The first thing any visitor will see inside Jim Broadhead’s home are photos of dogs and dog sledding.
Dozens of pictures and posters hang on the walls of Broadhead’s Hixon home, accumulated over time since a trip overseas sparked a friendship and newfound passion for mushing with dog sleds on snowy trails.
“It’s been probably one of the neatest things that has happened to me in life,” Broadhead said.
“I’ve met so many super neat people out on the ice and the snow.”
Broadhead himself has been involved with dogsledding for the past 25 years.
In 1997 when he was on his way up into the foothills of the Himalayas for missionary work.
“We flew into the Calcutta airport, and it was late at night and I saw a man there who was different in that sense. He wasn’t carrying a machine gun with him like many of the army officers and army personnel were there, so I walked up to him and shook his head, and said ‘Hi where are you from?’,” Broadhead recalled.
“And it turned out he was from Canada.”
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Broadhead learned the man was none other than Orville Moorehouse, who was representing Canada at the world arm wrestling championships.
Broadhead was even more surpised to learn Moorehouse lived in the Williams Lake area.
“Here we lived about 20 to 25 minutes apart,” Broadhead said.
“I had passed his road, many, many times and he had passed my place many, many times. I had never met or saw the man in my life, and so we chatted a bit, and then one of the fellows and said ‘come on, we’ve got to go north’ and so he had to get another vehicle and head up to the China Burma border in northeast India.”
After the two Canadians departed their ways, Broadhead had stayed in the area for some time before flying to Vancouver, where he caught a flight to Manchester, England, to visit family.
Upon returning home, he went into Save-On-Foods in Williams Lake, where he bumped in Orville once again.
At the express line, the two men talked, and Broadhead said Orville told him he was able to take third place at the championship in his weight class.
“Then he made a statement and what he said was his greatest passion is not to twist wrists. He said ‘I’m also a world-class weight lifter, but my greatest passion isn’t to pump iron’,” Broadhead said.
“He said, ‘my greatest passion is racing sled dogs, and why don’t you come out with me and see out I do?’ so I went out with him as a dog handler.”
Broadhead did that for more than a decade, practicing with a team of 10 dogs on various logging roads both men had never been down before.
He learned more about the winter sport from Moorehouse, who invited him to use his second team at the Caledonia Classic in Fort St. James.
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They arrived late Friday night amid a snowstorm followed by freezing rain overnight.
While Broadhead had a bit of a rough going the first day, nearly losing control when the dogs pulled him off the groomed trail and into some roughage, he said he did much better the next day.
He didn’t return to the Caledonia Classic until over a year later.
”I just went out with Orville for the next eight years, and we practiced and trained, and he went to Barkerville and won the dash several times from Wells to Barkerville,” Broadhead said.
In 2018, when Moorehouse needed a hip operation, the two friends agreed for Broadhead to race in Moorehouse’s place.
Lead dog Roxy went just like the wind leading the team to pass everyone in sight, Broadhead said, noting it was confirmed later in the day he had won first place in the dash.
To this day, Broadhead and Moorehouse still go out dog sledding.
Broadhead has a few dogs of his own and tries to feed them top-quality food with no corn in it.
“It’s just been a really neat thing by walking over and shaking a man’s hand in Calcutta, India all those years ago and how it’s still ongoing,” he said.
Do you have something to add to this story, or something else we should report on? Email: rebecca.dyok@quesnelobserver.com
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