Rene d’Egville was one of the more colourful people around Hazelton for a while in the years before the First World War. Then, an expatriate from England, he went home to join up. He had filed a preemption claim near Telkwa and ranched there, but he also spent a number of summers in Hazelton as a fish guard where, as an artist, he made detailed drawings of the different species of salmon and trout. With a reputation for eccentricity and usually escorted by a little fox terrier, he was known in Hazelton for his Norfolk jacket, overalls, moccasins and yellow silk toque. No one at the time thought that “poor Deg,” as he was called, would amount to much. Lieutenant R.L.H. d’Egville, serving with the General Staff “somewhere” in France, though, wrote home to his friend Jack Frost at Soldiers’ Aid in Hazelton:
“You’ve made me positively homesick for the old brands of tobacco [in a Soldiers’ Aid parcel], it only wanted a piece of smoked salmon to make the thing complete. . . . I’ve seen quite enough in a short time to know that working under shell-fire is not as funny as it looks in a Bairnsfather drawing; nor can it be said that sleeping under canvas while the playful Hun empties machine-guns from airplanes into the camp is conducive to steady nerves or restful slumber. I have seen the shells falling about sixty to the minute—not a bombardment, of course, merely as an artillery exchange—and fellows playing football with an occasional shell falling among the horse lines and the Canadian band playing O Canada in the offing. . . I have not been in the front line, no nearer than the twenty-five mile snipers, but a lot of our labour people are well ‘forrard’ doing every conceivable job, pleasant or otherwise. And I know that ‘where-did-that-one-go’ feeling, though I confess it does not interest me as much as the ‘where in h— is the next-one-going-to-land’ sensation. The man who says he doesn’t mind being under fire is a d— liar. When you have seen nothing you want to go up; when you’ve seen something the back of the back looks mighty good. . . . I am now confined to an office and do not get away until eleven or twelve at night, but I like it and manage to get some fresh air, though I sometimes feel I would like to go out and split a little wood, and I found myself handling an axe lovingly some time ago. . . . I miss the old trail and the camp fire. It’s going to be a hard job to stay this side. BC’s got me the same as the other fellow.”
After the war the Herald noted, with evident surprise, that poor Deg had served as an efficient cypher officer at the General Headquarters Staff, been mentioned in dispatches, and had gone to the German headquarters at Spa with the Allied Armistice Commission. He seems to have stayed in England after the war and probably become an illustrator for the Bystander Magazine.