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The Bear Creek Bevan Boys and the Bevan’s Barge
I think it was my neighbor Clinton Petterson that first told me about the Bevan Boys. I had heard that they grew up down by the Bear Creek and lived with their father. It sounded like when they got older that they would fix up cars and some of the cars they fixed to drive were the ones left down the hill going down to the creek. Memories of a teen but I would meet one of them in my later years. He was building a log cabin in the area that he used to live. His girlfriend at the time, his son, her son and Trevor Bevan would build that log cabin using only a suede saw and an ax. I got to see them build it over the year and they would give me the left over wood, which I used in my fire places. Later, I would take them for a horse ride as a thank you for the wood and as a reward for their hard work. It was impressive to see their dedication to finishing it. This was probably in the early 90’s. I regularly took rides in that area so people got to see the progression of it being built. There would come a time when I would find a sign posted by some forest officials that required it to be taken down or be faced with fines. I had his contact information so he was able to take it away. It was built without nails and had some kind of coding so they could rebuild it. Around 2010, I would see Trever again and he helped me with some work on a house that I had bought that needed fixing up, partly in exchange for being able to park in the driveway and use the electricity as he needed. Fast forward to the fall of 2016, and he would be living off grid of Bear Lake main, at a place that I had lived off grid earlier that year! I had come to pick up the last of my things from a trailer near where he was living, and my horses and I had moved to an acreage in East Kelowna. This area and my original home would be burned down in the fires of 2023. He lost his trailer and many of the things he had worked hard to save up for over the years. Just things. Fast forward to about 2021 and we would meet again to help with figuring a way to get a cement block off to access water. Turns out, he had rebuilt his cabin very close to where I live now! I had already known that there had been some problem resulting in the cabin disappearing, but he never knew where, how or exactly why. What a small world. In the winter of 22/23, I would break my arm and Trevor was kind enough to help with getting wood, using his snow plow and helping with hay at different times. I was able to pay a decent price for the last couple of loads of wood but for the most part he was kind enough to just take gas money due to times being challenging. The goal was and is to one day take his grandkids riding but we haven’t gotten to that place yet.
I have been able to hear some of Trevor’s stories growing up and he has many. I had always thought it was just him, his brothers and father that lived by the creek, but turns out his mother did too. Later they would build the boat that is pictured at the beginning of this story and live on Okanagan Lake, doing a combination of salvaging and diving lessons. Before moving, he told me that he had done a lot of motorbike riding and hiking along Bear Creek. There had been a lot more rattlesnakes and one even slithered across his shoe as he headed to or from school! Another time one somehow got loose in their car as they were attempting to drive it somewhere to release it. He shared lots of stores and I have been encouraging him to try to record some of them. Hopefully this is the start of many more!
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