Bill Lloyd, the third oldest of 12 children, was born in Viscount, Sask. in 1928. He was only 12 years old when his family arrived in Prince George in 1940. He married Joey (Josephine) Lybeck in 1955. Here is their story in a nutshell.
Bill said, "I was a pretty big kid when I was 15 years old and I was able to land jobs at the sawmills. My first job was tailing the head saw which sounded pretty romantic to me at first but I soon found out that there was nothing romantic about it. It was my job to pull and stack the bark slabs as they were sawed off the logs. It was back breaking work and you had to keep up.
"By the time I was 18, I was working for a steam sawmill along with my older brother Merle. We were the carriage crew until Merle got drafted. Over the years I worked at sawmills at Shelley, Eaglet Lake, the Trick Lumber Company, the Upper Fraser Sawmill and a sawmill in Red Deer.
"It was about this time that my brothers Merle, Ben, Howard and I got talking about going into business together. We purchased a bush mill in 1951 and named ourselves the Lloyd Bros. Lumber Company Ltd.
"I was the sawmill person while Merle, who was the senior member of the company, undertook the bush logging. Ben looked after the trucking end of the business and later took on the lumber sales and looked after the planer and the dry kilns. Howard was the cat skinner (cat operator) and did the logging with Merle. Time went by and Howard went out on his own and did very well for himself.
"Over the years we built three new sawmills with each of them being improved and better than the previous one. Lloyd Bros. Lumber Company operated sawmills at Swede Creek, Cluculz Lake and Isle Pierre until 1969. Our last sawmill at Isle Pierre was quite modern and we produced pulp chips for the new Canadian Forest Products mill in Prince George. After nearly 20 years in the business Canadian Forest Products offered us a good deal and bought us out along with our considerable timber quota. Interestingly the mill site located at Isle Pierre is still operating although it is now what they call a super mill."
Bill met Joey (Josephine) Lybeck in 1953. Joey, the youngest of three children, was born in Prince Albert, Sask. in 1934.
Her father worked for Northern Commonwealth, a wartime pilot training program in Prince Albert from 1942-43. He installed engines in the Tiger Moth planes that were built and used in the training program.
Her family moved to New Westminster in 1943 looking for better weather and work in her father's trade as a mechanic.
Joey grew up in New Westminster and graduated from the Duke of Connaught high school. While in high school she worked at the Eaton's retail store on the weekends. She worked at a fish cannery that summer and then went on to Normal School for teachers training. She graduated from Normal School in 1953 and taught 40 students in a Grade 2 class in New Westminster.
Students who went to Normal School at that time were assigned to their classes alphabetically. It just so happened that she went to school with Bill's sister Marie Lloyd. It was through this association that she eventually met Bill Lloyd in 1953.
Bill was living in Prince George and when he came for a visit during spring break-up in 1954 the young couple got engaged. They were married in 1955 and as they say the rest is history.
Joey said, "I successfully applied for a teaching job in Prince George. Ray Williston was the school superintendent and he hired me to teach at the Connaught elementary school. I taught Grade 2 and I had 35 students in my class.
"I taught school until our children started to arrive and then I became a stay-at-home mom. We had three beautiful daughters - Sandra (Hector) Theroux, Margot (Peter) Slater and Nancy (Brian) Gallagher and I am proud to say that all three of our girls graduated from the University of BC with degrees. We now have seven grandchildren."
Joey volunteered with anything to do with her three girls at their schools. She volunteered in the library at the John McInnis school for five years, taught Sunday school at St. Michael's for many years and worked with other church members to help build their church on the corner of Victoria and Fifth Avenue.
Joey has been a member of the Beta Sigma Phi for 60 years and participated in their many volunteer activities.
She was a member of the board of directors who got together to build the local YMCA. She said, "We had a group of men who wanted to play handball and needed a place to play. They had an idea and organized a board of directors with the idea to build a safe place for many groups and activities. At that point in time schools did not have gymnasiums so the YMCA was the perfect solution. We raised money by canvassing the community and we were happy when they supported the project. Des Parker was the architect and he managed the project."
Bill served as the president of the Prince George Quarter Horse Association for five years and he has been a member of the Kinsmen Club since the age of 30; he is now part of the senator's club.
He served on the Prince George Exhibition board of directors for ten years. He started and then ran the PGX logger sports competition events. Bill said, "We did the real stuff back then and we had competitors from New Zealand, Australia and the United States. The logger sport is no longer a competition and has since changed to a demonstration event."
Bill and Joey golfed and curled together for years and he still enjoys fishing.
The family did downhill and cross-country skiing together but the main interest were their horses out on their ranch in Vanderhoof.
His real passion was golf and he said, "I am proud to say that over my lifetime I had three holes-in-one. I retired from golf the day that my golf sticks weren't working so good any more."
Bill and Joey agreed when they said, "We had a very fulfilling life. We traveled and we lived our lives together and our daughters gave us three really great sons-in-law and we can say that they each made a good pick."
