Grizzlies, Gales and Giant Salmon

by Pat Ardley

  Renovating Gus’s cabin had been a challenge for George because it was originally built by someone who apparently didn’t understand proper building practices. They must have built the walls flat on the float and then lifted them. This is how the cabin was originally built:

  Approximately every twenty-four inches they laid an alder pole to be used as a wall stud. Then they nailed poles perpendicular to the uprights about six inches up from the bottom and several inches down from the top. These top and bottom poles were used to tie the uprights together but should have been attached across the very top and bottom of the upright poles as what is called the “plate.” They flipped these framed walls over and nailed thin shiplap planks to the outside, trying but not always succeeding to centre the ends on an upright pole. They managed to lift the wall and brace it to others that were built the same way. Then they nailed hand-cut shakes on the outside. There was no finish on the inside walls. The roof joists rested on the top alder pole and the roof was finished with shiplap planks and hand-cut shakes.

  As a result of this curious building technique, when there was any amount of snow load on the roof of this cabin, the entire roof and walls sank down under the weight and rested on the walkway on the bottoms of the shakes. This also created a problem for me as I nailed my cedar shakes onto the new outside walls of the building. I had cut close to a thousand shakes to cover the new walls, and I was hammering into something akin to a soft mattress. The studs should have been sixteen inches on centre instead of twenty-four inches apart, so the whole wall would bounce when I hammered making it difficult to hit the nail a second time. George had bought a huge box of really cheap nails used for nailing plywood. They had rings around them so they wouldn’t pull out of the wood, but this also made them bend very easily. Using bendy nails on a bouncy wall defied logic.

  Heavy snow weighed down the floats. One of the old cabins was built in an unorthodox way. The bottom plate was attached to the side of the wall studs, which were simply alder poles, so we had to remove the snow from the roof before the weight made the building settle onto the bottom of the shakes that covered the walls. We put aluminum roofing on all the buildings so the snow could slide off quickly. We could then shovel it off the floats.

  The first wall that I worked on, I just followed the way that Gus had put his shakes up and found out quickly from George that that was not the right way. Gus had just started with a shake on one side of a wall and overlapped them across, then without measuring, started another row above. I learned to attach a long, one-by-one board or stringer across the bottom of the wall, then a row of shakes beside each other and then covered the gaps between them with another row of shakes across the bottom. Then I used a chalk line to attach a long narrow board that created the straight edge for the next row about eight inches up. All of this was done in the pouring rain and of course there were no gutters to keep the water from continuously inundating me. This is where the hammer-and-nail claw-hands come in. It was like a wartime torture to have to work as the winter cold water cascaded down on my wrists hour after hour.

  George had to go to Port Hardy to be a witness for the Fisheries officer’s seizure of the illegally purchased Indian food-fish sockeye fillets from the fishing lodge the previous summer. The lodge owner “defendant,” Mike, sauntered into court looking very dapper and well tanned from his recent month in Mexico, George told me. George approached Mike to ask if he wanted the float we were borrowing to support the old leaky boat, OM, while we repaired it, or if he would sell us the float outright? “Sure,” he said, “how much is it worth to you?” George said, “A hundred dollars?” Mike said, “How about two hundred?” George then said that it wasn’t worth it, but for the convenience of not having to pull the boat off “and having it sink again,” he agreed to pay him two hundred. Shortly after that, Mike pleaded guilty to one charge and the Crown decided to drop the other two charges. His defence was that “people are out to get me because I’m an American—and everybody gets fish from the Indians all the time.” The Crown asked that he be severely fined with the maximum, which could be as high as one thousand dollars. The judge announced that his fine would be two hundred dollars! Poor George. He was really choked at having to pay Mike’s fine for him by buying that scrap-heap float.

  The Page Hits the Water

  George had been working harder and longer trying to get the boat repair finished and get The Page ready for the water so we could take it outside of our bay into the main channel where we could use our VHF radiophone. Once it was ready we would use The Page for long-haul trips, for carrying freight and for carrying guests after we opened the lodge. Since we didn’t have a high antenna, we had to get away from the surrounding hills to have better phone reception. The phone on the boat was registered under the name, The Page, but when we made a phone call during high-traffic times, we would quickly answer the operator’s query with “Page.” It was short and sweet and the operator often heard our boat name before picking out a longer name. This would be very important later when there would be hundreds of boats in the inlet, and we might be fiftieth in the lineup to make a call.

  We had hauled The Page up onto the side of our house float using our handy little come-along. Then George used the hand jacks called Gilchrist jacks, which handloggers had used to move gigantic logs in the woods, to raise the boat, one side at a time, onto blocks so it was two feet above the deck so he could work under it. He built a frame around it that he covered with plastic so he could work on it in any weather. The covered frame also helped to keep heat in when it came time to set the fibreglass layers.

  Once the boat was covered, he attached the new and much stronger floor joists that he had cut from a log on my island. He then put a new floor on top and lots of layers of fibreglass to make it really sturdy. He also sanded the outside of the boat and added strips of fibreglass down the prow, along the bottom, on the sides and all around the motor well so the boat was incredibly strong and heavy. He finished the outside with a shiny, smooth gelcoat that made the boat look very professional.

  We ran the little generator for long hours so he could use electric lights the last few nights as he finished the final bits of fibreglass work and painting. We were bound and determined to be on the water by 7 PM in case someone phoned us. We had planned to be out in the boat between 7 and 8 PM on Wednesday evenings to receive calls and to phone friends and family. George ran everywhere, ten steps to get a screwdriver, five steps to get the sander, eight steps to get a piece of wire. No time for walking. No time for meals. We had lowered the boat two days ago so it was sitting on metal rollers with a few wooden blocks keeping it balanced and steady. The afternoon was speeding by as I called out the time in half-hour increments. As I pulled a meat pie from the oven and stashed it in a box with salad and wine, George was attaching the last bit of wiring, ready to connect the radiophone.

  Everyone who had stopped by to watch us work in the last few weeks had asked how we would get the boat back into the water. They were all doubtful that the rollers would work. “The boat is too heavy … There will be too much drag … You’ll need more people to push.” Needless to say, after removing the blocks, we were holding our breath as we exerted every ounce of our combined energies for the first push. The Page started to roll as if we were pushing a little red wagon. It hit the water at exactly 6:35 PM. Just minutes to spare in order to be in position to hear if anyone would call us at 7 PM, the time we had told people we would be available for calls. We suddenly had to scramble since neither one of us had thought to put a rope on it. I jumped into my boat and started the engine, hooked a bowline onto The Page then onto my towing harness, and I headed out of the bay pulling the boat behind me. George was already on the floor installing the radiophone.

  I laughed all the way out of the bay because The Page was sitting so high on the water without an engine to weigh down the stern that it fishtailed and danced around on the surface, but I had to drive far enough out of the bay to be a
way from the surrounding hills. George must have been getting dizzy but didn’t stop working until we were minutes from where we could pick up good reception and I saw him raise the antenna. I tied the two boats together then shut the engine off and scrambled aboard The Page. The sun was still quite high above Mount Buxton on Calvert Island, so the evening was lovely and bright with the slightest breeze pushing us along. We drifted on the current with just the sloshing of water as it splashed on the side of the boat, and the tranquil water sparkled all around us. Then we heard the haunting call of a loon as we gently glided out toward Fitz Hugh Sound—the perfect soundtrack as we toasted the almost-finished boat. It still needed the seats, steering wheel and engine installed, but it was now built like a tank, and the little finishing bits wouldn’t take too long.

  Every Wednesday evening, I boxed up dinner and we headed out and drifted around in Darby Channel hoping that someone would call between 7 and 8 PM. If no one called by 8 PM, we usually called someone just so we could be in contact with the outside world. George’s dad had found a travel agent in Duncan on Vancouver Island to whom we would pay a commission for sending fishing guests our way. We hoped that we would hear from her but it was still early, and we hadn’t actually advertised yet.

  The view from outside the main bay in front of our lodge where, in the mid-1970s, we drifted around in order to find reception good enough for making phone calls. A few weeks after re-launching The Page, we were able to lift an antenna high enough to get reception right in our house, just in time to receive a call from our first guests.

  We could now use the phone to call George’s mom and dad, who still lived in Lake Cowichan, and who would be doing a lot of grocery shopping for us to make sure that we had fresh produce and dairy delivered on a regular basis. Lucky, the owner of the Dawsons Landing General Store, told me that he would not put in a special order for me on a continuing basis. I wanted to cut down on the fresh produce that we would have to fly into the lodge, and I loved working with the soil on dry land. I had my garden looking really great now. I planted seeds in the house and set out tiny kale, Swiss chard, spinach and lettuce plants on the island. I planted carrots, turnips, beets and Brussels sprouts straight into the ground. I started zucchini seeds and planted them in five-gallon buckets beside the house. I also had tomato plants that I would move out to the front of the house very soon. We carried an old rickety wooden rowboat onto the front corner of our house float and I filled it with soil and seaweed. We enjoyed the sun-warmed lettuce that I pick to thin out the plants growing there. I will have lots of fresh vegetables to serve our guests this summer. Our first guests would arrive on June 25, and we were both looking forward to finally getting our resort started! There was still a lot of work to do though.

  Carburetors and Kenny

  The look on his face told us what had just happened. Our friend James had swallowed the needle valve from the carburetor of our broken-down generator. He had insisted that, “You have to take the carburetor apart three times … no less than three times.” George had already stripped and cleaned the parts several times and the generator was still not getting enough gas to keep it going. James took it apart again and said, “the needle valve is probably just clogged,” and blew into it. Then he sucked on it and the teeny tiny valve disappeared—right down his throat.

  We had been rushing to put the finishing touches on our main house/lodge building and our first guesthouse before the new fishing season started and now we had no power to run the table saw, and, well, no power. The saw was set up in the dining room of the lodge so we could cut all the finishing pieces right where we needed them. The generator was a five-kilowatt Busy Bee that we had ordered from the Princess Auto catalogue. Where on earth would we find the part that we needed? James was one of John Salo’s deckhands in Sunshine Bay and had come over to catch the flight to Port Hardy from our “Sleepy Bay International Airport Dock.” He was leaving and taking that very important piece of equipment in him. I wanted to nail his foot to the floor. George hinted that we would even be happy to receive a parcel from him in the mail.

  George headed out of the bay in The Page so he could use the radiophone. He made several calls and tracked down a carburetor in Florida and asked the company to “air-freight” the package to us in Rivers Inlet. There was so much work to do and very little time, so George started “ripping” one-by-sixes with his chainsaw. We needed one-by-ones and one-by-twos for finishing the walls in the kitchen and around the edges of the floors. This would take ten times as long as cutting with the table saw but we had to keep working. Ripping through a one-by-six lengthwise is a very slow process and is very hard on the chain. The wood heats up, the saw heats up and the language heats up, so I would make sure that I was working on something far, far away. There would be a cloud of blue smoke coming from the overheated saw and a cloud of blue air hovering over George’s head. I learned very early to read the warning signs and beat a hasty retreat. As soon as George finished a nasty job though, his usual carefree and happy self would return and I could work beside him again.

  Five days later the part still hadn’t arrived at Dawsons Landing. George called the company from the boat on his way back from the store. There was an air-traffic controllers’ strike, and freight was not being flown anywhere. We had to work with what we had, which was a very small 2.5-kilowatt gas generator that would power the paint sprayer, the hand drill and not much more. I started painting everything in sight, inside and out. It is much easier and faster to paint in an unfinished room with a paint sprayer than with a paintbrush and roller. There is nothing to cover and protect except the windows, which I taped and covered with plastic before I started spraying.

  My brother Kenny and his friend Alvin arrived from Winnipeg to stay with us for a couple of weeks. Kenny loved fishing and every time he put a line in the water, he caught something different. We ate well while Kenny was with us. He was in fisherman’s heaven but we had to put them both to work. I put a paintbrush in Alvin’s hand and pointed him toward the miles and miles of white trim that needed to be painted outside. Kenny and I worked together in the kitchen painting the rough chainsaw-cut trim. Most of the pieces hadn’t been attached yet, so to save time I cut them to size with the handsaw and we would paint them, put a couple of finishing nails partway into the wood, and then holding onto that nail, we then nailed them to the wall where it joined the ceiling. Kenny is taller than I am and could reach most of the spots where we were attaching the boards. I had to perch on a paint can so I could pound the nails in.

  Kenny could remember every funny line from every funny movie he had ever watched, and he entertained me with humorous skits. We were running out of time so we made up for it by not letting the paint dry before we stuck the boards up, and we were having a hell of a time holding onto the wet wood. I was on my tiptoes on a paint can, reaching way over my head, holding on to one end of a nine-foot board that was still wet with paint and trying to hit a tiny finishing nail with a hammer that was already slick with paint. My hammer would slide off the nail and splat into the paint, spraying white specks all over my face and hair. I started giggling. At the other end of the board, Kenny started snickering. Before long we were doubled over hooting and snorting when George walked into the kitchen. He looked at me, then he looked at Kenny, and in an absolute fury, he stormed out of the kitchen yelling over his shoulder, “It isn’t funny!”

  The poor mini generator just couldn’t work that hard. We burned out the brushes, which conduct the current, and essentially crippled the generator. Now I couldn’t even use the paint sprayer, and we still had to paint many rooms on the inside of the lodge and guesthouse as well as the cedar shakes and shingles on the outside of all the buildings. George bought the only available set of the wrong brushes at Dawsons Landing. He carved them to fit using his jackknife, and we had a little power again. Still no needle valve for the bigger ­generator though.

  We were using Aladdin lamps in the evening to conserve
the generator for using tools in the daytime. Aladdin lamps are nice and quiet (as opposed to the Coleman lamps that had to be pumped up and hissed from the pressure the whole time they were lit). They were also very bright, but if the mantle was a little crooked the flame would start to make soot on one spot and if you didn’t notice right away, the soot patch would get bigger and bigger until it started a flame burning. At this point, the light in the room would grow dim and little specks of black soot would start drifting down onto the page that you were reading as you slowly brought it closer and closer to your face because you could hardly see it. Someone would finally notice and with a shout of “The lamp! The lamp!” would leap up to rescue us from what was now a flame shooting a foot high out of the top of the glass.

  While still waiting for the generator parts, George used the chainsaw to cut a hole in the living-room roof to put the metal chimney through for the new fireplace that had just arrived. It was a Franklin fireplace from the Sears catalogue. At this point the only heat in the house was the old wood stove in the kitchen, which wasn’t quite enough to heat the whole house on a cold day. The fireplace arrived with a removable screen, a set of fireplace tools and two brass balls that we were supposed to screw into the top of the stove for decoration. I didn’t like that idea so I cut a chunk of Styrofoam from the packing box and screwed the brass balls into it and put the sculpture on a shelf in the bedroom. I liked the idea of having brass balls.