Drama at Beaverfoot

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It's 14.40 on 2nd of July. I had already spent an hour or two writing a pretty long entry about the next three days - Thursday, Friday, Saturday - but unfortunately my phone deleted my notes, so I lost everything. So, I guess all I can do is 'start again at my beginnings/ and never breath a word about my loss' in the words of the Rudyard Kipling poem on my wall at home. I probably won't write in quite as much detail this time around, however.
So, Thursday. Thursday was Josh's birthday, so we all wished him a happy birthday in the morning - but it was still a normal working day for everyone as usual. In the morning, Matt, Josh and I begun by moving furniture and scrap wood around the site in the flat-bed. This was one of those tasks that seemed to have very little purpose, but it filled the working hours and it was pretty enjoyable work - so we didn't complain. As we did this, Rosie and Kate got to work beginning to paint the huge deck of the pavilion.
Once we'd managed to manoeuvre a sofa through a doorway much smaller than it for no apparent reason, we were then tasked with going up to the mountain house and taking all of the guy's duvets, as guests needed them. Matt and I guiltily undertook this, then came back to find Josh sharpening the chainsaws, ready to take down two large trees that were perilously close to the lodge. We decided, however, that this was best done after lunch.
We ate, then headed out with Raph and Dan. I don't think I have yet introduced Dan. He is an incredibly seasoned character having been at one point a champion wrestler, a male dancer, an inmate for 6 years (we don't know why), a finishing carpenter, and a surrogate father to no less than 8 huge dogs at the same time who he called his children, and with whom he had a connection I'd never seen before between man and animal. As well as, and above, this - he is probably the most genuine and friendly man I have ever met, one of the kinds of people you learn from by just sharing the same space. Where Raph was a boss, Dan was a leader.
It was Dan who cut down the tree, cutting a pie out of one side, then over-cutting through the other side with a wonderful precision. Raph stood by with the excavator to push the trees in the right direction of they began to fall towards the lodge - or us. The trees came down true enough, however, and we all breathed a sigh of relief. These were big trees - maybe 4-5 stories tall - and the lodge would have been seriously damaged had anything gone wrong. The rest of the working day saw Josh and I axing and chainsawing the branches off the trunk, which Dan then dragged away with the loader to be peeled and converted into planks for construction. By the time we were hot and exhausted, but satisfied with the work we'd done.
In the evening we took the barbecue from out the back of the lodge up to mountain house, along with a pile of sausages and burgers, and held a barbecue for Josh's birthday. It was a really nice evening - swapping stories and jokes (many concerning bear-spray) around the downstairs of the house, having cake and presenting Josh with the book we'd made full of quotes and little passages written by all of us. As we approached midnight the girls began to leave for mountain house until, by maybe 12.30, it was just Josh, Matt, Felix, Adam, Rico and I sitting downstairs. We talked a little longer, then hit the hay by about 2am.
The next day, like the previous few, was hot. We got to work that day - Josh and I - by beginning to load piles and piles of the branches we'd cut the day before into the back of the flat-deck and driving them down to the burn pile on lake side. We talked and got to know each other a little better as we worked. Josh told me of the university courses he was taking in Leon and Ottawa, and I of my plans for the next few years.
In the afternoon we recruited Felix and Cammi to help us work - then all of us headed down to the campsite to help Raph move a variety of large and cumbersome objects from the wedding pavilion to the lakeside, which was becoming something of a dumping ground. It was probably the hottest day of the week, so moving huge cupboards and thick plywood sheets wasn't easy, but there was good company and good humour, so the work passed quickly. After finishing, we all went down to the river and plunged in, the cold water incredibly refreshing after working hard in the summer sun.
In the evening I trained, carrying my backpack full of rocks and a thick wooden post up a hill over and over again (I have to get inventive without a gym), showered, and headed out for dinner out the back of the lodge.
Fairly quickly it was apparent something was up. I asked Rico and he told me that they'd been a confrontation in the kitchen between Raph and Felix about Felix's day off the next day. I will briefly explain that all week Felix and Raph had been at odds - mainly due to Raph taking a totally unfair disliking to him and objecting to him doing things he'd happily let others do. Anyway, it turns out that they'd had another disagreement as Raph didn't want Felix to take the following day off even though he had worked 5 days previously - entitling to a free day. This finally pushed Felix over the edge, and he kept repeating to Raph 'go on Raph, hit me, just do it, be a man, I still have my pride'. And Raph did, he punched him in the face and kicked him before Rico and Adam managed to get Felix out.
Next thing we know Felix is calling Raph saying he and Dan (who was giving him a lift into Golden) had run out of gas 3 miles from the highway, and so Rico, Matt and I quickly volunteer to fill up a Jerry can from the petrol tank and run in down to them in the flat-deck. We laughed on the way down at the fact that Felix had repeated that 'he still had his pride' then 30 minutes later had to call to ask for petrol, poor guy.
Our laughter was called pretty short by the sight of a police car parked behind the red truck, with Felix in the passenger seat. We pull up and begun fuelling the red truck while Dan tells us Felix had rung the cops and was trying to get Raph done for assault. At this point the officer approaches us and asks us if he can shoot back and grab Felix's laptop charger which he left behind. We agree and Matt and I take the truck and drive the 10k back to Beaverfoot, get the charger and bring it back while Dan and Rico took the flat-deck back, not without breaking down 20 metres from the entrance and having to cool the engine.
It was getting late by this point so, after sitting around in the lobby a while and talking about the event us guys headed up to the mountain house and sit out on the balcony (where Adam sleeps in his hammock) for a little while, before getting to bed by 1am.
Saturday morning was the first of our last working days (or so we thought). We got up and breakfasted as usual, and I spent the morning helping Dan fix the showers by sanding and gluing the handles, then spent the rest of the morning cleaning the campground bathrooms and doing a couple of moving-stuff-around-unnecessarily jobs on my own with the flat deck. We had lunch, and I caught up with the others. Rosie and Kate we getting towards finishing the deck (they had one roller and paint that didn't match) and Matt was in the midst of a long and tedious job which involved changing the price mechanism on the vending machines.
In the afternoon Rico and I did some house-keeping down at the wagons, made the pizza oven fire and did a little laundry before Josh came and found me. Josh and I had a little chainsawing to do before we clocked off, sawing logs into sizeable chunks, but at that time of day the petrol fumes combined with the heat meant we could only work for 40 minutes or so. We clocked off at about 6, an hour after we were required to.
The rest of the afternoon up to dinner was spent in the usual manner, and around 8 we went out back for a lasagna dinner. At one point Raph came out and began angrily talking about how cheeky it was to ask for a day off tomorrow, and how bad attitudes were. It took about 20 seconds before I realised that he was talking about, or to, the four of us, and that Rosie must have asked him if we were good to take off the next day as we'd worked our 5 in a row. As he talked, and got himself so worked up he began saying we should pack up, move out and leave in the morning, I felt myself get more and more angry at the total unfairness of everything he was saying. Once he'd stopped, some of the girls that had gone food shopping that day arrived back and so we all got up in a shocked silence and helped out. Everyone kept glancing at us with apologetic and sympathetic eyes. I had heard he had said these things plenty of times to other wwoofers before, and of course there was the incident yesterday, but I never expected him to say it to us. We had been nothing but hardworking, friendly, fair and honest, and what made matters worse was that I knew Rosie would have asked in the politest way possible, and he would have replied in a way that was as mean and unnecessarily personal and Rosie was reasonable.
I had to walk past him in doorways as we unloaded several times, and each time I kept my eyes directed away from him and my jaw clenched to stop myself doing to him what he'd done to Felix - and I saw Matt and Kate do the same. Finally, when I went downstairs to put something in the fridge and he was behind me. He began telling me that he liked me and that he knew everyone didn't work the full five hours (which was utterly untrue) but that the girls in particular were 'slacking' and that he could have painted the deck in 3 hours. Is had enough by this point and told him that that was totally unfair, that the girls worked as hard as everyone else, probably harder and asked him that if he was going to kick us out tomorrow where did he expect us to go, and did he really think we had the money to go and stay in a hotel or hostel whenever we wanted? I walked away without an answer, and went upstairs to make sure the girls were ok.
They were upset, as we all were, and I told them what I'd said to Raph and he to I, then headed back down to help out. Soon Raph approached me again to tell me that he appreciated me sticking up for the girls, and apologised and said he was wrong, and that we could stay until Monday. I thanked him for his apology, and a couple of minutes later found Matt and we went on a quick walk of the property so I could tell him about Raph's apology. To him, as it was for me, the apology meant Jack-shit (excuse my language but he really made me angry) as he cant just say that kind of this and expect us to forgive him with a half-arsed sorry. Was also agreed, however, that we would be polite as long as he was for the sake of enjoying our last day with our friends.
I went upstairs and talked to the girls, they were on the same wave-length as us, and we sat discussing the injustice of it all for a little while. The rest of the evening we sat in the yoga room, the whole group, with a box of beer, chatting and enjoying eachother's company. As was often the case, the girls went to bed around 12, so Mariah ( who was in the mountain house), Rico, Adam, Josh, Matt and I went up to the MH with the beers and sat talking about anything and everything until gone 4 in the morning. We left not for lack of things to say - indeed I'm sure we could have happily sat and drunk beers and discussed whatever for at least another 5 hours - but because the sun was coming up and we needed to get at least some sleep.
Just a little update on Raph. We all wrote to Workaway a couple of days ago, as did Felix, explaining our experiences with him, and so he's been removed. This will cause him some serious issues as this is where he gets 90% of his workforce. Also, Rico sent us a message today saying he came down to the lodge this morning to find both the police and the health inspector in the lobby and, I imagine, a very worried Raph. It seems he getting what was coming to him, I just hope he doesn't take it out on the Workawayers.

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