Calvin Reeves McCaull was born November 25, 1889 in Ellerslie, Prince Edward Island. Bound for adventure, Mac arrived in the valley in 1911 at the age of 22. A few years later, he met and courted Janet Lavina Soles and they were married in 1920.

Janet Lavina was born in 1901 after her family arrived in Golden from Ontario in 1899. Her father Richard was brother to Andrew Soles and her mother, Elizabeth Storie, was sister to Andrew’s wife, Janet (see Soles.)

Edie Johnson (nee McCaull) is holding

a family snapshot of her parents cuttingthe cake on their 35th wedding anniversary in 1955. Janet and Mac raised eight children on the homestead in Parson.

In later years, Edie remembers her mother wondering how everyone survived the ordeals of raising a family 24 miles from the closest doctor, cold winters, deep snow and just enough money to get by on. Water carried from the stream, no phones, no electricity until 1955, and mail once a week was the standard. The farm provided milk,

butter, chickens, turkeys, mutton, lamb, beef, vegetables and wool for quilts. The kindness of neighbours helped lift a family through the hard times.

It’s possible that William Wenman took this photo of the paddle wheeler Isabel moored just north of the Columbia River Lumber dock on the Columbia River circa 1920. Moberly Mountain rises in the background. As a young girl, Janet (Soles) McCaull watched the steamer boats paddle past her home in Parson down the river to Golden.