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Haphazard History: The origins of the Boitanio name in Williams Lake

In Williams Lake, the Boitanio name is quite well known.
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Photo courtesy of the Cripps family (Wade Cripps) of Antone Boitanio.

Barry Sale

Special to the Tribune

In Williams Lake, the Boitanio name is quite well known.

We have Boitanio Mall, Boitanio Park, Boitanio Street and the Boitanio apartments.

These names recognize an early pioneer family from the Springhouse area.

Interestingly, the original family name was Boitano, without the ‘i,’ but over time, the spelling has changed.

Augustino (Augustine) Boitanio was born in Favale di Malvaro, near Genoa, Italy in 1834.

As a young man of 23, he left Italy to seek his fortune in the U.S. The Cariboo Gold Rush was just beginning when he arrived, and he headed north.

Augustine was a packer, and with the influx of people, supplies and equipment moving up to the gold fields, he found plenty of work. Even after the gold rush had run its course, he continued to pack for the Hudson’s Bay Company between Fort Langley and Fort St. James.

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Augustine became very familiar with the old River Trail to the gold fields. That route came from Lillooet, over Pavillion Mountain, up the east side of the Fraser River to Canoe Creek, then over Dog Creek Mountain, through Paradise Valley (now called Alkali Lake), over to Chimney Valley, then to Williams Lake and north to the diggings.

Augustine was impressed with the Springhouse area, and he homesteaded there, taking an Esk’etemc woman as his wife.

By 1881, the census shows that he had three children, Clothilde, 4 years old, Lorenzo (Lawrence), 4, and Cecelia, 2.

As well, there were five Chinese gold miners living in the place. They were reworking the bars on the Fraser River.

Augustine farmed vegetables, grew wheat and barley and raised horses and mules for his packing business.

The famous packer Cataline often wintered his pack animals at Springhouse.

Augustine considered him to be a close friend and regularly supplied him with replacement stock.

In January of 1885, Antonio (Antone) was born while his father was away on a trip. He was a child of the land, growing up without boundaries and travelling on horseback before he could even walk.

His mother used to put him in a birch bark cradle which hung on her back and then go picking berries with the other Esk’etemc women. When they found a good patch, the babies’ baskets would be hung between two poplar trees, and if any of the babies cried, it was the job of the older siblings to rock them.

By the time he was 7, Antone was proficient on horseback and was determined to keep up with his older brother, Lawrence, whom he idolized. When he was 9 years old, his mother died of pneumonia.

After that, Antone was pretty much on his own, spending his life chasing wild horses with his brother, breaking horses and hunting ducks, geese and prairie chickens on the Springhouse grasslands.

Then, when Antone was 13 years old, his father decided that it was time for him to go to school.

The nearest Catholic school which would accept an older student who had had no previous schooling was St. Joseph’s College in New Westminster.

A few boys from the area were already attending that school, including Claude Pigeon from Upper Dog Creek, some 25 miles to the south.

It was decided that Lawrence would accompany Antone to the Pigeon place, and from there, Claude and Antone would travel together to Ashcroft and board the CPR train which would take them to New Westminster.

So it was that in late November, 1898, after all the haying was done, the crops were in and the animals were rounded up, Antone and his brother set out on the trial to Upper Dog Creek.

It turned out to be a nightmare journey.

They had hardly left Springhouse when it began to snow and blow.

It took the boys all day to get to a meadow with a line cabin where they could stay the night. The horses were completely played out and they had to stay there a day to rest them.

The following day, they set out again, and after another 12 hard miles through deep snow, they made it to the Pigeon place.

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After resting another day, Antone and Claude started out on the trail to Clinton.

They took two teams, leading one and riding the other to break the trail, then exchanging.

It took them a whole week to get to Clinton, and three more days to get to Ashcroft.

There, they found that avalanches had blocked the rail line, and so they had to wait several more days until the tracks were clear.

When they finally did arrive in New Westminster, Antone hated every minute of it. He didn’t like the big city. He didn’t like being cooped up in a boarding school

He didn’t like the rules and regimen, and he didn’t like doing schoolwork.

At the time, ranchers in the Cariboo had very little money. Antone’s father was no exception, and he had arranged for Antone, as one of the older boys in the school, to look after the furnace in exchange for reduced room, board and schooling costs.

Antone had to get up at 5 a.m. each morning to start the fire, and he was the last one to go to bed each night after stoking up the furnace.

Actually, Antone didn’t mind doing the work, but he was used to total freedom.

He considered himself a man, but more than that, a man of experience.

He had chased horses in -30C weather and in four feet of snow.

He had seen men fall through the ice and even saved two of them. He had gone to dances and imbibed and danced all night.

He had raced horses for four days straight, winning some big pots.

He had learned to play the fiddle and was in demand as a musician. He had driven cattle 70 to 80 miles a day.

He really missed the Cariboo.

So, after six months at school, during which time he learned to read, write and figure, Antone came home for the summer holiday break. He never returned.

Antone’s education came from the land, its creatures and its people.

He was a cowboy, a rancher, a horse breeder, a hunter, a guide and a trapper.

He used his formal learning to take over the job of postmaster at Springhouse when his father died in 1914, and he kept that position for the next 28 years.

He attended the first Williams Lake Stampede in 1919, and never missed another. For many years he was a judge for Stampede events.

He was also a talented fiddler who played regularly at weddings and country dances.

In 1942, Antone sold his ranch at Springhouse, and moved into Williams Lake with his wife, May. She suffered from depression and emotional problems, and for the next 15 years, he was her primary caregiver.

After her death in 1957, he spent most of his remaining years with the Cripps family at Mud River, near Prince George.

He passed away in Williams Lake in 1970 at the age of 84.

Antone Boitanio was a true B.C. pioneer. In naming the park in his honour, the Williams Lake Centennial Committee stated that: “Antone typified the courage, the colour and the ingenuity of the men who settled the Cariboo.”

For this article, I have relied heavily on the memoirs of Paddy Cripps, whose father, Wynn Johnson, owned the Alkali Lake Ranch from 1909 to 1939. She knew Antone and his family very well.



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