Grizzlies, Gales and Giant Salmon

by Pat Ardley

  The house we built at Dawsons Landing for the Fisheries Department in the early 1980s. Back-breaking work.

  Another Lost Boat

  The wind was howling in our usually quiet little bay. We had walked around all of the floats during the day, putting anything away that wasn’t tied down, and tying down anything that was too big for us to move. George checked all the ropes and cables that tied all of the floats and walkways together. He also checked the standing boom to make sure everything was still secure. Then we retied any boats that were not tight enough. We were hours from the worst part of the storm and we knew that the hardest winds would come in the middle of the night.

  The floats were already groaning and knocking together. It had the spooky feeling and sound of a pirate ship from an old movie, and there was a sense of fear looming in the back of my mind. George and I settled down after rechecking everything and went in for supper. We are generally so sheltered here, all the way around the corner and in the back of the bay. There had been floats tied here when a tsunami caused by the 1964 Alaska earthquake rolled down the coast. At that time, the people living here noticed all of the floats rise several inches, all of the ropes tighten and then everything went back to normal. We weren’t too concerned about the blow that was coming.

  George went to check on things one last time before we went to bed. In spite of our superior knotting skills, one of our speedboats had worked itself loose and was gone. George couldn’t see it anywhere near the floats, so it could have been on its way to Japan by that point. We could not afford to lose the boat, so George had to go out and find it before it went any farther. This would be a terribly risky trip in a small boat in this wind and the dark. I tried to talk him out of it. What would happen if he didn’t come back? Would I then have to go out and look for him? Okay—now I have to tell you my little secret. I’m also afraid of the dark! It probably has something to do with my early childhood: me in my darkened room with my sister and brother crawling around my crib under a blanket, while I ran back and forth screaming. I pleaded with George to let the boat go or at least wait until it was light outside, but he was not to be persuaded. He said that the boat could have been miles away by then and we’d never find it.

  I watched him bob and bounce out and around the corner and disappear into the pouring rain and howling wind, into the pitch black. He didn’t use a flashlight, as even on the darkest night there was a little contrast between the water and the shore, and the light close to his face would only blind him. I made my way back into the house and turned on the overhead battery light. Fear was grinding in my chest and I could not distract my mind from thoughts about what could happen to George out there in the dark, rough water. My two worst fears! What on earth am I doing in this country—this wild and dangerous wilderness? And how am I still asking myself that question?

  I paced from the living room to the kitchen and back again. I sat in the rocking chair. I stood on the porch trying to listen for the boat returning. Then I paced from the living room to the kitchen again. I knew that if George found the boat, he would have trouble getting a rope on it, and then it would be a slow process of towing it home. Knowing this didn’t help, because I could imagine him falling out of the boat while he tried to get a line on the other one in the slop. It was a very long night, and finally the pitch black started to turn to dark grey and then to light grey, and then the oppressive feeling began to lift. I went out and chopped some wood in the half-light. It felt better to be doing something.

  I stoked the fire in the kitchen stove and in the living room to make sure the house would be nice and warm when George got back. As I went out for my second armload of wood, I could just make out the intermittent sound of an outboard engine. Oh my God! He was safe! A few minutes later he came slowly around the corner, towing the errant boat behind him. He was finally able to find it miles from home because even in the dark of the storm, the white sides of the boat were visible as if they had their own light shining from within. And his propensity for boating in bad weather added more fuel to his Hurricane Ardley nickname.

  Starting a Family

  We headed into the 1982 fishing season feeling excited. Things were looking good. We had lots of bookings, and the summer season was taking shape very nicely. At the end of the last season, we sold the original twenty-one-foot Sportspage and replaced it with a used twenty-five-foot speedboat with a flying bridge, which we also named Sportspage. To house it, George designed a huge boathouse that we would build before the coming season. The roof would be high enough above the boat slip to accommodate Sportspage without having to put the antenna down. There would be a large woodworking shop at the back as well as storage space for several of the guest fishing boats and a second-floor level over the workshop with three more crew rooms. We were booking twelve guests at a time and we planned to hire more help for the summer season. We would have six crewmembers and they would each have their own room.

  Anthony, our erstwhile part-time handyman who we hired from Port Hardy to help with some of our bigger projects, was staying with us and helping George build the boathouse float and structure. The roof trusses for the building were massive and required ingenuity and planning in order to raise them with just the two of them working together. By the time the roof was going on, I was felled by morning sickness. We had been feeling more settled and our coffee chats had often turned to discussing the logistics of having children to share our exciting life. I wasn’t prepared to feel so terrible, though. We lived such a clean fresh-air life that I was taken by surprise that I could spend hours in the morning draped over the couch.

  I hated not being involved in the building process, but all I had to do was lean over my chicken house to collect the eggs to be knocked flat by the smell. (I will carry the memory of that brutal combination of cedar shavings mixed with warm feathered bodies and chicken manure for the rest of my days!) I would be quite useless for the rest of the morning. It was more than I could bear to lean into the chicken-coop aroma to pick up the eggs. I was extremely affected by smells and I couldn’t walk within fifty feet of the cage. Our solution: we gave the chickens and ducks to our friends the Coopers with the provision that when they were done with them, we would get the boom-winch float back. One day, George would be able to use it again.

  One morning I heard a boat troll slowly into the bay and then George walking out to greet whomever it was. They carried on a conversation in low tones, which I wasn’t able to catch because my head was in a bucket and the rest of me was again, draped over the couch. I found out later that the visitor was a police boat from Bella Bella, and the rcmp fellows on board were hoping I would make them lunch. George apparently explained to them where I was and what I was doing, and they beat a hasty retreat! I’ve always felt a little guilty about that. I do hope they eventually found lunch somewhere in the inlet.

  There were rumblings in the global market that the world economy was not as rosy as it once seemed to be. Stocks were falling, oil prices were dropping and freight companies were losing business. What started out to be an amazing year suddenly wasn’t looking so good. We lost quite a few bookings when large companies in the US and Canada had to lay off hundreds of employees. The perception would not be good if company executives were flying off for an expensive holiday when, at the same time, staff were losing their homes. We lowered our expectations and tightened our belts like most other successful companies were doing.

  We had always had a large number of husbands and wives, or fathers and sons fishing with us. Many times guests who first came to us as part of a company group would book again with their wives. We had always had a washroom with a shower in each guestroom, so once the men saw that their wives would be comfortable at our place they happily booked more trips. This would be our saving grace when we could no longer rely on company-only business. Some women arrived expecting to lounge out on the deck, but they would get caught up in the excitement of catching such big beautifu
l fish and often became more avid than their partners, pushing for earlier wake-up calls and wanting to stay out through lunch.

  We had a “good enough” season that year and went into the fall making plans to house a baby in our one-bedroom home.

  But first … we had a hunting trip to attend to. George had cooked up a plan to go moose hunting with our neighbours Lois and Floyd Casperson, who were caretaking at Duncanby Landing. They owned a fishboat, which was our transportation to Bella Coola, where they owned a home. From there we used their truck and drove up past the Rainbow Mountains, or “Rainbum Mountains”—so named because I was eight months pregnant at this point, and there were four of us crammed into the front seat of their truck. I sat sideways with my bottom pressed hard against the door, and I had to pee every few miles. It was initially a slip of the tongue but we continued to call them the Rainbum Mountains from then on.

  We drove on and up toward the small community of Anahim Lake, about eighty miles east of Bella Coola. This road, Highway 20, which is called “Freedom Road,” had way too many sharp hairpin turns with no possibility of seeing if another vehicle was coming around the corner. Some parts were so narrow that if you did meet another car, one of you had to back up to a wider space with the cliff going straight up beside your car on one side and straight down on the other. Some parts had an 18 percent grade and, at one time, we stood at the side of the cliff in a light cloud and could see three switchbacks below us before another cloud hid the rest of the road. After the most harrowing driving trip ever—there are t-shirts available, I survived the Anahim Hill—we arrived safely in Anahim Lake to stay overnight.

  We flew in a tiny Cessna the next morning to Eliguk Lake, where the plane pulled up to a dock in front of the cabin we would use. The scenery was spectacular, with snow-covered mountains and glaciers in the distance. The four of us were staying in a large cabin that didn’t have much in the way of amenities. Good thing I had an internal furnace because I might have frozen to death there. And, oh boy, what next?—an outhouse for my many trips to the toilet in the middle of the night. We had seen lots of grizzly and black bear on our way to Anahim, so I thought, probably correctly, that there would be plenty around here.

  The new boatshed had room to house our new twenty-five-foot Sportspage, plus one of the guest speedboats, a woodworking shop, a mechanical workshop, crew rooms, storage and a winch for lifting motors. It was invaluable for its myriad uses over the years.

  I started to feel uneasy when George went hunting with Floyd, and I was left behind with Lois—leaving me to sit and read, Lois to cast for fish off the dock. I squashed any pangs that I felt about being in the middle of nowhere without a way of contacting the pilot. I must be crazy, I thought. I gave it up to pregnancy brain. What was George’s excuse? Eight months pregnant, I should be sitting with my feet up eating bonbons and reading a good book. Oh, I was. But I wasn’t supposed be in the Middle of Fuck Nowhere!

  The men didn’t end up shooting anything that morning—or any morning actually. They slogged around in the open bush and came home hungry and tired three days in a row. The guys had done the grocery shopping, and we were short of food. They thought we would be augmenting our meals with trout and moose steaks. It was harder to catch a fish than to sight a moose. When the plane finally appeared on the horizon, I started salivating. I’m eating for two here! I was starving!

  We flew back to Anahim, drove back down to Bella Coola, and then took the slow boat to China back to Rivers Inlet. I think it will be a while before I am talked into a hunting trip again. It has been a while. Well, never. No, I’ll never go hunting again.

  Just two weeks later I flew to Edmonton to stay with my sister Marcia and brother-in-law Murray. For this I am truly grateful. I felt safe and cared for, and our dear son, Casey, was born just three weeks after that, at the end of December. My other sister, June, lived just a mile away, so there was much going back and forth between the two houses. My mom came from Winnipeg to stay with us and have some daughter-and-new-grandchild fun. We wore a rut in the road between the two houses.

  Right after New Year’s Eve, George flew home to the inlet from Edmonton while I stayed on with my sisters for more cherished cosseting. He planned to build a room for the baby at the lodge. It was a complicated build. Not just because it was on a float. But because he was joining three parts of the house with three different rooflines and none of the walls were straight and the floors were at different levels. But he was so proud of the sweet little room that he had added on behind the kitchen. It was perfect. He had also added a hallway and bathroom at the back of the room that joined with our bathtub room and the back of our bedroom. It must have been so frustrating, joining all those wacky sections. But I was happy because this meant I wouldn’t have competition for the bathroom when we had summer female staff here.

  Our son, Casey, was born in December 1982.

  Casey and I flew home to Rivers Inlet from Vancouver via Sandspit on Moresby Island. A circuitous route to be sure. Port Hardy was socked in with fog, so the jet flew right over it and headed up to the Queen Charlotte Islands and the Sandspit Airport. While waiting for the fog to clear, I met another mother with a very small baby. We started chatting and became fast friends. Bonnie Lunn was heading into Dawsons Landing, where her husband, Brian, was the new Fisheries officer. Eventually the fog cleared around Port Hardy, and we were flown back there to catch our float plane into the inlet.

  George zoomed out to pick us up at the dock. He couldn’t wait to show us the new baby room. Mmm, the smell of fresh coffee when we walked into the house. I could see that he had been working late nights to finish the construction. Everything was general chaos in the rest of the house but the baby room was immaculate. He had put together the crib and there was a changing table with diapers already piled on it. He hung up the tiny new outfits in the open closet and arranged stuffed toys on the shelves.

  George walked Casey around his new digs and explained to him everything he was looking at. Then he carried him outside and walked him all around the floats and into the workshops explaining about all the tools and equipment and what he would one day be able to do with it all. They were an inseparable team from that day on.

  You’d Better Have a Good Excuse

  We were going to build a new float. We needed to collect the logs, either by stroke of luck—finding ones that had broken away from a log boom—or by a great amount of effort on George’s part. There was still a public timber-cutting area about three miles from our bay, and we’d gotten float logs there before. George had marked several giant cedar trees for our use. He headed out in our work skiff at about 9:30 AM to cut one of the trees down. It was the beginning of February 1983, cold and dry, and the days were short with the sun going down behind the hills by 2 PM, leaving the channels and bays submerged in darkness and eerily still.

  George would have to be back in our bay by 12:30 PM, or I would know that there had been a problem, and, worst-case scenario, I would need the extra daylight hours to help him. I pottered around in the house and after lunch put baby Casey down for a nap. After 12 PM, I started watching the clock, minute by minute ticking by. Usually, George would be home well before the cut-off time. At 12:15, I started to get anxious. By 12:25, I was getting mad. Did he really think I wanted to take our two-month-old out in a boat on a freezing-cold winter day to find out that he had simply forgotten to look at his watch?

  I bundled Casey up with a little sense of urgency, strapped him into his life jacket and settled him in his car seat, which sat on the floor of the boat. We zipped out of the bay and pounded across the waves of Darby Channel and all the way to the farthest corner of Morgan Bay to where there was a tiny indent with no beach, just rock wall from the water to the trees.

  I had the canvas top down on my speedboat, and I stood as I drove so I could better see over the windshield. As I rounded the last point at the entrance to the little bay, I immediatel
y saw George standing on the rocks where a large creek tumbled into the ocean. I was flooded with relief and at the same time I furiously shouted, “You better have a bloody good excuse for being late!”

  I slowed the boat down and as we trolled closer to the shore, I could see what George was pointing at. There was a tree, a tall alder with lots of branches, lying across his now submerged work skiff. George was standing sheepishly on a rock and his big Stihl 090 chainsaw was balanced across two other rocks about ten feet above him.

  I nosed the speedboat carefully up to the rock so George could clamber on and gingerly climb over the windshield and into the boat. My anger had dissipated somewhat as soon as I saw that he did indeed have a good excuse. He was so lucky that the tree hadn’t fallen on his head! He was also lucky that, in my relief in seeing him safe, I no longer felt the need to knock him over the head for sinking the engine, the extra chainsaw and all the other gear into the salt water.

  The next day, George headed back over to rescue the boat and equipment. He used the Stihl to trim the branches off the alder that was holding the boat down. Then he bucked the tree into pieces that he could move one at a time on his own and rolled them over the side of the boat. At low tide he removed the motor and the gas tank and all of the tools, then bailed out as much water as he could. The boat floated when the tide came back in and other than the mess inside from the alder branches, you couldn’t tell that a tree had recently smashed down on it. George towed the skiff home and ran fresh water through the engine to flush out the salt water and was able to get it running again for his next tree-felling exploits.