I lived in Oyama from the spring of 1958 to March of 1960. We arrived from North Vancouver when I was 10. My father was a major in the reserves of the Canadian Army and employed during the summer months at the Vernon Army Cadet Camp. He fell in love with the Okanagan and found a property with a house and an orchard on Kalamalka Lake that was available to rent for $50.00 a month for the summer. We moved into the house on the 9-acre property now known as the beautiful Kaloya Park.
It had been owned by a chiropractor named Schilling, and his wife. It was up for rent because the doctor had committed suicide in the garage. My mother reluctantly shared this information, one hot afternoon at the end of one summer on the property. We had been sorting apples in this same garage, where we had taken refuge from the heat.
Apparently, the property was up for sale. My father, (F.H.C. Oram), quickly put together a deal with two other contacts from Vancouver – a Mr. Smith and a Lieutenant-Colonel Harry Minshall, and became a one third new owner of the property. I have a clear recollection of my father at this point starting to refer to this property as Kaloya.
The arrangement was that he, (Harold Oram), would be able to live rent free on the property in exchange for running the orchard. He was also able to keep any profits from the sale of the fruit.
In the early part of 1959, the Bing cherry trees on the top part of the acreage had been completely covered in blossoms and it was shaping up to be a bumper crop for cherries. However a late frost had been forecast and my father began to worry. We stayed up late well into the night, setting small fires among the trees in the orchard to get the air moving, but it was simply not enough. The entire crop of cherries was lost.
During the summer that followed, I used to wear a pair of white running shoes to protect my feet from the small rocks on the bottom of Kalamalka Lake, whenever I went into the water to swim. Then I would wear the same wet sneakers and run around the property in the heat for the rest of the day. By the end of the summer, I had developed a roaring case of athletes’ foot.
Money was tight for my family at this particular time, since my father had also by now gotten out of the army and having worked as an engineer in India, was trying to start his own water drilling business.
In those days, one had to pay to see a doctor, but in September, my father took me to see the only physician in the area – Dr. Dobson. Dr. Dobson lived in Winfield and ran her practice out of a small office off the back of her house. We were greeted brusquely at the door by Dr. Dobson and issued into her kitchen. Here she made us wait, while she quickly sorted out some problem her small child was having. We continued on through the house to the office where I was instructed to take off my socks. She examined my feet and inquired: how long my feet had been like this? “Oh, a couple of weeks, “my father replied., “Two weeks? This?? I don’t think so!” she exclaimed in her Scottish brogue. She then handed me a tube of cream for my toes and a can of powder for my socks. “That will be 10 dollars,” she said to my dad. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Can I pay you later?” She shrugged and said,” Come back in a month,” and then issued us out of the office.
Two weeks later, my feet had finally stopped itching and a week after that, they had healed up completely.
We didn’t go back in a month.
It was January of 1960, and I was staying overnight at the house of my friend, Brenda Thomson. My mother, Enid, phoned and asked her mother, Dot, to please tell Jill that my father had had a small heart attack, but that everything was okay and not to worry; the doctor, (Dr. Dobson), had been and gone and Daddy was doing fine.
Harold, my 54-year-old father seemed indeed, by all accounts to be recovering nicely. Dr. Dobson had booked him in for an ECG two weeks later in Kelowna.
One week later, I was awakened about 10 o’clock at night, by lights coming on and a commotion in my parents’ bedroom. “Come and sit with him while I call the doctor,” my mother said, coming into my bedroom. Years later she told me that she had phoned Dr. Dobson and that the doctor had wanted to be sure that my mum had $10 before she would come out.
Apparently, my mother must have come up with the money, because Dr. Dobson showed up, called an ambulance and my father was taken to Vernon Jubilee Hospital – where he subsequently passed away in the early hours of the next morning – Feb. 2, 1960. I had been taken home with the Thomsons just after the ambulance left.
That was the last night I ever slept in our house on Kaloya.
My mother and I stayed for a few weeks with the Butterworths, who lived a few orchards down Trask Road, until friends from Vancouver found a place for my mother to rent and then she and I moved to Vernon.
Our share of the property was sold.
We stayed in Vernon for two years and then moved back to Vancouver.
The time I had spent in Oyama was short, but happy.
Jill Mary Anne Wright. (Nee Oram)
Jill in front of the side veranda of the Trask House on Kaloya Point.
(Photo taken by Miss Mary Barr, who was visiting from Vancouver; summer of 1959.)