat when he met with the aid to NWT Commissioner Ben Sivertz, Stuart Hodgson, who would later be appointed commissioner of the NWT in 1967.

In a letter to News/North, Brown tells how he met with the commissioner's officer while serving as Commodore of the NWT Centennial Voyageur Canoe Team and after months worth of paddling from the fledgling Sahtu community to Kingston, Ont. He returned home with a $50,000 commitment from the government to build an airstrip, officially legitimizing Colville Lake as a new NWT community.

“During the first years that we got going here, I had to fill in for a lot of different jobs,” he said. “I assumed the duties of a medic here. I did some dentistry too, extractions.”

It was also the community meeting place and, on Saturday nights, a movie theatre.

Brown had managed to get his hands on a projector and every summer, a boatload of films from United Artists in Calgary would arrive.

“They’d send them by boat in the summer and I’d exchange them the next year for a new batch,” he said.

Comedies and westerns were community favourites.

“Some of the favourites were Tarzan the Ape Man, the Three Stooges, John Wayne and westerns,” Brown said. “They liked action pictures.”

The church was also the home for drum dance ceremonies and treaty discussions.

“Because it had the largest room in town, it became a centre for any activity that involved a bunch of people together,” Brown said.

Brown also started Colville Lake’s first store, the Kapami Co-Op, founded the Colville Lake Lodge and acted as the community’s bylaw and forestry officer.

He also became the mailman. In 1970, he bought a plane in Toronto and flew it back to Colville Lake where he started a weekly mail run.

“I went down there and flew it back here and then I started flying into Fort Good Hope weekly to pick up our mail and I did that for 10 years,” he said.

“I got another plane following that and I kept flying until I was 85 and then I quit.”

Though he said he was certainly a jack-of-all-trades, Brown said he was first and foremost a priest.

“My main occupation here was the spiritual,” he said. “We had services every day.”

Though he left the priesthood in the early 70s and married, Brown still performed church services. He said building our Lady of the Snows meant people who had moved to nearby settlements could return home.

“It attracted a lot of those that had been out in that area trapping and hunting, but who had moved into Fort Good Hope,” he said. “Once they heard we had put up a mission here, they moved back.”

The area that was once home to only one family now boasts 150, Brown added.

“It’s been growing every since,” he said. “We have 150 people here.”

Special visitors

Colville Lake’s traditional lifestyle and log buildings attracted some high-profile visitors to the community, Brown said.

“Every building put up here was done with logs, so it was unique in the fact that it was the only all log settlement in the NWT,” he said.

Prince Charles and Pierre Trudeau both paid visits to the community.

“They were here overnight, ate with us and everything,” Brown said.

Prince Charles made a particular impression on him, he said.

“Oh, I enjoyed him very much, he was interested in everything,” he said.

Later this month, the community will host more visitors to celebrate the church’s 50th anniversary. Bishop Murray Chatlain, bishop of the diocese of Mackenzie-Fort Smith, will perform a mass on Aug. 15. Other activities will take place as well.

Now 92 years old, Brown said he has seen a lot of changes since his three-week canoe journey into Colville Lake 50 years ago.

Some of those include the arrival of electricity, a school, a health centre complete with an outdoor basketball court and soon, a new $12 million airport.

“Those changes are remarkable,” he said.

Even so, Brown said he is glad some things haven’t changed.

“Once you get outside of the village a few miles, the country is the same as when I arrived.”

Brown said he has great faith Colville Lake will continue to flourish.

“Now that we have that number of people here, I feel confident this community will persevere and become permanent.”

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.