Riding in Style

Alan McGowan has lived, and ridden his beloved Harley motorcycle, through British Columbia’s 20th century history. Growing up in Vancouver and Princeton during the Depression, with a family fractured by poverty, he then bounced around B.C. and worked in the rough-and-rollicking mines, mills and logging camps that were the backbone of the province. Along the way, in a life packed with adventure and misadventure, McGowan became a master keeper and now a teller of stories. Poignant tales, like that of the Vancouver butcher, who gave him free soup bones for the ‘family dog’, when both he and the butcher knew the family didn’t have a dog. Funny tales, like waking up to a bear sitting on his face during a fishing trip. Take a ride with McGowan, now 85 and living in Terrace, through his and B.C.’s early days.