COWBOY-WITHOUT-BOOTS-WHO-SPEAKS-TO-SPIRITS

 

This chronicle is about Harry Jukes, a man I only knew for these five years or so, but I feel that an eternity has befallen upon me. I will try to be “gentle” in my typed print as I try to portray this “vessel” which has too much spirit to be continued within but emanates without.

 

Normally, people fit into categories:

• Too sassy
• Too religious
• Workaholics
• Lazy
• Too quiet
• Rambunctious
• Miserly
• Out of our class
• Mysterious
• Non-communicative
• Etc.,

 

Perhaps there is a special class that can be best defined as “Harry Jukes-like” but that may be fine for those that know Harry well but I chose to refer him as the “Titrating Cowboy” as that suits his category best at the beginning of this epistle. Now as I reflect on all my four (4) interviews, I need to change the title to a Western native name (wish I knew how to talk Cree) Cowboy-without-boots-who-speaks-to-spirits.

 

There were some who once observed, I am sure, that considered a young lad on a horse, seemingly lost in the rolling hills and small mountains around Clinton, B.C., as a product of a vagrant family but his Mother  did see him leave home for classes at the appointed time, lunch packed and all fully intent on attending class. It may be that wind blowing out the West distracted him. Then it may have been a call of a raven, or the screech of the hunting hawk or something on that distant horizon that just needed to be investigated, for Harry would pull his horse in that direction, without hesitation, completely rapt in curiosity.

 

Reviewing the attendance register of one of his students (who was always arriving at class in the early afternoon too many times), became too much for the Principal and he reluctantly sent a letter to Harry’s father, demanding an explanation. So the Father decided that grade eight may be enough for his son and relegated him to working on the family Potato Farm and there could ride his horse for explorations in his times off’.

 

I am sure that the father thought about his life in the urban community of Vancouver, B.C. where he had started raising hi s family while being employed in the ship-building industry during the Second World War. Even then his son Harry dreamed of horses and a ranch so that Dad had relented and decided to send Harry to Okanagan Falls, to an acquaintance who had use for a boy of twelve years of age to help on the ranch. This made the desire for more ranching and horses that become an obsession. After the War the Jukes family moved to Clinton and purchased a Potato Farm complete with horses which was just what the young Jukes needed…

 

It was also obvious to the father that this boy needed education and so he sent his son off to the B.C. School of Science in June where Harry was able to gain his grade twelve level in six (6) months.

 

“Education is fine,” Harry thought,” but what about horses and ranching?”

 

Harry’s uncle was a photographer and had concentrated on pictures of trains in Wyoming, USA. These pictures included cowboys on horses and Harry knew that he should try the University of Wyoming in Laramie and try mixing his love of ranching with his education.

 

So he was to achieve a Bachelor of Agriculture in 1952 within in three years. He had one more year left on his right to stay in the USA so he followed up his room-mate’s invitation to visit his family ranch in Buffalo, Wyoming. Of course that made every bit of sense to this would-be Cowboy now that he knew how to calculate what a ton of hay and knew how big that was.

 

Actually Harry’s best recollections of these times was having to follow the trail of his friend’s sister into town and lasso her as she was getting on the Greyhound bus in her attempt to run away from home. He probably tied her up and returned her home straddled across the front of saddle. (He never really mentioned how good-looking she was).

 

So his time was up in the USA and then, after visiting his parents, Harry discovered that his entry rights to the USA had been removed for five (5) years and so his further education was traded for Guelph, Ontario where he was able to obtain a Master’s Degree in Bio-Chemistry and Nutrition in 1955. This part of Harry’s character becomes complicated: how does the ranching preferences equate to Bio-Chemistry and so we have the controversial scenario of the “Titrating Cowboy”

 

By this time Harry was married along with his first born and with this responsibility, he needed a real job. Being desperate, in 1956, he naively accepted a position as Chemist in a Sulphite Pulp Mill at Prince Rupert. Harry recalls that it did rain there on occasion and left there after a few years before his toes became webbed and knew what 96 inches of rain a year felt like.

 

But the Cowboy in his “split personality”, lured him back to the Chilcoltin where the bB.C. Forest Service needed a Range Manager to take stock on the available pasture lands as feed for the local Ranchers’ cattle.

 

During this time his family kept increasing and schooling became very important but what really brought Harry down was an injury to his back. This resulted in inactivity and the need for income that did not require too much roaming around. A friend in Tatla Lake operated a general store that she could use help with while she dealt with other responsibilities. Harry found that even that was quiet taxing on his body and so his wife was really the store keeper.

 

It was at this time that the local Superintendent of Schools came asking if anyone knew of someone that could teach in the local one room school. Mrs. Jukes got an idea and uttered “my husband can!” So Harry became a School Teacher with four (4) of his children as students. Harry recalls that his four (4) year old son could naturally read a book up-side-down. This became a very interesting condition that teachers, other than Harry, would have difficulty understanding that this condition does occur in human beings and is not an indication to be reprimanded by sending that student home as there was no lack of intelligence.

 

This was like a stroke of good fortune in this chronicle of the life of this Titrating Cowboy as he found that he liked teaching. Off to Vancouver again and a one Year Teacher’s Training to achieve a Teacher’s Certificate.

 

After a brief search for opportunities, Trafalgar School; in Nelson needed Teachers and the move to Nelson, B.C. was where the Jukes became entrenched. From Trafalgar, L.V. Rogers High School was the next engagement and then on to Notre Dame College, all in Nelson, and all using his Chemistry attributes. It followed that when Selkirk College was created in 1966, Harry was hired in 1968 and taught there until his retirement in 1995.

 

It was during this time that Harry used his horse-riding expertise (I guess) to build these tall six (6) foot high truck campers with his freind so that the families could enjoy excursions into the hinter land throughout the Kootenays and beyond. No patents were applied for but it was said that this camper could roll down a typical South Nelson hillside and suffer no damage. The rumor spread and Harry had no problem marketing this creation when he became disinterested with camping.

 

While at Laramie, Harry noticed that he had the ability to perform hypnosis and was able to do this on a few of his closest friends. This would influence much of his future life as this interest developed into meditation and then to physic exploration into regression.

 

There was a time when Harry became interested in motorcycling and explored Mexico with his friend. One strange occurrence happened on their way back when they considered an over-night rest stop in Ritzville, Washington. Although tired, they pushed on and found that was the same night that Mount St. Helen’s erupted and essentially wiped out Ritzville that night. Harry’s comment was “I did not hear any ‘voice’ nor have any premonition, I just wanted to get home”. This statement, alone, makes much of what I will write now, about Harry, very much acceptable. There is no embellishment in his recounts but just statements of fact.

 

Motorcycling became a passing fad after a serious accident near Kaslo, B.C. that could have been more serious than a bruised elbow. Nora set the law and parked the motorcycle for good. It was not at all the same as riding a horse anyway.

 

About this time Harry became familiar with Edgar Cayce, a Psychic, that Harry met at a Conference in Virginia. This followed with the formation of the Edgar Cayce Study Group in Nelson, B.C. This small gathering involved itself with:

• Hypnosis

1. Led to exploration of life during time of Atlantis
2. Harry was able to take his son into this time where

1. He was playing with a falcon

2. On a spaceship mapping Earth

3. Harry got him to write some of what he was doing on paper which resulted in a foreign language impossible for his son to know but was able to write and speak

1. Harry took other people to a past life in Atlantis
2. People felt comfortable during this process
3. Dream analysis
4. Past lives

• Meditation
• Discussed:

• The participants kept their experiences to themselves as discussion with non-participants would be difficult for others to comprehend.
• Harry admits that this was an interesting and exciting time in his life

 

Harry started a Meditation Group at Selkirk College that convened at the Selkirk College Lounge from 1976 to 1977. There was a charge for these sessions resulting in great interest to many of the College Staff.

 

These series of sessions graduated to the organization of the Spring Festival of Awareness held at Selkirk College. Some 30 to 40 speakers from the Pacific Northwest were invited to make presentations. This was a concern for at least one group in the area, who condemned the Festival as the “Work of the Devil”. Harry was ingenious in making this a positive action by inviting this group to make a presentation at the Festival and this opinion dissipated to an acceptance of the positive and educational intent of the Festival. It was more on “awareness” as a positive group activity rather than any condemnation or negative action.

 

Harry became aware of the writings of Helen Schuman and William Thetford, both Doctors of Philosophy and Professors of Medical Psychology at Columbia University. It became apparent that Helen was at odds with her Department Head, William. This relationship was not acceptable to both and they jointly agreed that a positive solution to this was necessary as they both searched for a method to accomplish this.

 

Helen then became aware of subliminal messages that coached her to create a book named “A Course in Miracles” which was edited in part by William. This manual became a reference and a source of creative information for many Educators in Psychology.

Harry used this book in his classes and would conduct class in this fashion:

• Started every class with five (5) minutes of relaxing music
• Students would use this time to meditate
• Harry’s message to the students was:”learning is not a competition but a cooperative venture”
• He would give weekly quizzes wherein the class would assist each other in providing answers.
• In this fashion, he attributed that the class advanced more than in a normal class environment

 

Harry became a “Bare Foot Nudist” sometime  and as Ross Freake, a freelance writer and longtime Okanagan journalist writes: “….Ten years after he retired as a chemistry professor, he (Hary Jukes) doffed hi shoes, inspired by his then four-year- old grandson to become a below the ankle nudist.”

 

“My grandson was going barefoot out in the snow about 10 years ago, and maybe I took off on that. It was not conscious decision. I went barefoot when it was nice out.”

 

“Jukes has problems in cold snow and on hot asphalt, so he wears Crocs, bet he recommends barefoot living to anyone who wants to kick off their inhibitions with their shoes.”

 

“It was just something that evolved, partly because I dislike the confinement of shoes and boots, partly because I find them difficult to put on, partly because I like the feeling the connection to the Earth energies, partly because the grass is often cooler in the summer that the inside of a pair of runners, and party because it is less messy in the house thena shoes / slippers….”

 

Those of us that have worked and played with Harry, have tried to “throw a few nickels together” to buy him a pair of socks or two, failed to intimidate Harry who maintains his convictions and continues to live his life style.

 

As Harry’s life “unfolded”, with his final companion, Nora, the passion for “community” became an obsession as the search for a resemblance to “Eden” along with all the understanding that all human-kind attribute in their vision of same.  This was an obvious culmination of a life time working with people and the progression of the spirits (souls) that Harry had worked with their regression.

 

Harry included “community” in many of his workshop sessions, extolling on the virtues of people working together for a common goal with cooperation rather than competition.

 

Harry and Nora looked at various sites for such an ideal community and travelled to many locations around the world where there was evidence and workings of community, searching for answers as well as a method to create an ideal community. At one time their search centered on a tract of Crown Land in Ooteschinia, on the East side of Castlegar, B.C.., where a water license was applied for and investigations continued but this was found to be not the time for this to take place.

 

Grandview Housing came to their attention and a few meetings later, Harry and Nora became convinced that perhaps Grandview was a possible answer to their search for community. Their comments on this project were as follows:

• People helping each other
• A spirit of working together
• Caring and concern for each other
• Using collective capital for economy to each individual

 

Harry and Nora became members and committed themselves to a bungalow almost immediately. This followed by a total participation in:

• Directorship
• Landscaping Committee
• Promotions Committee
• Chateau Grandview (Central Core of the 60 acre site) Committee
• The administrative subcommittee of Chateau Grandview Committee
• Strata Council
• Gardening Committee
• Anywhere else that they felt that their effort could advance the objectives of “affordable housing” for seniors

 

Harry has eventually acquired a clear understanding of much of the world that is not visible to mankind and continues to learn more about how all this exists. Some of his recollections of interesting phenomena go like this:

1. Harry attended a James Twyman Conference in Colorado, USA., to obtain a direct understanding of this creator of many songs of Peace and his continuing participation in many difficult areas of conflict where he was able to make a difference

• Harry was late in his arrival and missed the regular bus to the conference location
• As he walked out of the registration area, he noted a bus waiting
• Harry was the only rider with the Bus-Driver as they proceeded to the Conference site some two (2) hours away
• Harry recalls a very deep and interesting conversation with this Driver that was of great satisfaction and education to Harry
• When it was time to return, Harry naturally wanted to find that same Driver but he was nowhere to be found
• Harry still wanted to meet the Driver and investigated where he could contact him
• Harry discovered that there  was no additional bus that had ever been scheduled and driven to the Conference after the initial group
• This is one of the mysteries that Harry adds to a history of his experiences that cannot be explained easily
• A conflict in Bosnia was attended by a group of such people
• In their attempt to reach an area that was of their specific interest, they intercepted a troop of armed personnel
• They were able to transmit their thought waves to this troop in such a manner that the soldiers in that troop were oblivious to their location as they lay prone near where they walked by

2. Harry recalls discussion with people that had achieved a higher sense of communication that requires much more comprehension than that is normal to the average person

3. Harry continued to work with understanding those thought processes that are not a normal communication for most human-kind

 

There is too much more to Harry that I have yet to come to grips with but I will pause now.

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ End ++++++++++++++++++++++++++