Lew Fountain...			...Burns Lake pioneer
			by Diana Roberts

Llewellyn William Fountain has lived in Burns Lake for forty years and is well known in the community. Born in 1921 in Aneroid, Sask., he was the youngest of 3 children. Lew's father, Hiram Franklin Fountain, was born in 1881 and married Lew's mother, who was from Ontario, in 1916. Lew's father, who only had about 2 or 3 years of school, homesteaded in Saskatchewan. The family lived there for the next 24 years, except for about five years when they lived in the States. The family was back in Canada at the time of the big drought and the Wall St. crash in '29. In about 1938, Lew's mother died of cancer. At this time, Lew, his father and two sisters decided to move to B.C. They travelled via Montana, Idaho and Washington. Lew remembers the War was going on and that France fell while they were in Montana.

Lew Fountain

They spent three months in the states, working as they went, including packing bags of hops while in Puyallup, Washington. When the family arrived in Vancouver, in Sept. 1940, each member of Lew's family had $125. With the war going on, it was hard to find a job but Lew did some work as a mechanic, in an office and pretty well whatever he could find. Lew's second cousin, who was a millionaire, got him a job at Hayes Manufacturing, doing some war work making logging trucks, busses and lockers for battle ships. Lew's childhood home in Saskatewan He worked as a shipper there for 2 1/2 years, making 30 cents per hour. He remembers he was working there when they bombed Pearl Harbor. He tried to get into the army, but was unable to because of his feet. Lew took a welding course and went into ship building. He built Victory ships. They were turning out one riveted-hull ship per week.

Lew as a youth

The first ship he worked on was hull #207. The captain's quarters of this ship were done up very fancy with carpeting and all but on their first trip across the Atlantic, the ship was destroyed by a submarine. Close to the end of the war, Lew was laid off, so he went to Dominion Bridge, where he helped build loader mobiles (similar to a Bobcat) which had a drum, cable and boom with a hook. This company sent hundreds of these machines to Russia. In 1950, Lew was working at Industrial Engineering where they made the first direct-drive power saw in the world. He worked there for 7 years. The last three years he worked as an inspector He was able to spot many defects with his sharp eyes.