With ample access to outdoor recreation, opportunities to ranch, and only 67 kilometres from the larger centre of Williams Lake, Horsefly is a place where people stay, relocate or return home to live.
A visit to the community in May to attend a forestry information meeting about proposed logging, presented the opportunity to meet local residents.
The fact more than 100 people attended is an indication of how much people care about the area.
The Horsefly Saturday Market takes place on Saturdays and it was there we met Dianna MacQueen, one of the vendors selling her sourdough baking.
Dianna has called Horsefly home for 19 years.
Before making the move she was living in Williams Lake.
She was working for Tom Barr who owned the Comer Station Pub and the pub in Horsefly, where she also worked sometimes.
“I loved the Horsefly area so much and I actually considered moving out here at the time,” she said. “But I waited until my children were grown up.”
Dianna said she resurrected the Horsefly Saturday Market. There had been one where the outdoor arena is once a month but it had gone by the wayside.
“After I left the pub I just wanted something to do so I started setting up a little table outside the corner house mini mall and I’d move inside when it got cold. I sat there probably two years by myself. A friend would come and join me now and then.”
When a local residents died, his brother and sister-in-law put in a kiosk and sold his tools and different things, which helped the market get a little bit busier and other people started to join as vendors.
“It kind of kept growing from there. It took a long time to get going, but now it’s a super little popular market. People come out from Williams Lake all the time.”
Also at the market was Joy Coleman with her knitted stuffed animals wearing knitted outfits and some gloves.
She and her husband Kerry Wilson moved to the area in November 2020.
Originally from the U.S. they were wanting to move to Canada to retire and started researching a place that was affordable.
Initially they looked at the Kootenays, but were discouraged by the price of real estate. When they began looking further north they came across Horsefly.
When they saw a repossessed property on YouTube they knew they could afford, they instantly fell in love with it online.
“It was during COVID so we couldn’t even come up and look at it. We bought it sight unseen, took a leap of faith it would fall into place. We packed up our things and moved up here.”
Prior to retiring she worked as a waitress for many years, as an esthetician for 11 years and eventually at a grocery store in Portland, Oregon.
She has been knitting since she was six years old and is doing it more now that she is retired.
“My mom knitted and I begged and begged her to teach me. She said I was too young at first.”
Originally from California, she grew up in the country and does not enjoy living in a big city. Kerry grew up in Portland but always loved hunting and fishing and always dreamed of having the lifestyle they are having now.
“We are still trying to make friends and find our place in Horsefly, but we love it here,” Joy said.
She does miss her son, daughter-in-law and grandson, who live in Las Vegas, Nevada. She hopes to visit in time for her grandson’s seventh birthday in November because she has not seen them for three years.
“My son and his wife are circus performers with Cirque de Soleil and are pretty busy,” she said.
Frank Wijma and his wife Carla Bullinger have lived in Horsefly since 2008.
At first they tried to buy the property they have now where they run Frank’s Plants and Produce.
“The real estate market was so hot and Linda Bartsch was the realtor at the time and she said, ‘why don’t you guys buy yourselves a job’ and pointed us toward the gas station,” Frank recalled.
After taking a tour they decided to go for it and ran the gas station for six-and-a-half years with a pizza kitchen, a garden centre and tire sales.
“We really enjoyed the work and it was pretty intense,” Carla said. “We enjoy serving the community.”
The station was open seven days a week.
The couple met in Winnipeg when he signed up to take a German language course in the evening at the University of Manitoba and Carla was the instructor.
“Not too many people can say they married one of their students,” Carla said, adding but they are the same age. “He didn’t ask me out until after the grades were submitted so it was very kosher.”
Frank grew up in Williams Lake off Winger Road by Chilcotin Road School.
He delivered newspapers as a kid and worked on cleanup crews at the mills.
“Our recreation was always west toward Esler, the Fraser River and Birch Lane. That’s where we would go hiking and ride our bicycles.”
His parents never had a garden while he was growing up and he never gardened himself until he started tending to house plants as a way to relax while working on his master’s degree in business administration.
“I then went from working in government in Yellowknife to going to horticulture school.”
Carla said they started a greenhouse business in the Fraser Valley and Frank wanted to return to the Cariboo.
“When we were looking for a place here it really was with the idea of operating our greenhouse. But how do you earn a living while you are growing a business so that is when the advice from Linda all those years ago made so much sense.”
In 2014 they felt they were ready for a seasonal business and that’s when they opened Frank’s Plants and Produce in its current location.
On Sunday, Aug. 28, they celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary by hiking to Teapot, the peak of Mount Elsey.
“We changed into our wedding clothes up there. I crammed my wedding dress into the bottom of my back pack and Frank had a suit jacket and he wore a tie as well. Our son, Michael, took some photographs,” Carla said.
The view from up there is utterly breathtakingly beautiful, she added.
“You have to work to get there. It’s a favourite spot for lots of folks.”
Bruce Rolph has lived in the Horsefly area with his wife Lonnie since 1982.
They were living and working in Ashcroft when the opportunity arose to purchase property on the 108 Road so they bought it and moved there with their three children - Krista, Kara and Tyler.
For 37 years they operated Rolph Stock Ranch up until they sold it in 2019 and moved to a different piece of property in the same area.
In addition to running the ranch, Lonnie worked for the Ministry of Forests for 11 years at the Horsefly office and 11 years in Williams Lake.
Bruce has worked at the Williams Lake Stockyards sorting cattle since the early 80s something he still does two or three days a week.
“I was shoeing horses and trimming cattle’s feet with my table and had the ranch. That’s kind of been our life.”
Horsefly is a great community, he said.
“We have had great neighbours all the years we’ve been here. It was a great place to raise a family and raise our cattle. We always had lots of grass and lots of water.”
While he was working at the B.C. Livestock Producers he began to write poems.
Each year there was a Christmas party and the poetry was a way to write about the long days and experiences there.
He continues to write poems and recently recited two of them at the Williams Lake Stampede Association volunteer appreciation dinner. He is a past Stampede director and continues to run the timed event stock for the rodeos.
He has also recited poetry at Arts on the Fly.
“Winters are little longer out here, but we enjoy the area and the community.”
monica.lamb-yorski@wltribune.com
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