Dianne Bersea Perambulations
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Martin Helps Charlotte

9/15/2015

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'Martin Helps Charlotte' is the opening story in a series of linked short stories inspired by life in the BC Kootenays back in the seventies.  Your comments much appreciated!  Enjoy!
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“Hey, who’s the old fart? He’s been hanging out that window since we got here.  Do you suppose he’s never seen a woman before?’

Martin considered that he might not have seen someone like Charlotte before. She was all fabric and scarves loosely draped with long brown hair flung over her shoulders and repeatedly pushed back from a face so full of words, it was hard to take in.

‘Okay, take these boxes to the kitchen. Then the rest can go in the living room for now. God, there’s still a whole darnation load of crap to go. Watch the step.”

Charlotte swung another box through the gate as she spoke. She looked around the box in front of her and stepped onto the porch. Martin followed with a wobbling bundle of bed rails. Then they turned around and did it all over again.

‘Now, what’re they looking at? Can’t a person unload a car without it becoming a national event? Oh, here’s that box I was looking for. Can you take that for me?  And put it down easy. I’ve got a ceramic jug in there.”

Charlotte’s commentary carried on as they went back and forth with boxes and bags, pieces of furniture, clothes and bedding stuffed in pillow cases.

“Hey, this isn’t bad. We can really make something of this place. Come on out back. Look at this yard. We can have a garden. Did you bring the seeds in?”

Martin considered Charlottes use of the word ‘we’, but decided to let it go for the moment.   He nodded when necessary and shifted a few more boxes.  Charlotte’s plans tended to include whoever was within earshot, and he’d already learned that the best way to respond was to say nothing and keep moving.

Charlotte had prattled away nonstop ever since they’d left Vancouver. Martin had tried to keep his mind on what she said, but she just went on and on. Most of it he’d heard before. A lot.

Charlotte had lived next door, as in down the hall, for ages it seemed. And not a neighbour you could overlook. The day she’d moved in, she dropped over, asking questions, talking, telling about her big plan to move to the Kootenays. She had a brother up there she said, Simon, and she had it all figured out. Martin had heard about it… in detail. And after ten months of listening to her dream, Martin had offered to help her make the trip.

In a way, the offer was just to see how serious she was. But after she broke up with Gray she was plenty serious. Within a few weeks she’d quit her job, nothing she’d miss she said… and started packing. A small legacy from a recently departed aunt added incentive. The fact that Gray’s kid was growing inside her didn’t change a thing.  

“Well, they got doctor’s up there, don’t they? It isn’t the middle of the Allegheny Canal you know. Besides, I’ll probably have it at home.  I’d like to have a midwife. That’s how women should have babies if you ask me.”  Martin only nodded.  Charlotte knew what she wanted.

There wasn’t all that much to pack. Charlotte had lived in a state of transience ever since she’d left home in 1968.  Six years later she’d lived in as many places. Kind of a flower child who seemed completely right for Vancouver’s nearby, free-natured Kitsilano neighbourhood.

Charlotte’s Granville Street Bridge apartment had only two small rooms.  A typically bohemian third floor walk-up.  And you couldn’t argue with the rent.  Martin liked the building for some of the same reasons Charlotte did. Cheap rent. No hassles. Interesting neighbourhood near the crazy 4th Avenue hippy haven and shops, coffee houses, health food restaurants, head shops, and the essential all-purpose social-centre, notice-board laundromats. Good view too, if you looked beyond the bridge abutments and telephone wires.  What more could you want for $60 bucks a month?

“I want fresh air. Garden veggies. My own preserves. Mountains. I want to get back to the land. Well, into the country anyway.” Charlotte felt cautious using hippie jargon even though she seemed the perfect hippie with her anti-war attitude and willingness to smoke a joint now and then. But that ‘getting back to the land’ thing felt a little scary, a bit too big a dream what with the clearing of forests, breaking the soil, building a log house, being totally self-sufficient.

‘Getting into the country’ seemed more realistic, more achievable somehow. It wasn’t that Charlotte was naive or irresponsible. She’d been to visit her brother Simon several times. Checked things out.

Simon lived in a bush cabin, a mile or so from the small town parked on a river delta in the deep lake valley.  An old log place on ten acres offered everything Simon needed, with a falling down barn, a chicken shed and an acre of garden.  He wasn’t into the ‘back to the land’ thing either exactly. Just liked living outside of town, the wilderness feel of it, hanging out, sitting on his warped porch ‘surveying the scene.’

After each trip, Martin got the latest stories, how Charlotte would take the all-night bus to land up in Nelson at 6:30 in the morning.  “I always sit next to someone who likes to talk, until they fall asleep.  Then it’s pretty quiet, but I usually sleep a few hours too.”

Martin could imagine the bus ride… from Charlotte’s seat companion’s perspective at least. 

The adventure really began when Charlotte pulled herself into Simon’s big red panel van to head up the lake.  Charlotte loved the drive, winding along the lake, into the town, and the scale of it all.  “Only nine hundred people!  Can you imagine that?  Well, maybe more if you take in the communities further up the lake.  There’s lots of draft dodgers and ‘landers’, and ordinary folks too.  But lots of wildness and mountains, and big gardens and really cool orchards.”

Charlotte had even discovered a little natural food store.  “It’s in an old house with bulk bins of wheat flour, sesame seeds, curry powder and pasta!  It’s exactly right!”

Martin could always anticipate how this enthusiastic story would end…. “And I love it all!” delivered with her arms flung out and eye’s wide.

When Charlotte finally decided to make the move, Simon had been recruited to find her a place. “Nothing fancy. It doesn’t have to be too big. Just enough for me and the baby. With a yard. Yeah, I’d like a yard.”

Simon had called back only a week later. He’d found a small house that rented for seventy-five a month, in town only a few blocks from the lake.  “It’s got wood heat. You’ll have to get firewood,” Simon warned. But Charlotte didn’t mind. She had a place in the country.

As usual Martin was one of the first to get the details… the size of the house, the rent, the need to get firewood. Charlotte whirled about in her excitement, twirling across her small apartment, sometimes with a hand on the slight bulge at her waist and the other hand swaying above her head. 

But she attended to the moving chores in an organized way. Mind you, Martin had to help. Driving her up there was only part of the job. Charlotte seemed to need a lot of help just getting things into boxes. Martin began to spend a lot of evenings helping Charlotte sort and pack.  It helped that Charlotte had laid in a case or two of beer and, not to be overlooked, provided a bonus when some of her girlfriends dropped by.

Charlotte’s stuff had to go in various directions. “I’d rather give this stuff away than lug it all the way to up there. Especially if I don’t need it.” Charlotte found she didn’t need her university textbooks, several framed prints from IKEA she’d picked up in the local thrift shop, most of her plants, a dozen worn placemats and a collection of novelty salt shakers a neighbour had given her. But everything else was going, including two twenty-pound boxes of pottery clay and four dozen wide mouth preserving jars.

In anticipation of more limited shopping, Charlotte stocked up on natural vitamins, organic shampoo, vegetable oil soaps, incense and candles. Her new home might not be in the center of the Allegheny Canal, but it wasn’t on 4th avenue either.

The trip it itself remained quiet except for Charlotte’s excited jabbering. The van hummed along the freeway but it nearly stalled out on the hills the other side of Hope. Coming through Manning Park was slow going. “Maybe we should get out and push,” Charlotte suggested each time the van got down to a crawl. The long hill east of Osoyoos really put the pressure on the van’s aging engine. 

Then they’d stopped at a campsite just beyond to let things cool down.  Charlotte flung herself out of the van, raised her face to the sun and inhaled the dry BC interior smell of pine and fir.  ‘Wow, this is IT!’ Charlotte exclaimed, embracing the trees and blue-green hills with open arms.

Late in the day, they’d coasted down into Charlotte’s new town.  A couple of church steeples peeked above the green foliage… into a scene fraught with scenic icons… the deep blue lake backed with a cascade of sharp peaks, bathed in alpen glow. Charlotte shrieked with delight.

Many of Charlotte’s soon-to-be neighbours observed their arrival.  Heads turned and followed the battered van as it made it’s way towards Charlotte’s home at the end of D Avenue where it sat just across the gravel road from the ball diamond, within view of the lake and the huge lakeshore cottonwoods.

Martin felt the eyes follow them, but remained unsurprised, and the watchers didn’t seem unfriendly.  Simon had said a large group of new people had settled in the area, but they weren’t in sight at this moment.  These people looked mostly like what Martin would call ‘old codgers,’ or as Charlotte would say, ‘old farts”. Out for an evening stroll.

Folks didn’t pop into a community of this size everyday, so newcomers got some attention.

When Martin pulled up in front of the new place, Charlotte’s long Indian cotton dress and large floppy hat did seem to set her apart.  And the excitement that pushed her voice into the shrill octaves didn’t exactly make her invisible either.  But after a friendly wave, their observers seemed to fade away and Charlotte and Martin turned to the final task for the day.

By ten o’clock everything had been moved into the house.  Martin ate the remains of a sandwich, popped a beer on the porch, let the cool beer relax him as Charlotte rummaged around inside.  Within minutes of putting the sandwich wrapper and beer bottle aside, Martin had laid out his sleeping bag on the porch and flaked out.

The smell of juniper and fir blew gently across his face and into his nostrils.  Martin tipped his head back and sucked the air in.  The sounds of Charlotte moving about in the house fell on his ears in soft wood dampened whispers, and the milky-way sparkled in a band of light across a dark velvety sky. 

“God, she might be right.  This is okay.”  Though he tried to keep listening to the lively night air, with one arm flung out free of the sleeping bag, his knuckles resting on the bare wood of the porch floor, sleep rolled over him.

“Hey, rise and shine amigo.  We got lots to do today.  Simon’s coming round to give us a tour and help get some firewood.  Come on, get moving!”  Charlotte kicked at the sleeping bag.

Grinning up at her, Martin stretched and took a deep breath.  The air still smelled good.  Fresh.  New.  Mountainy.  He propped himself up on one arm and looked out from the porch.  Little old houses, not much different than Charlotte’s, sat every which way in their small yards across the street.  And further down he could see the huge cottonwoods that marked the edge of the lake.  Mountains across the other side had halos of morning light.

Hell, this looked even better than Charlotte’s dramatic reports.

Simon’s arrival required a bit of males sizing each other up, but within minutes Simon and Martin had bonded.   A “Hey man…” and a handshake.

Simon’s Grand Tour included Front Street, a jumble of lightly-maintained remnants from the silver boom years pre 1900’s, a swing past a beached stern wheeler that had plied the lake until relatively recently… followed by a cut around the bay past the marina, then a few miles up the lake towards Fen Creek and return with, according to Simon, a final mandatory stop at the community Post Office.  “Action central”, as Simon called it.

Next stop, a snack at the Postal Code Café, a quirkily restored muffins and coffee kind of place where the new people hung out.  “I already feel totally at home,” said Charlotte as she fluffed herself into a sunny window seat.

When they finally got out into the bush on the west side of town, the sun had already moved high into the sky with shafts of lights striking deep into the forest. 

Fortunately it remained mostly cool under the trees. Simon did the chain sawing and Martin man-handled the wood out of the bush. Martin’s muscles burned and his hands blistered after rolling only a few dozen timber-rounds down to the truck and heaving them into the back.

When they’d been at it for an hour or so, Charlotte came bouncing out of the bush with a basket of berries, thrilled with her haul.  “I got some blackberries I think, and some, well I’m not sure….”  Charlotte looked anxiously into her basket.  She looked up at the sawdust covered, sweaty, grinning loggers.  “So guys, how’s it going?”  The two responded easily.  “We - need - a - beer!”  “Or two!!”

A few days later, Charlotte and Martin contemplated life from the end of the porch, slouched down in an old sofa they’d found at the United Church rummage.

“You know Martin, you ought stick around.  You could get a job at the mill or something.  And I’m getting used to you.  I’m not suggesting anything as far as we’re concerned, but you could stay here.  There’s the room at the back and I’m going to need a hand with things when the baby comes.”

Straight out.  Just like that.  And why not?  Martin wasn’t into a career position with the Canadian Postal Service.  Mail sorters were a dime a dozen.  And his social life was, well, to be honest, it wasn’t very social of late.  He could hang around.  He could do that.  Babies made him nervous, but maybe he’d be back in Vancouver before the baby came.  That Charlotte was pregnant kinda made him feel hands off with her anyway, more like a brother.  And he’d been giving Simon a hand on a few carpentry projects.  Rolling some firewood out of the bush.  It could work.  Tomorrow he’d look at what might be happening job-wise at the mill, or the marina.

“So what do you think?  You gonna stick for awhile?”  Charlotte nudged his arm.  She stood up and pulled him to his feet.  With another tug, Martin ended up on edge of the porch. 

“Look at that Martin.  Just look at that.  Why not stick around eh?” 

Martin leaned on a porch post and swung his gaze over the neighbourhood.  And the lake.  And the mountains turning red as the sun moved out of the valley.  He drew the evening air deep into his lungs, and exhaled slowly. 

“I might just do that,” Martin said… to himself, maybe to Charlotte, but for sure to the evening air sliding down off the alpine.


COPYRIGHT DIANNE BERSEA CSPWC AFCA


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The Dilemma of the Butter Tarts

9/11/2015

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Agnes viewed Christmas through two lenses.  One, a prism that created a dazzling array of opportunities and options, potential visitations and teas… the other, a smoked glass that beheld the world in the grey shadows of loneliness and fear.

Although now in her eighty-eighth year, Agnes continued to harbour Christmas fantasies… visions of sugar plums, families at the piano, trees hung with lights and tinsel, cedar bough wreaths and greeting cards hung from a string, the air filled with the smell of cloves and cardamom. 

From a strictly practical viewpoint Agatha had very little immediate family or friends to fulfill these imaginings.   Health and distance had exacted their toll.  One husband, one child, and two brothers had predeceased her.   Another son lived on the other side of the continent and a daughter nearer but equally distant in a way.  Neither had been home for years and only offered hurried phone calls now and then.

Friends had also dropped away due to health and the inevitability of death.  Mind, Agnes’ simmering resentment rebuffed most friendly encounters, and even her building neighbours did not know her well.  

Nephew James, on the other hand, occasionally dropped by her apartment, usually with a gift of some kind, a plant or bouquet, an invitation to lunch… lunch at one of those modern restaurants, all noise and bustle where Agnes couldn’t hear a word.  Sometimes that seemed worse than eating alone.

As expected, two weeks before Christmas James arrived with one of those large wicker gift baskets.  James stayed but a moment to deposit the basket on her kitchen counter, give Agnes a hug that smelled of fresh air and aftershave, and rushed outward to some other engagement.  At the end of the hall he called back that he would pick Agnes up for Christmas dinner at five and then disappeared.

Agnes stood in the hallway for a few minutes looking after him until she turned inside and closed her apartment door.  She contemplated the looming presence of the ‘gift basket’.

With some difficulty, Agnes shifted the cumbersome basket about so she could examine the contents.  Without disturbing the plastic wrap, Agnes saw more than she wanted to see, a cornucopia of Christmas cheer… a jellied salad, a box of chocolates, a tin of goose pate, a bottle of wine, a tidy little jar of strawberry jam topped with a tartan lid, a round package of European cheese, a small square of Xmas cake and… a bottle of wine.  There appeared to be more surprises buried even deeper.

Agnes blew through her lips.  “Phhfff!  All this and a bottle of wine.  Now what am I to do with this stuff?”

She contemplated the basket for a few minutes further, and found herself loosening the big red bow.  Once released, the gathered cellophane and ribbon fell away.  Additional excavation seemed imperative.

As she lifted the various contents out into the light and onto the counter, she studied each item accompanied by agitated breathing.  Agnes couldn’t abide wastefulness.  Each item must be accounted for and divested in some way.  James would expect some kind of comment on his gift.

Agnes continued unloading the basket.  The strawberry jam Agnes could use.  She liked a bit of jam on toast in the morning, as long as it didn’t have too many pips in it.  She held the jar up to the light and turned it slowly.  Some lighter bits, or pips, nestled against the inside of the jar.  Agnes felt tempted to unscrew the lid for a better look, but she didn’t want to break the seal.  She put the jam down on the counter.

A box of chocolates next received her scrutiny.  Two layers of chocolate at least, some of them filled with chewy, gooey creams.  Agnes liked chocolate but more than one gave her cankers.  “I suppose I can take them to bridge on Thursday,” Agnes considered.

The shiny tin of butter tarts resting on the bottom of the basket caused the most consternation.  “Butter tarts!  Butter tarts?  Twelve of them!  More sweets I don’t need!” Agnes complained.  “Twelve tarts!”  Actually Agnes loved butter tarts.  She still remembered her mother’s butter tarts, so flaky, buttery and sweet with raisons.  But butter tarts also reminded her of social times at home, with Doulton China teacups and dainty doilies.  All long gone.

Agnes considered the magnitude of the dilemma.  Four tarts she could probably manage.  She could freeze them and bring them out if someone came to tea.

But social invitations now stymied her.  That any number of people might actually enjoy a butter tart thereby easily reducing their numbers, presented an idea beyond the scope of Agnes’ imagining.

“Maybe Meg will go for a walk with me, then she can come in for tea.  I could put the tarts out.”  This thought settled Agnes for a few moments.  Though, the real dilemma would be in asking Meg to go for a walk, let alone asking her in for tea. 

She stood at the kitchen counter, counting and recounting the tarts.  Twelve.  Not ten or a baker’s dozen, but twelve, at least ten more than Agnes could possibly eat with lunch, or dinner… or a number of meals in fact.

The whole basket involved so much more than she could eat on her own, or share, or dispose of in any reasonable way.  Agnes left the contents strewn across the counter and turned away.

She slumped into a large high backed nubby brown easy chair.  Her deep meditations on the dilemma of the butter tarts and other items, had exhausted her.

She relaxed.  Her hands and mind were finally still.  She exhaled softly and let her head drop back against the hard chair pillow.   As she sat in the late afternoon stillness in her small apartment, the rest of the afternoon passed quietly beyond her sliding glass patio doors.  With little effort Agnes could watch smartly dressed heads and shoulders bob and gently sway, floating by above the dark, algae encrusted cinder block wall that defined her damp patio from the rest of the world.

Drifting in a reverie of old memories, new frustrations and the residual emotional pain of almost ninety years, Agnes watched the dark November evening fall.  The heads and shoulders slowly became smoky, diaphanous apparitions, now backlit by streetlights and windows across the street.

Unmoved by hours, Agnes slipped into sleep.  She only came alert again when street sounds and loud voices broke into her strange evening. 

“My goodness,” Agnes said to no one at all, “What time is it?”

She tucked her feet down, and pushed herself to standing.  She stood for a moment recollecting a sense of her room, then edged her way toward her small kitchen clutching first at the chair back, then the wall, and finally the kitchen alcove door frame.

Agnes tapped the switch plate.  Her neat, tidy alleyway of a kitchen flashed before her.  Precisely folded, flower bedecked tea towels hung straight and true from the stove handles.  The toaster oven sparkled from the twenty-four inch square white Formica counter top.  On the opposite counter the brittle plastic cover of James’ gift basket cast sharp lights and rippled with the playful colors of an oil spill.  The large red bow and its curly satin ribbons hung off the edge of the counter and displayed in colourful jumble, all the treasures the basket had revealed. 

Agnes frowned.  It was one thing to speculate on what to do with all that “stuff and nonsense,” and something else to dispose of it all.

“It would have made more sense for James to bring me a couple of frozen chops.  I could fry one up for tonight’s dinner and save one for next week.”

Agnes didn’t feel she was hard to please.  It didn’t take much, from her perspective, to do the most sensible thing.  “Really, young people just don’t think.”

Agnes returned to her big chair, even dinner forgotten as she pondered the “dilemma of the butter tarts.”  The silly phrase almost made her giggle.

Unexpectedly, Agnes rose.  She moved quickly into the kitchen and grabbed up the bottle of wine.  She pulled her apartment door open, looked surreptitiously up and down the hallway.  Four doors down she stopped, glanced around again and placed the bottle of wine against the bottom of the door.

Amused at herself, she returned to her apartment, and swept up the next item, the European cheese and a nice small wooden box with a colourful label.  This time she went the other way, and only two doors down she left the cheese.

Now, actually grinning, Agnes returned and fetched the chocolates.  Again, a momentary pause to ‘scope out’ the hallway, and off she scurried to make another delivery.

By the time she had delivered the last of the basket gifts, she’d had to take the elevator to the second floor.

The next day, the building was abuzz with amused and excited tenants, each comparing notes about the mysterious gifts.  Agnes scuttled out and in as need required, avoiding extended conversations.  But when Bob of four doors down asked her what she had found at her door, Agnes replied, “I discovered a lovely little tin of butter tarts.  Would you like to come round and share a couple with me?”



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Can Politics Accommodate Compassion??

9/3/2015

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It’s been very interesting reading the responses to my enthusiastic Facebook post (Sept 1st) about Tom Mulcair’s recent Penticton campaign rally with local NDP candidate Richard Cannings.  I found the comments thoughtful and positive for the most part.

A few people brought some discrepancies to my attention though.  For one, I thought Mulcair said that he supported a $15 minimum wage.  He does, but it would only apply to Federal employees and those who work trans-provincially in Federally regulated industries such as trucking, the Postal Service and banks. I was surprised that bank employees would fall in that group, but pleased that a large group of Canadians might be uplifted by a respectful income.  

And, as often happens with a Facebook thread, occasional responses wandered off into discussing Mulcair’s decision to not appear at some electoral debates.  I’m disappointed that he doesn’t feel a need to be visible in that way and share his thoughts on Women’s Issues for example.

Someone else suggested I read Tom Mulcair’s book if I wanted to know Mulcair’s political agenda, and I might do that, though I like to react instinctively to the living, breathing person.  Another response reacted to the appalling story about the family that had been refused immigration to Canada, and the deeply disturbing picture of their son drowned on a beach. 

You’re probably asking what this all has to do with Tom Mulcair’s rally in Penticton.  It all ties together for me because I feel very strongly that what we’re missing in our race to replace Harper, is compassion.  Compassion isn’t a word that’s often applied in political campaigns.  I suspect it’s thought of as a ‘soft’ word, not a meat and potatoes word like the ‘economy’, or re-building the ‘middle-class’.  Even ‘education’ has a nice solid ring to it.  Or how about ‘foreign policy’?  But how do we decide what we need, want for our country?  We need a departure point for decisions that affect all these ‘issues.’ 

I feel we need compassion.  I sense folks recoiling at that word.  Maybe some feel angry. There’s resentment at the implication that they, or we, are not compassionate.  Maybe we’re not.  Recent research has discovered that compassion is more than a feeling of pity, empathy or altruism.  It might be a survival emotion that helps us bond in important ways.

 Here’s a quote from an article* about recent compassion research. “While cynics may dismiss compassion as touchy-feely or irrational, scientists have started to map the biological basis of compassion, suggesting its deep evolutionary purpose.  This research has shown that when we feel compassion, our heart rate slows down, we secrete the ‘bonding hormone’ oxytocin, and regions of the brain linked to empathy, care-giving and feeling of pleasure, light up, which often results in our wanting to approach and care for other people.”  Bonus --- compassion even helps us feel less vindictive toward others. Think about where that might lead in the policy arena!!

I’d love to see our political decisions made with compassion, made from a desire to care for others…, and I’d add to that… to care for ourselves.  Why is this important?  Because I’m looking for politicians who are capable of compassion.  I’m looking for people who will lead from a position of compassion, rather than from the cold, dark areas of economics that put profits ahead of human well-being.  I’m looking for people who will lead with their heart…, tempered by the realities of their human / earth centered intelligence.  I’m looking for decision makers who recognize that we can’t burn our own, or neighbours house down, in order to keep warm. 

I can’t tell you that I find compassion everywhere. But I did come away from Mulcair’s Monday evening rally with a feeling that compassion is hovering out there, not too far away.  

Article:  What Is Compassion? http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/topic/compassion/definition    


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An Early Adventure in Outdoor Exploration and Journalism... on the West Coast Trail

9/1/2015

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PictureHikers approach the Ordway House at Clo-oose on the Ship Wreck Trail, now known as West Coast Trail. Photo and darkroom processing by Dianne Bersea.

I’ve been riffling through boxes of photos and files.  I’m talking about one of those ancient manila folder files with a tab for content descriptions.  There’s a lot of strange things in there…, carbon copies (yes “carbon” copies) of old letters I sent, scraps of newspaper articles, and some of my early literary / journalism projects.  Among these mysterious papers I found notes for an article about the West Coast trail.  A version of this article was published as a three page spread, complete with photos, in the Victoria Colonist weekend magazine when newspapers routinely had a weekend magazine section.  Entitled “Even the Rain is Beautiful at Clo-oose,” the events described and the publication of the article happened a lot of years ago, in 1969.

 

I’ve made some revisions for clarity, hopefully with improved grammar and the occasional aside.  I’ve also been inclined to re-interpret the experience and my original journalistic analysis of it.  I invite you to join me on this adventure….

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On the long May weekend in 1969 an assorted group of like-minded folks from various Vancouver Island outdoor groups, joined together to trek a section of the Shipwreck Trail near Clo-oose.  Some drove the rattle producing logging roads from the South end of the Island, and others, like myself, flew from Nanaimo to Brown’s Bay at the western end of Nitinat Lake about mid-point on the now named West Coast Trail.


In a battered Otter float plane we traversed the inland valleys of Vancouver Island on a westerly trajectory, skirting the high mountains that pierce the central island skies.  At a near landscape scraping four hundred feet altitude we had good views of the landscape below. The wagon wheel-like scars where logs had been dragged into a central spar pole for transport and the large swaths of clear-cut overwhelmed me.  Although I’d heard about the extensive logging in the interior of Vancouver Island I had no idea what that looked like.  A rather startling sight.


Overall, the pilot considered the flight routine, despite the ‘low fuel level’ indicator light that glowed brightly throughout the flight.


We splashed down at Brown’s Bay and unloaded onto a partially submerged dock.  Finally on the trail, the sight of a dug-out canoe under construction brought us all to a stop.  We gathered around the work-in progress for a tutorial in traditional canoe building. 


Although justifiably taciturn, the builder shared that his well-weathered Western Red Cedar log on which he worked would be a canoe for his own use and powered by an outboard motor.  “Weathered cedar is less likely to crack or split while being worked.” he informed us.  The last canoe took the builder only twenty-one days to complete, “but that was without people comin’ round to talk” he pointed out.  Hint acknowledged though it appears none of us stepped back to let him work, and he continued to provide a running commentary on his project.


He works without a plan but shapes the canoe simply by eye.  The canoe shell itself is only one and a half inches thick when finished.  It is then braced with struts and painted.  The preliminary shaping was done with a chain saw rather than a carefully directed fire as formerly practiced.  Final shaping would be done with an adze in either situation.


As he gave use this information he kept leaping about to conform to the wishes of various enthusiastic photographers.  “Little more the left please.” “Could you stand with your hand on the bow, or is that the stern?”


Pressed by one our contingent to confess to his lineage he hesitantly said, “Nitinat Indian.”  Further pressed to admit that this was part of the famous Nootka tribe he said, “Well, so the history books tell us.”


Eventually we tired of our crafts and lore exhibition and we pushed off toward Clo-oose.  Hot sun poured down as we packed through open logged slash bleached white by coastal sun and storms, through dense brush and sheltered forest.  The trail was a mish-mash of rough planks and crude rotting boardwalk, an unsteady trail that frequently caught a hiker unaware by tipping awkwardly or giving way altogether.


As we reached Clo-oose we flung down our packs and breathed deeply of the fresh sea air.  Everyone paused to enjoy the beautiful view out over the last remaining buildings of Clo-oose onto the blue green breakers and foaming surf of the Pacific Ocean.


Some of us then ventured north toward Whyac to see a natural blowhole, and Indian Petroglyphs carved on the rocks.  These seaside marvels provided an interesting comparative between natural and native creations.  Eventually we returned to Clo-oose and headed for camp.


A couple of old houses, all that remained from an earlier and brief white settlement, provided accommodation for some of our group.  The rest of us unrolled our tents and sleeping arrangements on the only reasonably stable level ground, an Indian graveyard.  This seemed strange but ghosts and Indian reprisals were the least of our worries if indeed we had any at all.  In fact several people remarked on the peacefulness of the setting.  Rotting, bleached crosses stood above graves carefully wrapped in trailing coverlets of shiny-leafed Kinnikinnik, the so-called Indian tobacco.  At one time, most graves had been protected by wooden fences, now fallen and snuggling among the creeping vegetation.


(An aside here.  I’m shocked now that we would think so little of desecrating a Native / First Nation graveyard in this way.  I recently heard a tribal chief talk about how they wanted to be treated, even unto not using the term First Nation, but only referring to people by their official tribal nation.  Times have truly changed and I’m thankful for that.)


Arising into a morning mist and the distant booming of the swell breaking on the rocks, we soon set off for Carmanah Light, a fourteen mile (approximately 18 km) round trip.  We followed the beach all the way down, not once returning to the trail. 


And what a fantastic day it was!


Strange wave cut rocks loomed up like wrecked ships, castle turrets or oddly shaped faces.  One rock looked so much like a wicked face in profile that it is actually known as the “Witch of Endore”.  Tide pools teemed with life, nature’s aquarium.  Our group contained several shore life experts who brought additional ‘colour’ to the world beneath our feet.  On the rugged headlands tenacious clumps of little yellow flowers clung to the rocks, and on the steep beach cliffs yellow monkey flower and Indian paintbrush painted bright spots among the green.


To our right, the crashing Pacific surf plunged in over the rocks and curled up the beaches.  On our left we had a succession of dramatic cliffs, some of which reared up one hundred and fifty feet above the beach, their dramatic history evident in the warped and broken strata exposed on their faces.  To the North behind us, the white tower of Pachena’s lighthouse marked the horizon some twenty-five miles away.  Overhead, magnificent silhouettes of great Bald Eagles soared across the high blue sky.



Arriving at Carmanah Point, the light-keepers, Mr. & Mrs. Pearce, welcomed us with tea and ice-cream.  That’s right, ice cream, an unexpected treat!  A tour of their home and the Light-Station followed with lots of interesting tales, including the news that Carmanah Light-Station is actually in the wrong location.  


Originally planned for Walbran Point approximately seven miles south, coastal weather interfered.  In the 1890’s, navigation methods were still quite unreliable.  A crew and all their equipment landed in a fog.  When the fog lifted, the error became apparent.  (Hence the need for light-stations and life-saving coastal trails!)

 
Fortunately, as the Pearce’s assured us, the error turned out to be advantageous.  Carmanah Point is a better location for the radio direction finding equipment now in use.  (Carmanah Point is no longer a lighthouse in the conventional sense, a victim of the so-called ‘de-staffing’ of coastal lighthouses over recent years.)

 
I especially enjoyed climbing up into the lighthouse to learn how such a small bulb can cast a light miles to sea with the amazing Fresnel lens, a complex of carefully calculated glass bevels. 

 
Mrs. Pearce would not let us leave without some souvenirs.  We each received several polished stones from the local beaches, and some of us went away with the glass ball floats that had escaped from Japanese fishing nets.  My glass float had been made from a wooden mold with wood grain marks in the glass, a real treasure.

 
To return to camp, we abandoned the beach route in favour of the ridge top trail. The tide had now turned and would make beach travel hazardous.  The trail itself was not without its own hazards as the boardwalks are rotted and frequently give way.  Parts of the trail traced the very edge of the cliffs and the interwoven salal growth and roots made it difficult to judge solid ground.  At times the springy surface suggested we were treading on air.

 
Between the edge of the cliff tops and only a few feet further inland, the vegetation varied amazingly, from the ever-present salal to horsetail, lily-of-the-valley, wild pea and massive arum lily (skunk cabbage) leaves.  Only a foot further inland and huge tree trunks rose to not more than ten to twenty feet, where they branched out umbrella-like, curving landward, unable to push higher against the sea wind onslaught.

 
After a camp dinner of macaroni and cheese, we all gathered at the Ordway home, residence of West Coaster Jim Hamilton.  Dorothy (?) Ordway, Jim’s mother, Clo-oose settler and still occasional visitor, astonished us with tales of coastal life and her once-upon-a-time career as a dancer with Hollywood’s Ziegfeld Follies!

 
Jim also shared unusual tales of his experience in this rugged location.  Can you imagine that storm winds and waves have been known to cast a telephone pole sized beach log hundreds of feet inland? 

 
Of this I have no doubt as Jim has lived a good portion of his life near the Cheewat River just south of Clo-oose.  His stories and recollections of life on the coastal edge enthralled us. 

 
I became so mesmerized by everything I'd heard, following the trip I found myself scouring the British Columbia Provincial Archives to fill in the historical details.

 
Here is what I discovered.  In 1912, a team of land developers began a campaign to “promote a Pleasure Resort in the Renfrew District on the West Coast of BC,” in the dense rain forest where we camped.  The company produced a very attractive, though likely fanciful, brochure with attractive renderings of a three hundred bed hotel with sunken baths and sulphur pools(!), golf links and tennis courts, all to be financed by the sale of undeveloped lots. 

 
Among other unrealistic claims, a future resident would find no mosquitoes or flies on this part of the coast!  The artistic rendering of a landing dock that was to be built directly into the surf at an open ocean beach seemed equally imaginary.

 
Besides the intrinsic challenges of development on that rugged coast, the intervention of World War I and the failure of a proposed spur railway line from Cowichan Lake and even a road, led to the collapse of the project, not surprising overall.  That did not preclude the taking up of the property offer by some individuals who brought with them player and grand pianos, a grandfather clock, a waistcoat belonging to England’s George III, and even a door from Ann Hathaway’s cottage.  At one time a grand piano stood in the incongruous setting of an Indian Potlatch House.

 
All that remains of this community and resort are the two houses referred to above, one the Ordway home, and several settler graves.   

 
Though the project could hardly be called a success, life was seldom dull for those who made the investment and lived on that part of the coast.  Known with good reason as the Graveyard of the Pacific, more than twenty ships went aground between Carmanah and Pachena Points during those years, 1904 to 1938.  The settlers were often involved in rescue and salvage operations.

 
The last wreck near Clo-oose was right at the mouth of the cove on Mission Rocks in 1925.  The Tahitian schooner Rita Papipe was ground to pieces and along with her crew and French skipper, a portion of her cargo of lumber and young trees were saved.  One of these young trees, a Cryptomeria japonica, a Japanese member of the pine family was encouraged to root in the garden at Mrs. Ordway’s house.

 
During the early prohibition years, the 1920’s, things were very lively.  A booming business was carried on with rum-runners from Neah Bay and Clallam in the United States.  Things eventually became so unruly that the B.C. Police were stationed in Clo-oose.

 
Jim Hamilton has written vividly of the interesting social life of the community in an article for the Victoria Colonist.

 
“Great times were had at community dances; beer came by the barrel; fiddles and accordions were the usual accompanionment but sometimes Victrolas blared Prince’s Band, Old Suzanna and the like.  At one point a soprano conducted a rectal at the Bungalow Inn to the untoward accompanionment of howling dogs which could not be flushed from beneath the building.

 
"The Indans meanwhile had social affairs of a contrasting kind, usually masked dances, initiatory festivals and rites de passage and, in the summertime, on the beach before their settlement and around a druidic bonfire.  Curious whites would stand stealthily behind the curtains of the village store to watch the last throes of a dying culture.  The faces of the Nitinahts were usually painted with stripes, often black and red ones, and a sheep or two and numerous salmon baked over adjacent fires…,

 
"People of that era very often had strong and colorful characters, inner-directedness rather than other directedness being esteemed by the denizens of the empire-building age.

 
"…Such environments develop characteristics in the personality which, in the urban environment would be stifled by the monotonous pattern of good behavior.”

 
Life was exciting, intimate and meaningful for people whose every day accumulated a series of struggles and innovative solutions.  For those with a more sensitive nature, the constant contact with the natural world provided for a personal assessment of the individual’s role in the physical and spiritual drama of life. 

 
Here are some additional words from Jim Hamilton.

 
“Hearing of our hardships and dangers, strangers were very often bewildered that we should actually have chosen to live here.  But there are strong reasons….

 
"Often on a frosty January night when the moon was full and the sea had ebbed to its farthest point we would take a brisk walk along the beach.  Few aesthetic experiences can be matched to this one.

 
"Getting onto the solid level sand we would walk for an hour or so by the breakers gleaming whitely in the moonlight….  The moon sped through the jagged conifers behind the beach and the sky was a deep velvety blue with a spangle of stars to westward.  Across the Strait the red beacon at Tatoosh glimmered fitfully…. One became involved in a rapport with the sea, land and firmament. 

 
"On summer evenings around a beach fire we watched the trawlers come in from the Swiftsure bank to anchor and to toss gently on the Pacific swells while they cleaned their catch or slept.  Occasionally we lifted our eyes from the crackling fire and the running lights of the vessels to the amazing profusion of stars in the Milky Way.

 
"It made a superb arc from the pole down into the sea over the South Pacific.  Contemplating the massed glimmer of stars for awhile we were re-awakened to the knowledge that our world was merely a tiny star swimming along with millions of others on the other side of that bank of twinkling multitudes.”

 
I too felt overwhelmed by the powerful forces everywhere evident in this rich land and seascape.  From the moist heat to the booming background of breaking surf, from spangled night skies to rich intertidal pools, the trip had offered marvelous explorations, and intriguing close-ups of a rare world.  An additional bonus, we were treated to the leadership and knowledge shared by trip member, Ruth Masters, a vigorous observer / defender of these natural treasures.

 
On my return home I immediately considered how I might find a way to return to the Ship Wreck Trail, this extraordinary world on the edge of the sea. 

 
(And I did indeed return, once again to the Clo-oose area of the trail, and later I explored south from Bamfield to the Pachena Point Light Station where I had lived briefly as a small child.)   Below, Mrs. Ordway shares her story in the original family home at Clooose, West Coast Trail.  Photo taken and dark room processing by Dianne Bersea.

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    I'm Dianne Bersea, a person of many personalities and endeavors..., photographer, painter, illustrator, designer, thinker, visualizer, writer, sometimes iconoclast, and often frustrated communicator.  This blog provides an outlet for all of the above. All images are mine.

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