Snowslides and saloons part of Sandon upbringing Nineteenth in a
series of pioneer profiles It snowed so much in Sandon when Rudy
Boates was a kid in the 1930s, he and his siblings could ski off
the roofs. Tasked with shovelling the top of a neighbour’s
house, they’d pile the snow until it was up to the eaves, then
sail down the bank. Come spring, it was a game to lie on the
now-bare roof and survey the still-covered hillsides, trying to
spot the first snowslide, of which there were many. When he was
four, Boates sat on his porch and saw a little girl named Evelyn
Stewart go by with her father and dog. Moments later, a white
roar swept over them, and Evelyn and the dog disappeared. Her
body was recovered the next day from under 25 feet of snow. “The
funny thing is my dad had a real sense of when slides were going
to come down,” Boates says. “He’d go out on the porch and say
‘Lizzie, there’s going to be slides today. Keep the kids away.’
He could smell it in the air.” The second youngest of nine
children born