At the age of 17, Tony Kunka of Williams Lake packed a small suitcase and ran away from his home in Pine River, Manitoba.
It was the late 1960s, his mom had died when he was young, and his home life was becoming tougher as time went by.
Hitchhiking, he slept in ditches and culverts on the side of the road and when he arrived in Ontario he could not find any work.
“The mistake I made, was I went east,” he recalled. “I could not find any work and everybody told me to go west was the best.”
He turned around, headed back to Winnipeg and then Vancouver.
Even though he did not have a cent on him, he was robbed of his little suitcase on the Hope Princeton Highway.
Kunka could not find work in Vancouver, someone suggested he head to Prince George.
In Lac La Hache he stopped for the night and found a spot to sleep in the old hockey arena in the change room.
“It had no lights and I needed some firewood so I went across the road and there were some slabs.”
While trying to make a fire, one of the slabs had a nail in it and he jammed his heel on it.
Feeling sorry for him because he couldn’t even walk, someone drove him to the hospital in Williams Lake where he received good care.
“I walked out of the hospital and some guy came up to me and asked if I was looking for work and I said, ‘man I need a job, yes.’”
The job was at the West Fraser gang mill when it was located where Blacky’s Truck and Car Wash is today off Mackenzie Avenue North.
“West Fraser used to shut down for breakup and I was walking down the road and another guy picked me up and asked me if I wanted to run a skidder and I said, ‘I don’t know what a skidder is, but I’ll do it.’”
He then went to work for Jack Dubois who was logging for Jacobson Brothers at the time, followed by a few years with San Jose Logging.
“I went on my own and bought my first set of equipment in 1973. I formed Kunka Holdings Ltd.”
He logged mostly in the Mackin Creek area, across the Rudy Johnson Bridge, for about 35 years and had up to three or four people working for him at a time.
Kunka got his pilot’s license for the summers and bought an airplane to fly people around to various fishing resorts.
“If I was on floats I’d go mostly to local fly-in lakes. I got to know a lot of the people who owned resorts in such places as Nimpo Lake and the East Arm of Quesnel Lake.”
Soon after he arrived in Williams Lake he found a room and board situation with Joe and Mary Zayonc on Schmidt Road, just off Dog Creek Road.
He soon fell in love with their daughter Judy, who he married 45 years ago.
The home he built is two doors from her family home.
Without ever getting a mortgage, Kunka built the house as they could afford it.
The Kunkas have four children - Maxine, Colleen, Jody and Shane - and six grandchildren.
This year he retired and sold the last piece of his equipment, a feller buncher, to someone in Anahim Lake.
He enjoys spending time with their grandchildren and still loves to get out in his plane when he can.
Looking back on the years he’s lived in Williams Lake he recalled fondly going to lots of barn dances with Judy when they were young to Sugar Cane, Deep Creek, Alexandria, Soda Creek, Riske Creek and other venues.
“I did a little bit of fishing when I was on floats.”
His years of logging were good, but today the industry is getting tough, he said.
“We had one machine on the fires at Anahim Lake for six to seven weeks last summer.”
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