This caption is actually a headline taken from a german newspaper...the heading was in english while the article was written in german. The article had been written by an adventurer/journalist who had spent some time with with a one-of-a-kind bikini wearing guide outfitter in the Quesnel Lake area of central British Columbia. This guide outfitter was Betty Frank...The Great Betty.
A couple of days ago my wife and I enjoyed a cup of tea with Betty, she had come out to our place to borrow some sled dog equipment items for a presentation that she was planning to make when she returned home to Vancouver Island. She said that she had wanted to do a presentation all about "Dog Teaming" for some time. She no longer had any of her equipment, it had all been either given away or sold over the past 10 years or so, ever since she moved to the Island from the Cariboo....but she still had a dog and her friends had been after her to do a presentation at one of the local bars.
Only Betty refers to dog mushing as "Dog Teaming" and she has as long as I have known her. Betty shared over tea that as a young child she would read adventure stories like Son of Kazan and Siverchief to the Rescue and she always dreamed of having horses and sled dogs...eventually she realized her dream. Betty grew up on the Island, she attended school in Nanaimo, eventually attending Normal School (Teacher's College)...her first teaching job was in the Peace River country near Fort St. John. Eventually Betty ended up in the Quesnel area and she and Gordon Frank raised five children around Alexandria, just south of Quesnel.
Betty is a self-taught musher, she had no mentors. Consequently, in a way that is only too true of Betty as a person, she did things her way. When I first met her in 1977 she was mushing big wooly malemute crosses using a stoneboat of a sled about 36 inches wide and fabricated out of steel....those were strong dogs. Betty would actually say "mush" to get the dogs moving, she had well trained lead dogs and she used the dogs around Quesnel Lake where she had established a guiding territory and a trapline. Betty still returns to Quesnel Lake to an idyllic spot at the end of the North Arm where she still has interests in an area that she refers to as "the lodge".
Betty will turn 80 years of age this coming June. A book about her life is being written by Sage Birchwater of Williams Lake and hopefully will be published in time for Christmas, 2011. A chapter in a recently published book written by Jack Boudreau called Whitewater Devils is devoted to Betty and some of her antics. I won't steal the thunder of these writers but I could go on and on and on about my experiences with this great woman (and dog musher), but please allow me one anecdote. Some of you may know Betty by a different name. At one point she consulted a numerologist (?) apparently someone who attaches a numerical value to each letter of the alphabet...they told Betty that the letters in her name should add up to a specific number if she was to have good luck. Betty and Gordon were never legally married so she always legally retained her maiden name Cox even though she went by Frank....with the help of the numerologist, Betty Frank became Glynnis Cox....go figure.
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