George was his usual restless self as I tried to read from Andy Russell’s book. As usual, he was busy with activity, a habit that inevitably rubbed off on any companion who happened to be within range. I asked him if I could read aloud from a few passages that had caught my interest, and this gave George a reason to sit down for a few moments. It also created an opportunity to broach my book idea. Knowing how much he disliked self-aggrandizement, I voiced the notion with much trepidation. His first reaction was surprise rather than dismissal.
Sensing the opening, I pushed on with my thoughts about a book that would inspire others to discover and to experience the mountain backcountry as he had. To my surprise, George was warm to the idea, perhaps in part because of his connection to Norman Willmore. An address that Willmore gave to the Edson community in February 1955, a few months before he became Alberta’s minister of lands and forests, suggests the range of influence he might have had on the young Evanoff.6 Like Willmore, in his later years George was an entrepreneur and a mentor, who was involved in public land use planning and demonstrated great environmental sensitivity. While he was hiking in the Willmore Wilderness in 1997, a year before his death, George Evanoff had again remarked on his connection with Norman Willmore, and the impact that Willmore had on his life as a young man. George was sensitive to the effect that he, in turn, was now having on others.
It was beginning to snow as we started to ski out at first light on Monday morning. I had a sudden feeling of melancholy as I stood waiting in the meadow below the lodge watching George close the last shutters and install the porcupine defences on the doorstep to stop them from chewing the structure. I had watched him do this many times, but on this day I felt an inexplicable wave of sadness as if I was watching him close up the cabin for the last time. I wondered again where that emotion had come from. The feeling passed as we set out. George travelled on foot, deciding to leave his skis at the lodge with the intention of retrieving them during the first fly-in trip he planned to do in a few weeks time. He had unknowingly hung up his skis for the last time.
I climbed ahead of him, enjoying the advantage of skis at this stage of our journey. Later, the tables would be turned when we left the snow behind and I had to carry my skis. By the time we reached the summit, we were caught in an easterly blizzard and whiteout. The mountains were behaving predictably for departure time. My eyeglasses iced up and rendered me nearly blind. With hood up and head down, I followed the shadowy form of the sixty-six-year-old man, secure in his presence as he led us back to the green- and gold-coloured world below, where it wasn’t quite winter yet.
My first encounter with George Evanoff in early 1979 had begun a long association that was fun, often physically demanding, and always rewarding. Nearly twenty years later, during the Thanksgiving weekend of 1998, we talked in his mountain lodge and the seed that became this book was planted. To appreciate the real origins of his story, however, we must traverse half a world, and nearly a century back in time, to the Balkan state of Macedonia in the early twentieth century, and to rural Alberta of the 1920s and 1930s.
Early Years and Rural Alberta 1932-45
Chapter 2
George Evanoff was born in Edson, Alberta, in 1932, the second child and first son of Elia and Mita Evanoff, immigrants from the village of Capari in the southern Balkan state of Macedonia, just north of the border with Greece. Elia and Mita’s first child, Luba, better known as Luby, had been born some six years earlier in Macedonia. George and his younger siblings, John and Mary, were born in Canada. George Evanoff’s father, Elia, westernized his first name to Louis after he arrived in Canada. I will refer to him by his Canadian name, except for references to his early years in Macedonia. He was born around 1900.
The Evanoff lineage in Canada began with George’s uncle, Vasil Evanoff, father of George’s cousin, Bob, who played a key role in George Evanoff’s early life. I met Bob Evanoff and his wife, Liz, at their home in Vernon, British Columbia, in June 2000. Bob, who was born in Canada in August 1927, confirmed that his father was the first member of the Evanoff family to come to North America from Macedonia. Vasil, whose first name was sometimes westernized to William or Bill, was also born in Capari, a small mountain village just three kilometres north of Pelister National Park and only six kilometres north of 2,601-metre Mount Pelister. The outdoors and the mountains had apparently been in the Evanoff blood long before their move to Canada. Vasil and Elia’s parents owned a small flour mill in Capari, the millstone of which was still lying on the property when George Evanoff and his wife Lillian visited in 1997.
After making the crucial decision to come to Canada, Vasil Evanoff caught the first ship he could find that was heading for North America. He was seventeen years old when he left Macedonia and landed on the Gulf Coast in Galveston, Texas. There he worked cutting railway ties from walnut and oak, before making his way to Quebec. Bob Evanoff told me that his father drifted up to Canada, picking up work along the way.
From Quebec, Vasil drifted west, meeting Bob’s mother, Rosie Stephan Chanasick, in Vegreville, Alberta. Rosie was born in Austria. After they met, Vasil and Rosie moved a little farther west to Edmonton, where Vasil did well with a series of businesses, including barbering. According to his son, Vasil had a kind of gold-rush fever in him, so when he heard coal mining was taking place southwest of Edson, a small railway town midway between Edmonton and Jasper, he moved west again. The couple relocated to Bickerdike, a tiny branch-line community west of Edson. Perhaps Vasil was drawn closer to the mountains, as the environment was similar to the one he had grown up in.1 Rosie Evanoff was upset at leaving Edmonton as they had been doing well there, especially because after the move Vasil was lucky to get one day a week of steady work, and had to do odd jobs such as shoeing horses. There were benefits to living near Edson, though, especially the abundance of wild game for meat.
In 1926, Vasil wrote to his brother, Elia, in Macedonia. Bob felt that his dad was lonely for the family connections of his childhood, and especially missed his brother. Vasil also had two sisters in Macedonia that he sent money to. According to Bob, they seemed reluctant to leave their homes, so Vasil decided to scrape together enough money to send for his brother, a feat that was tough to accomplish in the 1920s. Although he was already married with a child on the way, Elia was motivated to come to Canada because life in Macedonia was difficult, and rumours were drifting out that Canada was giving away land. The opportunity to own land was something that few could aspire to in Macedonia and many chose to immigrate to Canada.
George Evanoff’s parents, Elia and Mita, with family and friends at their wedding in Macedonia circa 1925.
Elia came right away, leaving behind his new wife, Mita (Kotevski) Evanoff, who was pregnant with their first child. Nearly six years passed before the young couple was reunited, and before Elia, who now called himself Louis saw his then five-year-old daughter, Luba. These were (and sometimes still are) the circumstances that people endured for the opportunity to immigrate to Canada.
The mainstay of supporting the family in west-central Alberta in the 1930s was the railway. Many men performed manual