Jack Schulte passed away at 5:00 a.m. on Thursday September 6th, he was just shy of his 81st birthday. Jack’s body had probably been battling cancer for a long time, but it was only in the last 4 or 5 months that it became quite evident that he really wasn’t well. Jack didn’t talk about being sick or of not feeling well, he was too much of a cowboy for that, he just kept plugging along in his typical quiet, determined, organized way. He did complain that he was feeling a little tired and that it was getting harder to shoe the horses, and he did mention that it was hard to eat and drink as much as he used to, but the thought of being sick and especially of dying just wasn’t in the cards for Jack.
Even though the cancer had affected many parts of his body, Jack was never really in much pain, in fact he didn’t really go to see a doctor until about a month before he died, to find out why he was losing so much weight. When it finally became evident just how ill he was, he started to fade quickly. Jack wore his boots, his hat and the belt with the big rodeo buckle right up until a few weeks before he passed away. About a week before his death, Jack moved into the Quesnel Hospice House….he was comfortable there and he knew that his time had come. Jack died like a true cowboy and dog musher….wearing his long johns….and up until a few hours before he died, actually cracking jokes.
Where did Jack come from? We do know about his early life in Alberta, but for those of us who love the outdoors, especially a life with horses or with sled dogs, he was like an apparition. I met Jack just 10 years ago and suddenly, in living colour, there was a man in my life who was like an incarnation of those larger-than-life pioneers who I thought had all passed on, Here was a man who was living the life that I read about in history books. Jack was truly a living connection with the past. For all of us he became a friend, for some of us he was our mentor and for others Jack became a father figure.
I don’t think that Jack was a complex person. What you saw, what you heard him talk about and what you saw him do….was Jack. Jack was the Real McCoy, and even though he used the word a lot when he spoke, there was no bullshit with Jack. When Jack talked about someone that he knew from his past he wasn’t just name dropping, he really did know the guy. He had a phenomenal memory for names and he could set people and their lives and experiences into total context. Jack loved history, he read voraciously, and much of what he read about he had actually lived, many of the places named in those books were places where Jack had actually travelled.
A significant person in Jack’s life was his uncle. This is the man who first developed the trapline in the Beaton River area in northern B.C. As a young man Jack spent a great deal of time with his uncle and he obviously learned well from this man. Jack showed me a pair of snowshoes that his uncle had made, they were clearly the template that enabled Jack to go on to make many, many pairs of snowshoes himself. Jack eventually took over his uncle’s trapline, and he worked it for 40 years…..think of that, 40 years of long lonely winters….all the time learning and practicing his craft, and learning to hate everything that had anything to do with a snowmobile…..Just this past May, in what was to be Jack’s last journey into the bush, he and Bob Smith travelled back up to the Beaton River country to visit Max Lautenbacher on his trapline. While they were actually located many miles apart, Max’s trapline is adjacent to the one that was Jack’s for so many years. It didn’t take long for Jack to become the trapper once again and soon he was showing Bob and Max just how to stretch and dry a beaver pelt using a frame made from bent willow branches…in true Jack fashion he told me….“I could never bring in all that fancy plywood and stuff to stretch those pelts, we just had to use what we had”.
Jack is the only man I have ever met who could make from scratch, a padded dog collar and a complete set of tandem collar harness all by hand. He was the only man I have ever met who could make and use a bobsled designed for use with a dog team. Jack had used a bobsled with his dogs on his trapline, this is a way of mushing dogs that has not seen prominence since the freighters on the creeks during the Klondike Gold Rush used them in the early 1900’s. I remember sitting in the “dog room” in my house along with several other mushers as Jack taught us all how to run cable down the centre line of a gangline as well as how to weave and hide the ends of the cable into the loop at each end of the 2 dog hook-up. Horse people talk admiringly about the halters and chaps and saddles that Jack produced over the years. I remember one mutual friend who was awestruck by the way that Jack could tie the diamond hitch when cinching down a load on his pack horse…..and all of this was just Jack being Jack.
Each of us who spent any time with Jack have stories that make us chuckle when we think of them. Jack loved to brag about his bedroll, he had no time for a fancy down cold-weather sleeping bag…he often said that he only needed a blanket and maybe a canvas cover. One year Jack was mushing his dog team in the Mail Run and we were camping overnight at Ahbau Lake and it was a cold night. Jack rolled out his flimsy bedroll right onto the snow, getting ready to go to sleep. Someone said that he might need a bit of insulation underneath him and they took some straw from underneath the dogs and put it underneath Jack’s bedroll. Jack crawled into his bedroll and it was obvious that he wasn’t too comfortable, but he wasn’t going to admit it. Jack hung in there and tossed and turned for a couple of hours but he spent most of that night along with about a half dozen other folks sitting around the very big camp fire, waiting for dawn.
I am going to miss Jack’s wonderful ability to peel away the confusing layers and spin that often camouflage an issue and he would often say, with a little smile, that no matter what the government might call it, what they really want is just to get more money out of us. He had a way of setting things into context.
We are going to miss Jack’s stories….or are we? One of my special memories was of canoeing on the Bowron Chain with Jack…he was in the bow and I was in the stern, I was a captive audience. I enjoyed hearing about his rodeo experiences but I got confused by all of the names of people who I had never met…but I just kept saying “o.k., aha, oh is that right”, and Jack just kept talking. Eventually it dawned on me that I might have heard the same story and the same names earlier on in our trip. I wonder if any others have had a similar experience with Jack?
Last year, almost a year ago exactly we had a very special celebration of Jack’s 80th birthday…We lied through our teeth to Jack to make it all happen, but especially with the hindsight that is ours today, it was a great occasion and was a true celebration of a great life. That event allowed all of Jack’s friends to meet his daughters, his brother and sister-in-law and nephew and to see the obvious affection that existed between them. At this time it is important to note that while all of us have a special affection for Jack and while all of us will miss him, there are those who will miss him even more…..his family. Jack often spoke about his family, you were important to him….his son and two daughters, his grandchildren, his great grandchildren, his siblings and his very caring partner Rosetta….who quite frankly added a bit of much needed class to a rather rumpled guy who had a few frayed edges.
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