Telling Our Stories:

    "Lexlexey'em"

  I dedicate this site to my grandmother Clotilde Thomas.(1907-2007) 

My Name is Rick Gilbert and I am the eldest grandchild of Clotilde and Frank Thomas.  In this picture, Clotilde is nearing her One hundredth birthday.  That is me playing the fiddle with her playing the harmonica.  She always carried her mouth organs, as she called them, in her handbag and at the slightest suggestion would whip one out and begin playing.  Even if it were in the midst of a busy restaurant.

Clotilde and husband Frank raised me from birth to manhood on the Sugar Cane Indian Reserve near Williams Lake, British Columbia, Canada.  I had many good times and some bad growing up on Sugar Cane.  The purpose of this website is for me to relay some of the good times and the good and sometimes funny things that happened as I grew up.  I'm hoping that if by chance any of our youth were to read any of my stories, they could get some sense of how life then compares to life on the reserve today and perhaps get a better understanding of their heritage. 

I recently spoke to other people who grew up on Sugar Cane and mentioned my idea of writing my short stories about my youth on Sugar Cane.  We immediately broke into different stories that we remembered well.  Perhaps, if this site goes over well, I might begin accepting stories from others who cherished their life of growing up on Sugar Cane and, who knows, other reserves.