ly days of
July, 1916.

The hotel was full of the wives of the officers stationed in the Camp.
During the daytime I was the only man among the guests. About five
o'clock in the afternoon the officers from the Camp began to arrive on a
primitive motor ferryboat. My son came over each day, and we often
visited him at the Camp. His long training at Kingston had been very
severe. It included besides the various classes which he attended a
great deal of hard exercise, long rides or foot marches over frozen
roads before breakfast, and so forth. After this strenuous winter the
Camp at Petewawa was a delightful change. His tent stood on a bluff,
commanding an exquisite view of the broad stretch of water, diversified
by many small islands. We had a great deal of swimming in the lake, and
several motor-boat excursions to its beautiful upper reaches. One
afternoon when we went over in our launch to meet him at the Camp wharf,
he told us that that day a General had come from Ottawa to ask for
twenty-five picked officers to supply the casualties among the Canadian
Field Artillery at the front. He had immediately volunteered and been
accepted.

At this time my two younger sons, who had joined us at Petewawa in order
to see their brother, enrolled themselves in the Royal Naval Motor
Patrol Service, and had to return to Nelson, British Columbia, to settle
their affairs. Near Nelson, on the Kootenay Lake, we have a large fruit
ranch, managed by my second son, Reginald. My youngest son, Eric, was
with a law-firm in Nelson, and had just passed his final examinations as
solicitor and barrister.

This ranch had played a great part in our lives. The scenery is among
the finest in British Columbia. We usually spent our summers there,
finding not only continual interest in the development of our orchards,
but a great deal of pleasure in riding, swimming, and boating. We had
often talked of building a modern house there, but had never done so.
The original "little shack" was the work of Reginald's own hands, in the
days when most of the ranch was primeval forest. It had been added to,
but was still of the simplest description. One reason why we had not
built a modern house was that this "little shack" had become much
endeared to us by association and memory. We were all together there
more than once, and Coningsby had written a great deal there. We built
later on a sort of summer library--a big room on the edge of a beautiful
ravine--to whi