by Rob Wood
From the Toba Inlet trip we learned to love the wild and rugged beauty of the Coast Range even more than the Rockies. It also became apparent that the greater availability of wild food, fish, oysters and clams, along with the relatively moderate climate, makes it much easier to survive off the land and sea on the coast than in the interior. We were also both inspired to start painting with watercolours. In synchronistic good fortune, that voyage also took us through Desolation Sound and the Discovery Island archipelago that later became my choice of place to settle down. I had noticed in passing at the time that it would be an interesting area to live in.
It was on the way back from this adventure that Shadowfax pulled into a derelict and characterful old dock in downtown Vancouver called Clay’s Wharf. We’d heard it was the cheapest place to tie up. The first person we saw at the end of the dock was a beautiful, dark-haired hippie gal in a long, flowing dress, just standing there smiling and nursing a baby.
“Is it okay for us to tie up here?” we asked.
“Of course,” she smiled. “Come on in.”
The next thing we knew we were invited aboard a funky old boat and were drinking herb tea with a bunch of colourful, long-haired live-aboarders. It turned out that at least one of these shady-looking characters was one of the original members of Greenpeace, which had had its recent origins at that very same dock in downtown Vancouver. As the city had, not surprisingly, condemned the wharf to make way for their Granville Island redevelopment scheme, these folks were being evicted, and some of them were plotting to form a co-operative to buy a piece of land on a remote island up coast somewhere.
“In the spirit of flower power and brotherly love an’ all that,” the charismatic, persuasive and exceedingly hairy old hippie with rings in his nose and ears asked with a wry and sly chuckle, “how would you like to buy a share?”
Not being at all sure about the whole deal, for once in my short life I was cautious, and I used the honest excuse of not having enough money in order to postpone making any commitment. However, Shadowfax stayed tied up at the wharf during the last year or so before the eviction notices were finally posted, while I worked in the city to save up some money for a share in the land.
I had an opportunity to see the land before committing to buying the share in the co-op, which was just as well, since I had not yet convinced myself of the merits of gambling what to me was quite a bit of cash on such a shady-looking deal. A respectable job in Vancouver at the time enabled me to take out a loan, which was something I had never done before, and my rambler’s heart did not relish the idea of being tied down to monthly payments. When I set foot on the island, however, all that doubt and uncertainty vanished in an instant. In fact, the hesitation had probably evaporated even before arriving at the island. Just the voyage up there from Powell River was an exhilarating adventure, especially the boat ride through the tidal rapids immediately prior to arrival at the destination.
A group of fellow enlistees in the co-op had quite sensibly organized a reconnaissance expedition and had invited me along. They chartered a sturdy old working sailboat, which turned out to be an excellent way to see the area and hear some tales and gossip of life beyond the end of the roads and power lines. The first part of the journey had been out in the open Georgia Strait, with enticing panoramic views of snow-capped mountains on both sides of the wide expanse of open sea. There was enough fresh breeze to set some sail, shut off the motor and feel the delightfully smooth rhythm of the classic old schooner heeling and heaving into the lively swell. Farther on we motored into the narrow channels that weave their way through the picturesque and heavily forested rocky shorelines of the cluster of islands squeezed between northern Vancouver Island and the remote mainland coast, at the top end of the Georgia Strait. This area has come to be known as the “Discovery Islands archipelago” after Captain Vancouver’s famous ship, HMS Discovery.
The huge volume of water that enters and leaves the Georgia Strait basin twice daily, enough to vary the elevation as much as 15 feet on a big tide, has to find its way through these narrow channels four times a day, on its way in from and out to the ocean. As it squeezes though the narrowest channels, it accelerates to form some spectacular tidal rapids, some of which have 4-foot overfalls and whirlpools the size of tennis courts. We were lucky on this first occasion to be initiated into the vagaries of the rapids by an experienced, female old salt called Zoey at the helm of a very sturdy and experienced old boat called Sailfish, both of whom seemed to know exactly what they were doing. Although they took us through while the tide was still clipping along at an impressive rate, it was in the right direction, going with the flow and not against it. They also chose the line very carefully to avoid the worst of the whirlpools and turbulence.
“Beginners are advised to go through at slack water,” Zoey explained.
“What’s that?” asked one of the would-be islanders.
“The brief interval four times a day, when the flow of the rapids stops and changes direction,” Zoey answered patiently, and then went on with a grin, “But we’ll go through with the ebb running a bit. So hold on to your asses!”
Although the Sailfish rocked and rolled and accelerated to twice her previous speed, she and Zoey came through smiling, while we greenhorns gripped the handrails with white knuckles and collectively gasped, “Wow! What a rush!”
So by the time we pulled into the calm and serene little bay that was our destination, it’s quite likely that I was already sold. Other than the occasional little beach shack there had been no sign of civilization for miles. As soon as the boat was tied up to the makeshift bundle of logs that served as a dock, the silence, beauty and peaceful serenity were a marvel. So too were the merganser ducks and blue herons in the back of the bay, the seals basking on the rocks and the eagle checking us out from his lookout on a branch, way up at the top of the magnificent old fir tree on the mossy bluffs nearby. This was exactly the kind of neighbourhood I was looking for.
A good hike around the property revealed a series of benches on south-facing slopes at the base of a dome-shaped mountain with fine views out to the ocean and neighbouring islands. Although it was hardly pristine, as it had been recently logged, the clear-cuts were relatively small and accessible by a network of skid roads.
“The clearings would likely make ideal spots for homesteads,” one of the more practical visitors noticed, “and there was enough standing timber to use for building houses.”
“Or to retain the integrity of the forest,” another one argued, with shades of things to come.
The vibrations of the land itself felt good, inducing quite a lot of primal hooting and hollering from the woolly-headed visitors, including me, perhaps inspired by adrenaline. We built a camp and had a wonderful gathering around a huge fire with sleeping bags laid out under the stars, amid wind-twisted pine trees on an exposed mossy bluff overlooking the water. My imagination was working overtime on the fantasy of building a home and settling down in such a beautiful and stimulating place.
Next morning the sadness at having to leave the island and go back to the city one more time was outweighed by the exhilaration of knowing the decision to buy into the land co-op deal had been made.
“How did you two meet?,” a female apprentice asked Laurie eagerly. “Was it love at first sight?”
WHILE ROB WAS LIVING ON Shadowfax at Clay’s Wharf and working in the city to pay off the loans on his boat and the land, one night in the climber’s pub in Vancouver, he complained to the old patron of the west coast climbing community, Jim Sinclair, that he wasn’t having much luck with the local ladies.
“I know just the girl for you,” Jim responded. “Her name is Laurie Manson. She’s going to be in Squamish this weekend.”
So, he set us up for a blind date in “The Chieftain,” a climbers’ bar in Squamish. Without telling Rob, Jim had phoned me and asked if I wanted to meet a famous ice climber from the Rockies.
“He has long, scruffy, blond hair and will
be wearing a red windbreaker…. By the way, he’s a bit of a lad, so you’d better watch out,” Jim had warned me.
I had been brought up in Squamish and had learned to climb with a group of local climbing desperadoes who called themselves “The Squamish Hard Core.” They trained on the fierce walls of the local granite massive known as “The Chief.” They were some of the world’s best rock climbers but they had a wild and lawless lifestyle. Partly under their influence, at the age of 20, together with some other girlfriends I had become a good enough climber to make some first all-female ascents, including “The Grand Wall” on The Chief and the “Diamond” face of Long’s Peak in Colorado, and was just then developing it into a career as an instructor.
Being used to the Squamish Hard Core, I was not at all intimidated by the climbers’ usual disorderly barroom behaviour, and I was not surprised to find Rob and his buddies already quite drunk at seven in the evening. First impression aside, I knew he was a famous ice climber, so he must have had something going for him. I suppose by the end of that week end I was attracted by Rob’s energy, his ideas and his sincerity. It might have been bullshit but at least it was heartfelt.
“How about you, Rob, was it love at first sight for you?” Everyone in the steamed-up cabin laughed.
I WAS PROBABLY TOO DRUNK to notice at the time, but I remember thinking next day when I saw Laurie climbing that any girl who could climb that well could do pretty well anything she put her mind to. I was right about that at least. We hit it off right away and arranged to meet again at the Outdoor Centre where Laurie was working in the Vancouver Island mountains and living with her four-year-old daughter, Kiersten. I was immediately impressed by the quiet strength and inner peace that both Laurie and Kiersten possessed and by the delightful, natural intimacy of their relationship. This was exactly the kind of sincere integrity that I was escaping to, and the lack of which, in society, I was escaping from.
The attraction served to pull me away from the city, farther out into the wild, rugged and remote coastal landscape where the powerful combination of mountains, forests and ocean calmed my restless spirit and inspired me to take the plunge. Finally, I turned my back on the city and professional life and the security of steady income, for good. I bought the share in the land co-op and invited Laurie and Kiersten to join me in “the back to the land movement,” carving out a living from scratch, on a remote and beautiful west coast island.
“So it was love at first sight, then?”
YES. INDEED IT WAS.
“That’s about it for one night,” I announced wearily and we all turned in.
Next morning the storm continued and so did the stories.
-4-
COSMIC SHACK
“How did you get started living on raw land?”
WE FINALLY ARRIVED ON THE island for good on board Shadowfax late in the fall of ’75. Having finally paid off the loans on the boat and the land and quit my job in the city, I had sailed up from Vancouver and lured Laurie and Kiersten away from the relative security of the Outdoor Centre. It was the end of their season and Laurie was being laid off, anyway. It was late in the day when we tied up at the makeshift dock, so we made ourselves comfortable in Shadowfax’s tiny cabin, which would become our home for the next few weeks until we found a place to build some kind of shelter on the land. The other families were already ensconced in tiny plywood cabins, each with its own clearing in the forest, a few minutes’ walk up the hill from the dock.
Choice of family house site location was on a very informal first come, first served basis, and we were last on the list. Although the most obvious house sites had already been taken, a magnificent spot among a pocket of old growth trees overlooking the ocean on the edge of two acres of logging slash remained unclaimed.
With hardly any tools, no practical skills and very little in the way of money or equipment, we built a tent platform that quickly evolved into a primitive shack, using fir poles for a frame enclosed with cedar shake walls and roofs, all taken right out of the forest. We used plastic poly for windows and egg cartons stapled on the walls for insulation. The shack was very drafty, especially when the southeasters blew. You could see daylight through the roof and walls but it didn’t leak. For us, after living for a few weeks in a small, damp and crowded boat, in true Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen tradition, it was “sheer luxury.”
Though constantly being upgraded, but with the total cost not amounting to more than a thousand dollars, it housed our family and pets for 12 years. I’m ashamed to admit now, however, that the reason tall people had to duck to avoid bumping their heads on the low ceiling in the kitchen was that I had measured the height by using multiples of a six-inch nail and failed to realize that six-inch nails in Canada are only five and a half inches. I discovered this during a visit from Laurie’s brother, Steve, who, having evidently noticed our stone-age equipment and exceedingly crude carpentry, gave us a Christmas present of a tape measure, a square and a level. Too polite to offer to show us how to use them, in a masterful understatement he said:
“You could probably use these.”
Water supply was initially buckets filled from nearby running streams. When these streams dried up in the summer and froze up in winter, water had to be imported by boat from larger but distant streams. Some elementary water divining led us to dig a crude well in the forest up the mountain. This, more by good luck than good research, turned out to be a real well. In addition to collecting surface water as a reservoir, it had fresh groundwater seeping into it. A great deal of trial and error determined a way of siphoning the deliciously fresh water up out of the well and gravity-feeding it down the hill through 18 hundred-foot lengths of one-inch plastic pipe to our cabin.
Our first real luxury, running water, into the kitchen sink!
Heat was from hand-split firewood burning in a stove made from a recycled 45-gallon steel oil drum onto which a friend on the next island had welded a steel door and a six-inch stovepipe chimney. One of the great surprises for me was that as well as the immediate community of a dozen or so neighbours in the land co-op, most of whom were as green as us, there were, scattered around the neighbouring islands, a few very resourceful and practical craftsmen. The same guy who helped build the stove also improvised a cunning coil of copper pipe around the stovepipe that gave us a very simple but effective hot water system.
Bingo again. We had hot water galore. Super sheer luxury!
A minute’s walk out in the clearing, which eventually became a meadow, was the outhouse, a hole in the ground covered by a tiny, three-walled hut. The open side faced strategically away from the general traffic pattern. The throne was a carefully dimensioned hole cut into the plywood bench with a plastic toilet seat tacked in place around it. The seat itself was soon upgraded to a doughnut of cushy Styrofoam, after a visit from my older sister Catherine, who was inclined to compare the relative merits of the loos of the world – she had written a guide book on the topic. She announced in her most flamboyant manner:
“I don’t mind roughing it a bit, but a bare bum on a frigid plastic seat first thing in the morning is a bit too much!”
From the perspective of today’s green technology, the old-fashioned outhouse scores highly and is a relatively healthy, low impact, carbon neutral and waterless way to dispose of human waste. More important, perhaps, to us was the daily, bracing ritual that offered a meditative and uplifting, spiritual experience. While not exactly smelling of roses, the quiet privacy, unobstructed view and exposure to the elements provided an opportunity to listen to the birds sing, the wind howl or the rain spatter against the roof – generally, to absorb the ambience of the land while reflecting on the true nature of the universe.
Lighting through the long winter evenings was from candles and old-fashioned kerosene lamps, which, though romantic for a while, were soon found to be dangerous, polluting and difficult to keep clean. The most prestigious model was the famous Aladdin, which, although it gave a superior light when workin
g properly, turned out to be notoriously finicky to keep clean, while the slightest draft made the delicate mantles flare up and burn out. Fortunately for us, we had a visit in the early days from a friend in Vancouver who was a physics prof at UBC doing research on solar panels. After seeing our oil lamps he insisted on giving us a used solar panel and showing us how to hook it up to a car battery.
Bingo again! We had the extreme “sheer luxury” of power to the people in the shape of one fluorescent light bulb in our makeshift kitchen. This was a great status symbol and was the envy of the neighbourhood. Now, with our one electric light, we were considered to be really “upwardly mobile.”
Another mod con that was also powered by the solar panel and car battery was a marine VHF radio that boat people and remote logging camps used for making phone calls through the Campbell River marine operator. These devices were designed to be on boats, but most folks living on remote islands had them in their houses. Each station had a name and number which was usually the name of a boat, and every transmission started by calling up the Campbell River operator. For example, we would press the transmit button and speak into the microphone, “Shadowfax calling Campbell River radio.” When the operator answered we would ask to be connected to our required phone number.
The interesting part and, for us cabin-fevered country bumpkins, the entertaining one, was that because there was no privacy on the call, everyone on the whole coast could hear the conversation. This was particularly hilarious when one of the parties, usually the one making the call, was familiar with the system and would very often be cagey about what they said while the other person would not hesitate to divulge all kinds of sensitive, often intimate and personal information. Later the system was improved to provide privacy, but only for the party making the call. So the audience was provided with an extra layer of entertainment, elevating it in value to the status of mystery drama, having to guess, deduce or imagine what the person was saying when only hearing the bleep, bleep, bleeps.
