Reminiscing with Residents: Spruceview edition with Jurgen Moll

By Serena Lapointe

For those who have lived in the area through the eighties, this interview in the
Reminiscing with Residents series might bring forward some cherished holiday
memories, especially if your family enjoyed having a fresh, locally cut Spruce tree to
decorate as part of your Christmas traditions.
Jurgen Moll has lived at Spruceview Lodge for three and a half years. Before that, he
lived just outside Whitecourt, twelve miles into Woodlands County, down Highway 32,
on an 80-acre plot of land he and his wife Irene purchased raw and built a home on,
developing the land into a dream property for their family to enjoy. He even sat on
Woodlands County Council for three years.
But before telling stories from Whitecourt, we must start at the beginning. “I was raised
on a farm, in a log home, about twenty miles south of Spirit River. I was born at home
on July 28, 1938. We lived there until I was fifteen.” Moll said he attended a one-room
country school. “We had one teacher, and she taught twenty-five kids and eight grades.
She lived four miles from the school and rode a saddle horse back and forth to school.
Sometimes, she would carry one of her girls in front of her,” he said.
After leaving school at sixteen, Moll worked in sawmills south of Grande Prairie. “They
only ran in the wintertime because they were small mills. They sawed the lumber there
and hauled it into Grande Prairie, where there was a planer mill. Big companies bought
licenses from the government and would hire Gyppo mills (independent loggers running
small-scale operations). They had lots of them here in Whitecourt. If you talk to any of
the old guys here, they were sawing lumber with small mills,” said Moll.
After a few years of working sawmills in the winter and working on a large farm near
Rycroft in the summer months, Moll wanted a change of scenery. “I had a sister who
lived in Victoria, so I went there. But I needed a job and couldn’t find one. “So, Moll, his
sister and a friend drove to Vancouver to find a job. After learning that the Seafarers
International Union was hiring crewmembers for ships, Moll bought a membership to the
union so he could apply.
“They hired me to work on the Yukon Star for the whole summer. I had to go and buy
the right kind of clothes because I was going to be a porter, which is cleaning floors and
bathrooms,” explained Moll. “I worked there for three months on the night shift. It was a
passenger ship that carried 200 passengers. We sailed from Vancouver to Skagway,
Alaska and back and forth every seven days.”
The experience of being on a ship off the Pacific coast for the summer of 1959 ended
up being the change of scenery that Moll was looking for. “The inland was very nice. I

enjoyed it.” Following his ocean adventure, Moll was ready to work in Alberta again,
returning to the Grande Prairie area.
“I got a job with forestry and stayed (in the field) for the next 33 years, working my way
through the system,” said Moll. “I worked two years with an initial attack crew in Grande
Prairie. In the wintertime, we were building a bridge because, at that time, the
government built many things themselves. It wasn’t just everything contracted out,” said
Moll.
He then found himself in Keg River within timber management, living in a log house with
power but no water warmed only with an oil heater in the center of the main living
space. His soon-to-be wife was a teacher at a nearby Metis Settlement. “We got
married, she moved in with me, and we were there for about six months. Then I got
a promotion to Peace River, so we moved there,” said Moll.
His 30+ years working in the forestry industry was an adventure, moving him from one
community to the next. He also lived in Edmonton as his youngest son was deaf and
needed to attend a school better suited for him. “We were there for two years. I’m a
small-town person, and we didn’t enjoy being in the city very much, but he couldn’t get
an education in Peace River. We had to move, and it was nice that the department
moved me,” explained Moll.
From Edmonton, the next stop in Moll’s job trail landed the family in High Level and then
in Edson, as they sketched a path from north to central Alberta and back again. In
Edson, Moll was the Chief Forest Ranger and was there long enough to build a beautiful
two-storey family home. They enjoyed it a bit before moving again, this time to Coal
Creek.
That’s when the path finally landed in Whitecourt. “I was promoted to Forest Protection
Officer for the Whitecourt Forest Area, and I stayed here until I retired because I knew
this would be my last move,” said Moll. After renting in town for two years, which so
happened to be just across the street from his current residence at Spruceview Lodge,
they found the best place to dig their roots and settled onto their acreage just inside
Woodlands County.
Though the uptown area around Spruceview Lodge is all homes now, in the late
seventies, Moll’s forestry office and warehouse were a short walk away, where the
condominiums now sit, kitty-corner from the lodge. “It looked very different back then.”
One similar thing from then to now was the transient nature of the community. “I think
people still move a lot. But at that time, people would move in and not expect to stay.
They would stay until they got a different job or a promotion. We knew people, and then
suddenly they were moving,” he said.

Now people stay to retire, said Moll, which was not the case before. “People retire here
because they stayed too long and got too old. I’m retired here because I got old,” he
chuckled. “We talked about moving, but my wife finally said she wasn’t talking about it
anymore because we weren’t changing our minds. We were never going to move,”
laughed Moll.
In the eighties, after doing a lot of work on the acreage, including clearing 30 acres of
willows that were growing back from the previous owners clearing attempts, Moll
noticed that little Spruce trees were growing in abundance. “When he cleared the land
and pushed together all the piles, he took the topsoil off a little bit. We have so
many Spruce trees around us that it seeded it all in. It was covered with little trees,” said
Moll.
Not sure what to do, Moll put a fence around the area and let sheep roam it. “They ate
all the willows that came up but never touched the Spruce.” So, Moll kept the trees on
the smaller side, pruning them into perfect Christmas trees. When November came, he
and the family advertised their homegrown Christmas trees, starting a tradition that
lasted a decade.
“Sometimes, we would sell 100 trees. It was a U-cut. People would come and buy and
cut a tree. A couple of people here at the lodge said they bought trees from us back
then,” laughed Moll. As the trees started thinning out, the business slowed to a halt, but
Moll said he holds onto memories from that time. “It was kind of fun.”
Thank you, Jurgen, for sharing stories from your many adventures with The Press and
for the extra special sprinkle of Christmas magic your family shared with the community
from your much-loved acreage. Residents wishing to join this series and share their
Whitecourt stories are encouraged to contact Serena Lapointe at the Whitecourt Press.