Magical Memories by David Cartwright
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MAGICAL MEMORIES 3 This is a section from a project we did for David Cartwright. His family asked us to capture stories all about early years, adventures, and passions. They choose the Anthology 4-interview format and their project came out to 176 pages. We spoke to David about his early years growing up in Chile, his adventures in Patagonia, his move to Canada, his career and business, his creative passions, and more. We especially loved the story about being one of the first people to see China’s terracotta soliders.
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CONTENTS p 7 p 35 p 53 p 71 p 93 p 105 p 113 p 129 p 147 p 153 p 169 Growing Up in Chile Going Out on My Own My Family Family Memories Life One – Professional Life Two – Real Estate Investments Life Three – Artistic Endeavours Retirement Years Career Reflections Reflection Questions Rapid Fire Questions MAGICAL MEMORIES 5
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MAGICAL MEMORIES 7 1 Growing Up in Chile
David, age 10
MAGICAL MEMORIES 9 Growing Up In Chile Spanish was the language that I spoke for the first 26 years of my life. I spent a lot of my time either at school in the capital, Santiago, or in a country home that my grandparents had purchased when they moved to Chile in the 1850s, both maternal and paternal. And it was up on the hills above Valparaiso, the port. It was a magical place. In 1891, there was a revolution in Chile, the army against the navy (there was no air force in those days), and the second battle was fought on our property. The trenches are still there, and there’s a museum in the capital, in Santiago, where my family donated everything that they picked up after the battle - after the confrontation there - including clothing, firearms, and all kinds of things like that. This museum is called the Compton Museum. In the country home that we had in the countryside there, we had dogs. So I grew up with dogs, two, three, four, even five dogs at a time. And we would go out hunting rabbits and for long walks. It was a very enjoyable family outing time. The property was planted with eucalyptus trees to use as firewood. So I grew up in an environment where we were continuously cutting down trees and cutting them up into firewood and bailing them into round bales of firewood, trucking them down into the city for sailor’s firewood. Because in those days, of course, they didn’t have gas. And they used a lot of firewood to cook with. And, obviously, it was a Latin culture. The principles that I grew up with, including the language, which, of course, was Latin-American, included the dealings with workers and with servants. So it was quite an environment there.
1 0 CHPT1: GROWING UP IN CHILE My Family In terms of my family life, I never met my two grandfathers; they passed away before I was born, in fact. My paternal grandmother lived in the capital in Santiago, so I saw a fair amount of her. My maternal grandmother lived in the far south, and I really didn’t see very much of her. We called my paternal grandmother ‘Granny.’ She had been married to a banker. She lived in an apartment within walking distance, about four or five blocks away from where my family lived in Santiago, so we’d meet up quite often. When my father got a job in Valparaiso and moved there, he and my mother moved to the country home we had on the outskirts of Valparaiso. So I went to live with Granny, and that was a bit of a change because she lived in an apartment and I was used to living in a house, a spacious house, but I got to know her quite well and continued going to the same school. It all worked out well. She had a very structured way of life. We always sat down for breakfast together, for lunch together, for tea. Tea was always very enjoyable because she’d quite often go and buy special pastries and things like that. So she treated us very, very well. My brother and I lived there with her. Family picture at the Plascilla pool. Alice, Krelin, and my brothers and sisters
MAGICAL MEMORIES 1 1 My Parents Mom was born in Valparaiso, the coastal city. She spent a lot of time in a country home that we had up in the hills of Valparaiso, and in Santiago. She met my father, and they married. They went on a honeymoon up to Machu Picchu, which in those days, of course, was not really well known, Machu Picchu up in Bolivia. They went travelling up there and came back. She was a very, very friendly person; very likeable. She had many, many friends. And she got on incredibly well with all levels of income groups in Chile, including the workers in the countryside and the servants. So it was a very calm, enjoyable life that she established for the five of us; my two brothers, two sisters, and myself. I had a falling out with my father at an early age and that was the end of my relationship with him. When I had the opportunity, I decided not to immediately start working, as he was suggesting. Instead, I went to university in Chile and got my university degree. And then I won a competition to represent Chile at a conference in Vancouver and came up to Canada. And then UBC invited me to come back and take graduate work at UBC. And I did that. That’s when I knew I was leaving Chile and was not going to return.
Alice in chair
Krelin in chair
1 4 CHPT1: GROWING UP IN CHILE My Siblings I have a sister, Andy, another sister, Sue, and Martin and Ben are my brothers. We grew up together and got on very well. We used to play all kinds of games in the country home. It was a very big house, so we were encouraged to invite friends to come and stay there for a week or a bit longer. We’d play games out in the field, out in the fields in the forest area: hide and seek, and ‘Beckons Wanted.’ It was just a very, very enjoyable interaction with all of us. Mind you, it took some time for the younger two to become involved because they couldn’t keep up with the older three. We’d play soccer, catch, hide and seek, Beckons Wanted. Those are the main games we’d play. Krelin and his children
My father, Krelin, and my brothers Martin, Ben and myself
1 6 CHPT1: GROWING UP IN CHILE Country House It was a very, very secluded, protected place. There was a big swimming pool there. At that time, it was about 2000 acres of land. Eventually, it was all split into smaller parcels as the family members inherited it, and some sold and moved on to other things. There was a big, big house, which is a heritage house today. It was a place where I’d go and walk into the forest and feel totally free. I would go exploring the hills and the valleys and see what I could find. It was really quite amazing. There were three other families living on the land there; these were the families of workers that were employed by my grandparents. When they moved off the land, then it suddenly became a very secluded, protected place to be. And, as I mentioned, there was a revolution in Chile in 1891, and the second battle confrontation was fought there. So I was always looking for bullets and artifacts that were there. It was a place where I’d go and walk into the forest and feel totally free. I would go exploring the hills and the valleys and see what I could find. It was really quite amazing.
My childhood home, Placilla
The swimming pool at Placilla
MAGICAL MEMORIES 2 1 I found rifles, bullets, grenades. I still have one, a bullet, that I found in a pool of water, deep down, when a dry period came along, and the river stopped flowing. I went into the pond that was there and excavated down through the mud and found things like that that had been washed into that pool. So it was really quite interesting. I never did find something that could explode. I guess the bullet might have, but it was from 1891. The grenade was the outer partial shell. The grenade was one of my best finds—I think that was quite rare. On Fridays after school, we’d drive the two- or three-hour drive to the country home and then come back Sunday evening. So I spent holiday time and weekends there. It was quite magical because it was such a lovely, lovely home. The grenade was one of my best finds—I think that was quite rare.
2 2 CHPT1: GROWING UP IN CHILE Boyhood Adventures In Chile, my early adventures in the countryside included trapping rabbits with wire traps. And the reason that I trapped these rabbits was really quite simple. When I caught one, I’d skin it, clean it up, and then march into the little village there, up to Auntie Betty’s home, and give it to her. Auntie Betty was an older person. She was single; her husband died a long time before. The next day, she would turn up at our house in the countryside with a chocolate cake. So that was my exchange: a rabbit for chocolate cake. It was very good. The hunting that I did was using a BB gun; I used a pellet gun for catching birds that I’d take into the kitchen and clean, and then they’d cook it up for me. And with a .22 rifle, I’d hunt rabbits. And the same thing: I’d exchange them for chocolate cake or eat them. So that was my exchange: a rabbit for chocolate cake. The fishing there was in lagoons, freshwater lagoons, and I used to go down and hike into some of these lagoons and go fishing; it was just mindboggling and very, very lovely. And sometimes I’d come back with 50-60 fish. And then horseback riding. I learned to horseback ride at a farm close by where they had horses. We’d go down and saddle them up, and off we would go galloping into the fields and around into the countryside. It was just quite unique, quite lovely.
MAGICAL MEMORIES 2 3 Dogs We had five dogs at one time, four big ones and one smaller female dog, by the name of Princesa – Princess. She was a little dog that belonged to one of the workers. When he couldn’t keep her any longer, he offered her to us, and we took over. We took her over and set her up with the other four dogs that we had. She became my favourite dog. She was just a very, very likable, little, friendly dog. Very good. My family had an enclosed vegetable garden in the country residence that was very large. It was enclosed by a wire mesh fence that was quite tall. Two entrances only. And, of course, rabbits knew that this was a vegetable garden, and some dug under the wire fence and began to have a nightly feast, much to Mum’s annoyance. The first time that we got one of the dogs into the vegetable garden and showed it where the rabbit was hiding, it immediately went after it. The rabbit ran away and dived into a culvert that had a tube in it to carry the rain water away. I blocked one end of the tube immediately. I then got a thick cloth and a long pole. The cloth went into the tube and blocked that end. I then went to the other end and with another cloth I got it down to where the rabbit had been pushed up against the blocking cloth. It was now easy to get my hand on the rabbit. Other times I would take Princesa into the patch and catch one or two rabbits. Those were the ones that I would skin, clean up, and take down into the village to Auntie Betty and exchange for chocolate cake. Such was the daily life in Placilla. Placilla dogs
2 4 CHPT1: GROWING UP IN CHILE Hunting When hunting for waterfowl it was quite often not possible to shoot the fowl sitting in water on lagoons or lakes. Once dead they floated on the surface and I was not going to swim out to get them given the very cold temperature of the water. So, I decided to train a dog to do this work for me. It began with a small stick that I would throw into the water not far from shore. I instructed the dog to fetch it. Upon him bringing it to me I gave him a snack that I had brought for this purpose. I then would throw a dead bird into the water. He would fetch that. And then it was all downhill once I showed him where the duck or goose that I had just shot was floating in the water. It was a very successful undertaking. In my teenage years I loved fishing, hunting and adventurings
MAGICAL MEMORIES 2 5 Fishing I would go off on horseback into very isolated areas that are only accessible by walking in or going on horseback. I would go down to the streams, and every six casts, I’d catch a fish: trout or rainbow trout or brown trout. So it was just incredible what was there. The trout had been introduced into Chile by early settlers, and it didn’t have any natural attackers or anything like that, so it just developed incredibly. I remember once going down to a large river, and I went down to where it flowed into the ocean, and I was casting there, and suddenly, the spoon hooked up on a log or something underwater. I started trying to pull it in, and little by little, it started coming in. When it came within about eight metres of where I was standing beside the water, I suddenly saw it wasn’t a log, it was a fish—and this fish was four or five feet long. It was a big fish! I jerked the fishing rod when I saw this fish, and when I did that the big one let go of the small one, which I had hooked. I had hooked a small rainbow trout while this big fish was trying to eat it. So I quickly threw the rainbow trout back into the water, still hooked on the spoon, and the big one grabbed it again. This time, I quietly pulled it closer and closer and closer. Then I marched into the water in my boots, and when it came over my feet, I kicked it out onto the shore, and I put a stick through its gills. With a friend, we marched back to the farmhouse, which was about a kilometre away, with the end of the sticks on our belts and the tail of the fish dragging on the ground. It was quite an event. I gave the fish to Auntie Ruby and she, in turn, gave it to the workers to eat down in the eating area in the housing site, so it was pretty good—and I got more chocolate cake. It was a magical growing-up period of my life, just incredible. Absolutely amazing! And of course, what I really enjoyed doing was getting into the forests and riding horses the country home and looking around and finding things that you’d never imagined from the wartime now.
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