That was a while ago.

I was asked by one of the utilities here in British Columbia to take a few photos of some of their properties. I made a fairly large loop (about 600km) and ended up driving down the Fraser Canyon on my homeward leg.

My grandparents lived in Salmon Arm, BC and we would regularly drive the 7 hours and visit them. Before 1986 when they built a new highway, the only reasonable way up was the road beside the Fraser River. Several times a year we would all pile into our car (1977 Chevrolet Impala – quite the machine) and we would make the trek. Once, and only once as I recall, we stopped here for breakfast, as my dad always wanted to get on the road early. It was a Smitty’s Pancake House in Yale, BC.

In the first decade of my life I probably traveled this road 30 times. In the following three decades I have been up it three times, as I recall. Wait. Maybe four times. Regardless, it has been a while.

Things have changed, obviously. This location has, sadly, closed and the town which always felt somewhat bustling is now very quiet. The food here was really not very good, and I expect that there were a number of factors that involved the closing, but ‘great food, I’ll miss it’ was probably not something that people said much of.

That said, though, I remember being here once, probably when I was about 8 years old. And I remember it like it was yesterday, almost 40 years later. Even bad meals can do that to you.