There is something compelling about driving along these rambling, historic backcountry roads. It is not difficult for one to visualize the olden days when these roads were once heavily roamed over by an influx of men -- not ordinary men -- but good ol’ boys who proudly worked themselves to the bone, sweating nothing but their own blood and tears to toil these lands in order to turn a small profit. They would all endure the same hardships, loneliness and occasional misfortune in their quest to make a life for themselves in an unforgiving landscape.
Through these backcountry roads, you’ll catch glimpses of the left-over remnants of early colonial settlements -- barns, bunkhouses and stopping houses -- resting in the depressions of wildly overgrown fields guarded by dilapidated split-rail fences. Machinery that once carved through the depth of the earth's soil, now ramshackle and rusted, are reduced to field ornaments in a royal sea of spotted knapweed. The weather worn blue-collar faces of the past that have seen their days come and gone. Many of these men have died in obscurity, often virtually penniless, chasing their rainbows to the last. They belong to a special breed that of the ‘stubborn and not stupid’ kind, individuals who had been drawn to the Cariboo-Chilcotin and never left it - living by their creeds and following a precarious existence for their entire lives. Even today, in the backcountry of the Chilcotin, there are a number of these mountain men who have chosen this way of life, extracting their tithe from the lands and waters each season, content with their chosen path.
‘God Broke My Truck’ is a visual poetic essay of a fractured land through photographs depicting isolation, hostility, and the influence of geography on identity and the tendency of the land to be equally shaped by its inhabitants. I want to know what happened to this idealized version of an industrial British Columbia in the 20th century, and what’s leftover but remnants of what was at one time a booming economy? What do these places tell us about ourselves and more importantly, about the future?