The Need for a Home

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The next day, Terry, a squat and jolly equipment operator, spent several hours digging to a depth of 15 feet with his backhoe. Sure enough, Old Jim was right. Water trickled out of the side of the hole. With clenched fists, we watched it seep into the cavity. The next step was to wait patiently until the following morning and check the accumulation. Peering bleary-eyed back down into the hole, I was tickled to see the level at least three feet deep. Terry estimated that we would have enough for household use. In the pit, with his backhoe, Terry installed our well — a column of three five-foot-tall cement cylinders.

Once the water was flowing from the taps, our home came to life. Natalia, Ben, and I claimed the new territory with enthusiasm. The loss of the Ningunsaw Valley had affected us all. Yet we weren't the only local residents to lose our home recently.

In March 1994 the headline in the Shuswap Market read "Crisis for Homeless Bat Colony." For what may have been decades, the sole summer residence for an impressive colony of Yuma bats had been the attic and belfry of the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul at Squilax. Numerous articles echoed concern the community felt for their fate. The maternity colony consisted of pregnant females that gathered during the spring, in a suitable location, to give birth and raise their young. On March 14, 1994, while the bats were away for the winter, the historic church burst into flames. One local paper reported that when the heat reached the hefty store of bat manure in the attic, the top of the building blew right off. Within 45 minutes the struc ture was burned to the ground. The cause of the fire still remains a mystery.

The Catholic church had been built in 1910, almost a hundred years after the first white people came into this area. Up until that point, the Shuswap Indians had been nomadic. Then they were forced within the boundaries of small reserves, like the one upon which the church was situated.

The congregation had gradually become accustomed to the hissing presence of countless creatures in the attic above. Some had even joked about putting plastic over their heads to protect themselves from any bat droppings that might slip through the cracks in the ceiling.

The last service to be held in the church was a funeral in 1977, when the bell tolled four times for Jack Sam. Eventually the building, which had fallen into a state of disrepair, was condemned.

It wasn't until 1987 that naturalists at Shuswap Lake Provincial Park discovered this colony of Yuma bats. Soon after, naturalist Chris Harris, who saw the potential for learning much about this misunderstood mammal, began to study them. In the process he discovered that with numbers between 2,000 and 3,000, this was by far the largest maternity bat colony in Canada. He asked for and received permission from the Shuswap Indian people to continue research. Chris was curious about the migration routes of these chocolate-brown creatures and also wanted to find out where the males live while the females are in the maternity colony. Another enigma was where did they hibernate?

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