Alex Streich came to Kimberley from Morris, Manitoba in 1927 and went to work on the timber gang underground. He returned to Morris in 1929 for a visit and married a widow he had known before. He adopted her two children; Martha, eleven and Andy, seven. Andy remembers celebrating his eighth birthday the day he arrived in Kimberley. It was March and the snow banks still lined the streets, higher than he had ever seen. They had to stay in rooms above the L.D. Cafe until a house could be obtained. The first one was behind the Mark Creek Store across the creek. They later moved to Morrison Subdivision.
Two sons were born there; Bernie and Edgar. Ed was only five months old when Alex was killed in a car accident coming down the back hill from work in 1933.
When Andy was young, he pedalled the Vancouver Sun paper after school and delivered meat for Walkleys butcher shop. When he was sixteen he entered the Mine blacksmith shop as an apprentice under Harry Scholemar.
Martha worked at the townsite cookhouse with Mark Beduz. She married Ray Jordan and had one daughter, Caroline. She later married Albert Lucas and they had three sons; Gary, Donald and Carmen. Albert worked on the maintenance crew at the Concentrator.
Bernie also works at the Concentrator and is now a Chief Operator there. He married Velma Watt of Canal Flats who had four children from a former marriage.
Ed began working for the Company in 1949 at age sixteen, as an apprentice in the blacksmith shop but transferred to steel fabrication. He married Shirley Howard of Fort Steele in 1957. They have four daughters; Marilynne, Sharon, Jan and Yvonne. Marilynne is a Medical Lab. technician in Coquitlam; Sharon married a teacher, Ian Robertson, in Kimberley. Jan will graduate in 1979 and Yvonne is still a student.
In 1945, Andy married a nurse, Mary Sullivan. She trained in Pembrook General Hospital in Ontario. Her desire to see the west prompted her to answer an advertisement for nurses in Kimberley in 1943. Miss Milburn was the Matron and Miss Farnum was head nurse. She met Andy the second day she was there. She nursed in Kelowna and Vancouver for a time and did special duty in Victoria. The war was still on and rather than be conscripted into the army, Andy joined the Navy. Both he and Mary were stationed in Halifax on V. J. Day. They were there when the Ammunition dump at Medford Basin, just three miles away, exploded and for three days Mary didn't know if she was a widow or not. She was kept busy working as a nurse. They returned to Kimberley in 1946 and Andy went to work in the Car shop at the Mine. He was the maintenance supervisor underground for seven years. He then transferred to the Concentrator shop for two years. For the past twelve years he has been a steel fabricator foreman at the Central Shops at the Fertilizer Plant.
Mary and Andy have two sons; Bob and Allan. Bob is now a doctor and married a Montreal girl that he met while interning and taking courses there. They are now in Vancouver where Bob works out of St. Pauls hospital. Allan studied to be a Physical Education teacher and after two years at McKenzie, B.C. he is back in Kimberley teaching at McKim school. He married Barb Vohradsky.
Andy has been active in First Aid for many years. He was on the 1956 Sullivan Mine Car Shop Team when they won the Blaylock Rose Bowl, the Lindsay Cup, the Oughtred Cup and the Department of Mines Cup and Shield. The team was made up of Tommy Hotchkiss, coach; T. Berge; F. Davis; J. Morrison; W. Caufield and Andy Streich.
Andy loves fishing and hunting. He used to play an accordion at dances. Recently he took a night course in upholstery. He has travelled from coast to coast and says he hasn't seen a place in Canada any better than Kimberley.
Mrs. Streich, senior still lives in Kimberley in an apartment above Woogman's where all her children and grandchildren can visit her often.
