| Pioneers In Many Ways |
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 In 1929, the Pemberton area was lucky to have Dr. Gimse, a dentist, settle there. Dr. Gimse was originally from Norway, and had lived in a privileged household with servants. In contrast, in isolated Pemberton, the Gimse family retrieved their own water from the river in buckets. "Flooding and mosquitoes, not death, was crying out for immigrants. Upon arrival, Carl Gisme took up a series of jobs in various places. Two years later, he caught word there was work for a man with a truck hauling railway ties in the tiny settlement of Pemberton. Carl bought a truck and had it shipped by boat and train to Pemberton. Not long after, Carl's eldest son, Gunnar, finished high school and joined his father in Canada. When Carl met his son in Vancouver, their first stop was the Motor Vehicle office to pick up Carl's driver's license. Two years later, Sigrid and her daughter, Sidsel, decided to join Carl and Gunnar in Canada. The women packed up their worldly goods, including Sigrid's precious dental equipment, and traveled by way of the Panama Canal to Vancouver.  Like many in the Pemberton Valley, flooding plays a role in the Gimse family story. Affected by the great flood of 1940* and subsequent flooding in 1941, the Gimse potato crops lay in ruins. Gunnar found work with the Public Works Department, heading a crew to gravel the road in Birken. It was there Gunnar discovered the old Thompson place. Marjorie Gimse writes, "Looking back at the house, he realized it would take a flood of biblical proportions to come near the house and outbuildings." Upon learning the place was for sale, Gunnar persuaded his parents to come and look. Both of the elder Gimses were enchanted by the house, with its view overlooking hay fields, orchards and some old growth fir trees with open pasture between them, an area Dr. Gimse came to call 'Shakespeare Park'. It was a perfect setting for 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. The Gimses Pioneers moved into the old Thompson place the following spring and soon settled into farming, logging and saw milling. Dr. Gimse continued to practice dentistry from Birken, serving residents from Pemberton to Lillooet for about 20 years. Dr. Gimse took pride in her work. "People thought of her as an artist," says Carl Gimse of his grandmother, "and 20 years ago it was commonplace to see elders in Mt. Currie proud to tell me that they got this gold tooth from my grandmother in the thirties and forties." Dr. Gisme's dental equipment, including her chair, is now on display at the Pemberton Museum. The old Thompson place, built in 1908, still stands as part of a larger, remodeled home, where a granddaughter of this pioneering couple resides today. * Some excellent accounts of the can be read in "Pemberton: The History of a Settlement" for sale at the Pemberton Museum. |
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