Joanne McQuarrie, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter | [email protected]
Chris Lameris is a diamond in the rough. In Jasper for 40 years, the self-proclaimed scrounger doesn’t waste time keeping up with the Joneses.
You’ll see the hard-working handyman driving around town in one of his two trucks, usually packed with bottles and other recycled goods. The less visible side of Lameris is a man who can read people like a book, a man who helps people through hard times.
Lameris was born on March 26, 1952 to Riekje Wagner and Anton Lameris in Edmonton. His parents immigrated from Holland in 1951 and their first son, Alexander was born there in 1950. Son Guido joined them in 1956.
Shortly after Lameris was born, the family moved to Onoway for a short stint. Then it was up to Spirit River in northern Alberta where they looked after a farm.
Life was a series of adventures for Lameris. Many siblings have a love/hate relationship and his and Alex’s was no exception.
“My brother Alex stirred up a hornet’s nest in a barn and then locked me in,” he said.
Lameris used to get chased by turkeys on the farm. He wasn’t the only one in the family to have adventures. His mom drove a tractor into town to get groceries. There was the time when she not only drove it into town, she drove it into the grocery store.
“She catwalked it into the stairs,” Lameris said.
There was a day when Lameris decided to play hide and seek with his parents.
“There was a river close by,” he said. “They were looking after me for two hours.”
It turns out Lameris was hiding behind the door in the house and fell asleep.
The family moved to nearby Grande Prairie next.
“We put our stuff on a train and we rode in the caboose into the city,” Lameris said.
His mom worked as a cook at the Park Hotel.
“Alex and I sold cookies and lemonade to office workers downtown,” he said.
“We sold everything. That was to make money to go to the county fair. We used to go through the lint catchers at a laundromat/dry cleaners close to where we lived. We found lighters, money.”
The brothers would pretend to put some of that money in the offering plate at church and then buy ice cream with it later. There was the time when Lameris and Alex “lifted a window to get into a friend’s place.”
“We took his water colour paints and crawled into an old shack and painted it up,” he said.
One day Lameris was at a public swimming pool and started to sink.
“A guy there grabbed me by the hair and threw me back on the deck,” he said.
“Another time at Saskatoon Lake I was swimming with dad. I used to ride on his shoulders. He swam up to mom. She said, ‘Where’s Chris?’ then, ‘Oh my God. He’s in the water!’ Dad just followed the bubbles. I was underwater walking. I can remember the weeds under there. Dad yanked me out of the water.”
In 1961, the Lameris’ moved back to Edmonton, in their 1954 Austin A40, settling in the Hazeldean area after a couple of months. They lived in an old house built in 1911 that was located within a middle-class neighbourhood and had a root cellar.
“My parents lived on about $200 a month,” Lameris said.
His mom worked at the Green Brier Hotel as a cook for 26 years and became known for her culinary skills. His dad worked odd jobs here and there. There was a huge garden in their yard.
“Alex and I sold vegetables - carrots, beets, corn - door-to-door,” Lameris said.
He had his own pumpkin patch too.
“I used to sell those for Halloween and made some extra money.”
Lameris transferred to the Ritchie Junior High School.
“That was one of the roughest schools in Edmonton,” Lameris said. “It was not uncommon for violence.”
That included the teachers, he said, who would “rip us out of our seats by our sideburns, broke rulers and pointers on kids’ backs, threw chalk at your head.” Fist fights were common and girls were “scrapping” in Mill Creek Ravine, close to the school.
For fun, Lameris and his buddies shot arrows into the air at night.
“It was like a game of Russian roulette - we’d see how close the arrow landed to us,” Lameris said, assuring he never got hit with an arrow.
He had less nerve-wracking pursuits too.
“I was an avid swimmer and cyclist,” he said. “I never competed because we had no money.”
When he was 15, Lameris started working at the Riviera Motor Hotel as a banquet server. He remembers serving the mayor of the day once. He moved on to the Green Brier, washing dishes twice a week.
“I cleaned sidewalks for my Grade 4 teacher out of Ellerslie for eight years. I also delivered flyers and did odd jobs including gardening.”
Lameris graduated from Bonnie Doon High School in 1970.
“Then I thought, ‘What the hell?’ and went to Vancouver on the train.”
He decided to keep roaming and hitchhiked to Portland, Ore. That was where a woman lived, who had dated Alex one summer and then moved on.
“I found her, asked her for the ring my brother gave her and retrieved it for Alex. Brotherly love.”
Then it was back to Edmonton where, to Alex’ amazement, Lameris handed him the ring.
After a four-month stint at I.T.E. Electric, Lameris hit the road again. With just 75 cents in his pocket, he panhandled all the way over to Prince Edward Island.
“I picked tobacco there for just a week,” Lameris said. “It was the worse job I ever had in my life.”
He hitchhiked back to Regina and hopped a freight train to Calgary and then rode a Greyhound bus to Edmonton. After five months of work for Westhill Rosco, Lameris decided to go across the pond to Europe.
“I went to see my aunt in Amsterdam. Then Alex showed up.”
The roaming brothers hitchhiked here and there. Lameris remembers when he and Alex were picked up by a couple in a van. When it came time to sleep the couple parked in a farmers field.
“We slept in a nearby farmer’s shack,” Lameris said. “It was just crawling with rats. They were the size of cats.”
After adventures in St. Tropez, Alicante and an island off the coast of Spain they ended up in Amsterdam. Their uncle got them a job at a campsite.
“We made $1 a day, plus room and board. I managed to buy a new pair of jeans.”
Lameris went on excursions. Picture him riding an old moped with no brakes, wearing wooden shoes.
He remembers one day at lunch time at the campsite.
“I was eating a peanut butter sandwich and some chocolate milk,” Lameris said.
“I looked out the window and saw a girl walking arm-in-arm with her parents. I said to my brother, ‘I’m gonna marry that gal. I met her, chummed around with her, took her to a movie.”
But then he decided it was time to leave Amsterdam.
“I got to the border of Germany, but I was so in love with this girl,” he said.
“I went back to Amsterdam to her place and we went on a few dates.”
After being overseas for eight months Lameris returned to Canada. Alex had left earlier, but Lameris decided to return to Holland again five months later, working as a machinist and assembling heavy-duty equipment.
Lameris and his lady love, Caroline De-Bever, got married in 1976. Long story short, they were divorced three-years later.
Lameris came back to Canada, stayed with his parents for a couple of months and then worked on oil rigs in Redwater, Alta.
Jasper called his name in 1981. Over the years, Lameris had a variety of jobs, including doing security work and cat operating at Marmot Basin, pricing goods at TGP, working for Byers Transport for 12 and a half years, running a recycling business for about eight years and doing handyman jobs in the neighborhood.
Lameris ended up staying in a camperette across the railway tracks for 12.5 years while he worked for Byers Transport. He met Junko Nogata 17 years after moving to Jasper, when she worked behind the desk in the Whistler Hotel.
“The courtship was short - five months - and then we made a decision to get married in Las Vegas on Good Friday, April 2, 1999,” Lameris said.
Their son, Benjamin Sho Nogata Lameris, was born in Jasper in November that year. Lameris, Junko and Benjamin travelled to all kinds of places including Europe, Tokyo, Korea and Alaska. Lameris took three-year-old Benjamin on a three-week road trip too.
Lameris said he’s fond of the wildlife in the area. He starts most mornings sitting on a bench along Connaught Drive, enjoying a coffee and an apple Danish no matter what time of the year it is.
“I call it my thinking bench,” he said.
“I love the mornings. I like watching the town come alive, watching the people wildlife go by.”
Lameris is moving to Edmonton in five months.
“It was a long run,” he said. “It’s time to leave. I’ll miss the good people here.”
