by Rob Wood
Some of us, who were closer friends than others, found mutually agreeable arrangements for co-operating. Certainly the children benefited tremendously from their happy experiences of growing up in such an adventurous physical environment and acquiring deeply ingrained self-confidence and self-reliance. They also benefited from their tribal experience of belonging to an extended family, acquiring a deep bond and love for each other. In spite of the incessant, unglamorous squabbling among the adults, we succeeded in protecting the kids from the brunt of the negativity and fulfilled, temporarily at least, the primary goal of creating an alternative community in spite of ourselves.
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ISLAND SCHOOLING
“What about the kids? Were they high too?”
NOT ON DRUGS. THEY WERE naturally high, engaging with the magic of the landscape and with each other. Kiersten and six other young co-op children close to her age lived together as an extended family, sleeping with different parents every night in whichever household they ended up in. Most of their time was spent playing barefoot in the forest and on the beaches. You could say they were “free range” kids. Even though we knew there were cougars around, the parents never worried about the kids and sometimes didn’t know exactly where they were. Parents were heard to say things like “Has any one seen the kids lately? I haven’t seen them for days.”
This is not as irresponsible as it might sound, because part of the reward of coming to terms with all the variables of living on the remote coast, especially in a tribal situation, was that through experience we learned to trust a sixth sense that provided access to a collective heightened awareness of our surroundings. Between all of us parents, someone would in fact know pretty well where the kids were and what they were doing. We had also noticed how prevalent this deeper, intuitive and instinctive consciousness, knowing without knowing, was among the old-timers we had met, especially fishermen, tugboatmen and loggers who spent a lot of time doing very dangerous work out in the wilds and had developed uncanny survival instincts. It was another example of being in the Zone.
This is exactly the kind of wisdom I had glimpsed while climbing in the Rockies, and also something that appealed to hippie sensibilities because it was a manifestation of the way loving consciousness can be used to overcome fear of the unknown. It supported and substantiated the demand for peace by showing that violence was not the only or even the most effective way of responding to dangerous external threats.
Perhaps even more important was the way this attitude influenced the kids themselves, so that they were not afraid. Our belief, supported by experience and traditional example, was that the behaviour of the animals was affected by our demeanour and intentions, and vice versa. If we thought and behaved like victims the vibrations of our body language would make wild animals more inclined to interpret us as victims. Conversely, if we were not threatened by their presence they would be less likely to be threatened by ours.
Co-op kids were taken three days a week in small boats in all kinds of weather for two miles through the tidal rapids to the one-room elementary school a couple of miles away on the adjacent island. The school had been closed for many years until a small group of us local parents succeeded in persuading the local school board to reopen it even though there were only about ten kids who would attend on a regular basis.
Because of the difficulty of negotiating rapids on a twice-daily basis in small boats with old outboard motors, we bought an old floathouse that had been a logging camp cookhouse. We tied it up at the government dock just down the hill from the school and fitted some bunks and used it as a hostel for the kids to stay in overnight. We also managed to talk the school board into a three-day school week, and the parents took turns house parenting the kids for the two nights at the floathouse.
This was the era of the Trudeau government’s Local Initiatives Program (LIP), and one of our parents who had been a lawyer (the original Greenpeacer who had started our co-op) knew how to file grant applications. We applied for funding to upgrade the kids’ accommodation from the (even by our primitive standards) rather slummy floathouse at the dock to a brand new timber frame bunkhouse at the school site. Part of the small print of the grant application required that the project satisfy all local planning and health requirements. The school board administration, which had originally been hostile to our endeavours to help ourselves, had quite surprisingly softened up because by some mysterious fluke our children had remarkably good academic records.
No such luck, however, with the local health inspector, who was not at all sympathetic to the traditional outhouses we were proposing to use for toilets. We had a meeting inside the old float-house with six of the interested parties, three on each side of the tiny kids’ table squeezed tightly between the bunks. On one side of the negotiating table were three of us local dads. On the other side were the federal government bureaucrat, who thankfully was on our side, the rather posh ex-British army secretary treasurer of Campbell River School Board and, wedged tightly in between them, the hugely obese and hairy-bellied Campbell River health inspector.
The climax of the meeting occurred when the health inspector finally made it clear that he stubbornly refused to budge an inch from his original position of demanding proper flush toilets with a hugely expensive septic treatment plant. At this point, to our absolute amazement, the secretary treasurer said in his most pompous English military accent: “The Federal Government of Canada seems prepared to put a blind eye to the telescope. The School Board of Campbell River is prepared to do the same. I don’t see why the Health Authority shouldn’t do so too.”
In the end we got round the health inspector, in spite of his massive girth, by successfully applying for funding to build, not a “dormitory,” but a rather fine “storage shed” to store our children in while they attended school.
Speaking of outhouses, there was another incident that went down in the “bunkhouse hall of fame” and illustrates how different were the values of what we considered politically correct parenting in those days. Generally we parents were permissive when it came to controlling our kids’ behaviour, but part of the self-reliance code was accountability and acceptance of responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions. When it was time to draw a line in the dirt, remedial measures were often swift and decisive, though rarely violent or unjust.
There was one particularly mischievous and outright naughty big kid who tended to bully the smaller ones in the school playground. He was accused of having deliberately thrown a younger kid’s soccer ball down the outhouse hole. When his dad heard about it, he took the culprit by the legs and dangled him head first down the outhouse hole to retrieve the soccer ball.
In spite of horrendous logistical problems and personality conflicts among the parents, the kids enjoyed the experiment in communal living, and even now those who attended the bunkhouse have strong and long-lasting friendships and happy memories, another extended family, essentially.
Not so the parents. The basic idea was that the parents should send as much food to the bunkhouse each week as the kids would eat at home. Unfortunately, there was one family who had three kids and used the opportunity not to bother sending much if any food. I listened to all kinds of whining by the other parents. When it was my turn to host, the three kids showed up for three days with three loaves of bread. At the end of the shift I sent a note back home with the kids for the parents saying, “Even Jesus needed some fishes.”
This did not go down well with those parents, and I heard through the grapevine that they said they were going to kill me.
Soon after the new bunkhouse was completed, the school board introduced a travel allowance which enabled the parents to buy newer outboard motors and run the kids to school and back home each day, so the bunkhouse sleepover days were finished.
At that point the very fine timber frame building served first as a classroom and later, when the school board built new classrooms, as a community meeting room. It has continued to do so ever s
ince. Over the years the pride people have in the characterful and charming timber frame building has contributed to a very strong symbiotic relationship between the outer islands community and the school. Both are benefiting from and dependent on each other in what could be considered as a genuinely effective and successful community school.
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DOMESTIC ANIMALS
“Did you have any animals?”
OF COURSE.
When Kiersten was eleven, she just had to have a horse. It turned out to be her soulmate, a wonderful character named Riskie, part quarterhorse, part Morgan, a brown mare with a cute white stripe on her forehead. I was impressed by and jealous of the obvious rapport the two of them enjoyed.
Kiersten was amused by my lack of comfort around the horse. For a start, Riskie was quite big and very powerful and definitely had a mind of her own. She was what horse people call “spirited.” I called her “Frisky Riskie.” Laurie and Kiersten pointed out that I had a bad attitude and my nervousness made Riskie more aggressive toward me.
It took me quite a while to get over this problem. They recommended I should feed her and give her treats as well as stroking and petting her more often. Particularly impressive was her ability to find her way back home after long outings into the interior of the island. Once I discovered that she could do some work my attitude changed a bit. I built a wooden pannier that sat on top of her saddle and could be filled with various loads such as boxes of groceries and firewood. In the fall we would travel several miles to an old homestead to load her up with apples. I was truly awed by the weight she would happily carry over rough ground. She could carry ten of my armloads of firewood. The only proviso was that four o’clock sharp was quitting time and she headed for the barn.
Eventually I did overcome my hang-up and Riskie allowed me to work with her, but much to Kiersten’s hilarity, I failed miserably in my one and only attempt to ride her.
Riskie’s greatest claim to fame was the time she boarded our catamaran, Quintano, and sailed into Heriot Bay. I had assumed this was a joke when Laurie and Kiersten first suggested it, and when I saw them lead her down the ramp and onto our dock I still could not believe they were serious. I walked away shaking my head, refusing to have anything to do with it. To my absolute amazement Kiersten calmly walked Riskie down the ramp, along the dock, up the makeshift plywood ramp, over the combing and down into Quintano’s cockpit. No problem at all.
Kiersten tied her halter to the mast step inside the cabin and off we went through the rapids. We even had a favourable enough breeze to put up the jib and sail for a while. There were some quite big waves, and as the boat rocked gently from side to side, Riskie swayed her bum to help keep her balance. Her head was up and her ears pricked, which showed she was enjoying herself. As the boat came into Heriot Bay we raised a few eyebrows. By the time Riskie walked up the ramp at the public dock a crowd had gathered and they all cheered when she stepped off the top of the ramp onto the landing. Kiersten jumped on her back and trotted off down the road. I was left to clean up the poop she had deposited on one of Quintano’s winches (henceforth known as the “poop deck”).
During the first ten years on the land we had a female tortoiseshell cat called Tweedy who had a lot of kittens. At first I was in the habit of drowning some of them, which did not go down well with the kids, so I thought I’d be clever and use the opportunity of throwing a gunny sack full of rocks and kittens into the sea to give the kids a lecture in elementary biology. I was explaining why we had to control the cat population. When asked where the kittens came from, I was attempting to tiptoe around the honest answer only to find the kids giggling hilariously at my prevarications. What finally stopped me dead in my tracks was when one of the youngest little girls blurted out with great glee, “Yeah. And that’s what all of that humping is all about.”
So much for politically correct child rearing.
From then on 8-year-old Kiersten took charge of the situation and insisted on giving the kittens away when she went to town. I thought it would take forever to stand outside the supermarket and dispose of four kittens. Not so. Kiersten had them all gone in an hour. What’s more, she continued to do so for many years after. She became known by a whole generation of Campbell River folks as “the kitten girl.”
When we finally decided to have Tweedy spayed, our vet friend Marlene generously offered to visit the school and give an educational spaying and neutering class. She invited all the local kids from the surrounding islands to bring their cats to school for the occasion. Everything went well with the females, including Tweedy, but when Marlene performed the surgery on the first male kitten several of the young boys in the class fainted.
More recently we had another female, black and white cat called Irish. She acquired her name because she had such a wild and rebellious spirit. Her previous owner had kept her, her mom and her siblings underneath their house rather than inside it. They gave her to us after the rest of her family had been taken out by a cougar. She responded well to our hospitality and Laurie’s animal witchery and became extremely domesticated and affectionate. She offered me a daily lesson in the giving of unconditional love. When my attention strayed out of the here and now, which it invariably did quite quickly, like a Zen master with his stick she put out a demanding paw and if the deviance was not remedied right away there was just enough exceedingly sharp claw action to ensure a speedy remediation. I never ceased to be amazed at how comfortably she could nestle into the contours of my lap and how grounded that made me feel. In spite of her wildness, Irish didn’t bother going out at all when it was really cold or wet. On the contrary it was impressive how close she could get to the wood stove without being cooked, how deep inside our bedcovers she could snuggle and how much of the time she could sleep.
The cat we have now showed up at a community meeting. A neighbour from the next island had a cardboard box sitting on the table, and when the meeting got boring someone asked, “What’s in the box?” Without answering, he lifted the lid and four tiny grey and white kittens jumped out.
One of them, quick as a flash, ran across the table, bounced off my lap, up onto my shoulder and calmly sat there and looked at everybody. “Rob. You’ve been chosen. It’s your cat now!” For the first time at the meeting everyone agreed. I seconded the motion.
Smokey has turned out to be a very pretty cat with all the qualities of Tweedy and Irish and more so. A wicked mouser, she is wild and independent at the same time, extremely affectionate, sociable, intelligent, playful, entertaining and lovable.
The first pigs we had impressed us with their strangely human personalities and their ingenuity at finding ways to avoid our attempts to restrain their freedom. Begrudging respect gradually evolved into admiration and eventually fondness, especially from Kiersten, who, just like her mom, was a born animal lover and their main feeder. This became quite a problem at butchering time. None of us were vegetarians, but we felt that if we ate meat at all we should experience what is involved in the kill rather than having someone else do the dirty work for us. The reward was a significant example of an important principle we learned about farming. It’s always good to get two things for the price of one. With pigs we got three. The actual cost, including the feed we had to bring in, worked out about the same per pound as store-bought pork, but the pigs also did an amazing job of breaking up the raw land, loosening rocks and roots. They fertilized the land as well. We can still see many years later how there are fewer rocks and weeds in the areas where the pigs were.
After numerous botched attempts at slaughtering we finally arrived at a strategy whereby Laurie tempted the victim with a carrot to push its nose through the picket fence while I held the gun directly to its forehead and pulled the trigger. Then Laurie plunged the knife into the throat to start the bleeding.
Maybe this tells you something about our personalities. Laurie could never bring herself to actually kill the animal, but she didn’t mind sticking the knife in and letting the blood, whe
reas I had no trouble with the shooting but could never stand sticking in the knife or the blood, even after the creature was dead.
We did the butchering when the weather was cold in winter, and it involved hoisting the carcass on a tall tripod with a block and tackle above a 45-gallon drum of water boiled on an open wood fire beneath. We lowered it into the boiling water to soften the bristles so the hair could be shaved off. The sharp knife went in again to open up the carcass and remove the guts. Then came the carving and chopping. The final and best part of this whole complex procedure was eating the bacon and pork chops, which were undoubtedly more tasty than their store-bought equivalents and free of preservatives.
The second pair of pigs we bought were one-month-old piglets from a farm on the south end of Quadra Island. It was a hot midsummer’s day and we had just taken delivery at Campbell River airport of my 13-year-old niece, Zandra, who was travelling from Halifax, Nova Scotia, for the first time away from her mum and away from the suburban lifestyle. Poor lass – she had no idea that what she was about to witness turned out, even by our standards, to be one of the most weird and wacky afternoons in all our years on the land. Talk about culture shock!
First thing was that part of the purchase deal was that the young piglets were loose in a pen about the size of two tennis courts and we had to play rugby with them for half an hour before catching them. Then we shoved them into gunny sacks ready for transport in the back seat of the car we had borrowed for the occasion. We had one caught, “in the bag,” so to speak, with the window open because it was so hot. When we came back to the car with the second one, we discovered the first one had escaped out of the gunny sack and the car window and had taken off across the surrounding countryside. To cut the story short, we eventually caught it after an hour of really embarrassing invasions of people’s privacy and an exhausting cross-country run and more aborted rugby tackles, but this time not even contained by the limits of a playing field or pitch.
