When Is a Man

by Aaron Shepard

  Each night, with the last fish tagged and released, he found his resolve. He drafted letters and a proposal, recalling the language and tone of academia. It was easier to consider his future at night, surrounded by a darkness he’d never grown accustomed to.

  The morning before Tanner would arrive with the biologists, he counted only three fish. This was his last true day here. Tomorrow, he would have an hour or two of peace, and then the site would fill with trucks and a bunch of men standing around in a loose circle, sipping from travel mugs and laughing at inside jokes. He would be the stranger among them but also an object of curiosity. They would ask a dozen questions, examine the fence, and be disappointed there were no trout in the weirs. Tanner would say, “You should have saved us one.” Everyone would split into groups to walk the different reaches of Basket Creek and the Immitoin. Afterwards, he and Tanner would dismantle the traps, pull the rebar, and roll up the fence, and that would be that.

  So he had lots to do on his final day. Take the fish scope up Basket Creek one last time, careful not to step on any redds. Find a stone from the creek, another from the Immitoin. Sit and drink something hot in front of the fire, roast his dinner in the coals, smell the woodsmoke, watch the ash drift. Feel the trout struggle in the net, all muscle, all willpower and motion.

  Subject: Proposal for Ethnographic Research

  From: Paul Rasmussen

  To: Dr. Elias Tamba

  Eleven hundred people were forced from their homes in 1970 by the construction of the McCulloch Dam on the Immitoin River. This is less than the estimated two thousand or so people displaced along the nearby Arrow Lakes and a far cry from the millions of people who will have been displaced by China’s Three Gorges Dam upon its completion. Still, the Immitoin Valley provides a unique opportunity to conduct an ethnographic study of those who have been displaced by hydroelectric dam activity.

  The displaced were farmers, ranchers, loggers, and veterans from both World Wars living along the valley bottom where the river widened into two lakes. Four hundred and fifty of them lived in the largest community, known as Lambert, which had resisted incorporation and had, for much of its existence, depended on steamships for transportation and access to the outside world. Unlike most nearby communities, including Shellycoat, Lambert began not as a mining claim but as a cherry orchard, planted by Dutch and German settlers. At its peak, Lambert’s fruit production rivalled that of the Kootenays and the Okanagan.

  The valley has undergone remarkable physical change. For most of those who lived in places like Lambert, the very landscape of home has ceased to exist. How did these rural farmers—many of them descendants of the valley’s first European settlers—respond and adapt to this deep, irreconcilable loss? On the other hand, how have the children and grandchildren of these displaced citizens (as well as the displaced citizens who still live) benefited from the more modern communities created by the dam? These are some of the questions I hope to answer in my study.

  One of the significant effects of the relocation has been the widespread dispersal of these people after the flooding. The government relocated many citizens to Bishop, which is now a ghost town. Thus, no concentrated population of displaced citizens can be studied through observation or immersion. There’s no physical, tangible community, nor a virtual one (there’s no forum or chat room for displaced Lambert locals, for example, and I doubt many would show up if one were created).

  My methodology will primarily be face-to-face interviews with those participants still living in the Immitoin Valley. Gina Hubert, a Shellycoat resident whose family was relocated prior to her birth, will act as a gatekeeper and key informant, providing names and access to potential participants. This includes her mother, Elsie Hubert, old neighbours, and friends of the family. Also, her ex-husband, Billy Wentz, and his father, Cyril.

  Those are the bones of the proposal, anyway. Will send you something more thorough and formal once I settle in. I should mention that I expect hostile reactions to the study from some participants, particularly Billy and Cyril. Not for the reason you’re probably imagining—they’re just generally hostile toward everyone. One potential key informant, Hardy Wallace, has shown signs of mental instability and may be impossible to interview (at least without being shot at—or was that the level of seriousness you’ve been hoping for?).

  Convalescing,

  Paul

  Agnes Hutchinson (b. 1929, 80 yrs old)

  Partial transcript, taped at her home in Shellycoat, October 27, 2009.

  Agnes was a neighbour of Gina Hubert’s parents prior to the flooding of the Immitoin Valley. She lived and married in the house where she was born, on an acreage next to the ferry landing across from Lambert. Her family raised and sold cattle, lamb, wheat, potatoes, and corn until they were relocated to Bishop in 1968.

  She lives in a small house only a block away from Shellycoat’s main street, a few minutes’ walk from my own place. In her kitchen and living room are things from before the flood: medicine bottles, candleholders, matchboxes, doilies. A framed sepia photograph on the mantle shows her in her twenties—a tall, lean woman standing on a split-rail fence. When she notices my interest in the picture, she brings out her old photo albums.

  Before my visit, I’d come up with a number of questions, based on the literature and comparative studies I’d been reading for the last week, which I hoped to ask all my participants. Following this interview, I’m considering a few changes.

  Paul: How did the flood alter your perspective of the landscape?

  Agnes: Pardon?

  P: I mean, in the absence of familiar landmarks and structures, how did you go about redefining your sense of place?

  A: I’m sorry, I’m not sure I . . .

  P: Right. Of course. Let me just rephrase . . . What do you miss the most about your old life? Besides your home, of course.

  A: I suppose the steamship—a sternwheeler, which was the best boat for getting through the shallows between the two lakes. The Westminster. I miss seeing it come in. A cable ferry replaced all the steamships in the fifties, right up to the flood. Our kitchen looked out on the water toward the wharf.

  Those are apple boxes being unloaded off the ship. 1925. The photo’s a bit worn, my father didn’t take great care of his pictures. The apples are from Lambert, of course. We used to trade meat for fruit and jam and quilts the Mennonite women made. No one ever paid for eggs back then. Knew a Swiss fellow and his wife from Lambert, produced their own cheese and sausages. Quite lovely. We had a root cellar for our own vegetables and homemade elderberry wine.

  That’s Harry leaning against the truck. Gina Hubert’s father. This is around 1963. Man standing with him is Cyril Wentz. Cyril or Sid, I can’t remember. A faller and bullbucker. His wife cut hair. She could smoke half a pack in the time it took to give your bangs a trim. Now, this photo’s from . . .

  P: 1925.

  A: Yes, right . . . those are my parents on the left. The Fruit Growers’ Association would hold a dance every fall at the town hall in Lambert. Donald Wallace was president of the association in the valley and he organized the shipping and distribution.

  P: Bit of a coincidence, eh? The hall dance in 1925, you were born in ’26.

  A: Pardon?

  P: Never mind.

  A: This is me in ’75. My photos are out of order here. That’s Bishop’s schoolhouse behind me. It was also the library and the firehall. I taught there for almost eight years, but there was hardly enough children to justify the work. It was mostly older folks who were relocated to Bishop. I think the government hoped it would grow into a proper mill town. John, my husband, had to get a job in Shellycoat, drove there and back every day for ten years until we moved.

  It was
Bill Newcomb from Monashee Power that dealt with us. We’d known him for years. We did okay with the sale. Enough to put away savings. Drew a good number in the lottery too: we picked out a lot set back from the logging road, a quiet place with some timber and southern exposure . . .

  P: Sorry, what do you mean by lottery?

  A: Bishop used to be a steamship landing with a few houses and farms. Monashee purchased all the surrounding Crown land for, what was it called, “restitution purposes” and divided it into lots. Everyone who was going to Bishop entered a lottery—well, we had to enter if we were to live there.

  P: What did people think of that system?

  A: Well, some complained it was rigged, but how could you prove something like that? Anyway, we were lucky, because Bill quit about as soon as he started, and most other folks had to deal with this other fellow. I heard he liked to put the scare into people. You didn’t make out so well with him, I think is what happened.

  Paul moved into an apartment, a one-bedroom suite on the main floor of a house uphill from Shellycoat’s main street. He converted half the bedroom into an office and bought a desk, a filing cabinet, and a chair from a garage sale. Tanner had given him a spare television, a gigantic, boxy thing that dominated one corner of the living room, which had a partial view of the river flowing past town. Gina had promised to bring over some plants. He liked the height of the bathroom sink—this was a sink in which a man could properly wash his penis, now that the days of solar camp showers and plastic water basins were behind him.

  The kitchen and front entrance of his suite faced a quiet avenue lined with maples and chestnuts. On the southwest side, a back door opened onto a long covered porch facing downtown. The porch, cluttered with snowboards, kayaking gear, a table and chairs, also served as the entrance to the upstairs suite where Jory lived with his girlfriend, Sonya.

  The first day after his job ended, he’d popped into Jory’s shop to return the fish scope. The shop was chaotic, mountain bikes shoved into a dense row along the back and snowboards, jackets, and ski goggles crowding the display window, while teenagers pawed through shelves of discounted T-shirts and used skateboards. The young man clasped his hand enthusiastically after an aborted attempt at a complicated handshake, and Paul was grateful and relieved that their one brief meeting had counted for something.

  On the drive from Basket Creek back to Shellycoat, he’d been desperate for a solid plan, his mind still generating and discarding ideas that felt like the remaining wisps of the morning’s clouded dream. The trailer, hitched once again to Tanner’s truck, bounced along ahead of him, and the sight was sad and frightening. Once in town, he’d booked a room and spent the night and the next morning rearranging his life, making calls and e-mails and fine-tuning his proposal to Dr. Tamba and the anthropology department.

  The housing gods were on his side, at least. It turned out the tenant downstairs from Jory and Sonya had taken a job on the rigs outside Fort McMurray. He didn’t want to pay November’s rent and was leaving early—Paul could move in before Halloween. “And you won’t have to worry about us partying and shit,” Jory said. “We keep a quiet house, the old lady and I.”

  “I wasn’t worried.” Although he wondered how a guy who ran a shop that looked and sounded like a traffic accident defined quiet.

  “Take it you’re not here to be a ski bum,” Jory said.

  “No.” Paul scratched at his beard, feeling very old and out of place. “There a decent stylist in town?”

  “I say grow it out. Lot of dudes sport the woolly look here.”

  Paul shook his head. “How about the museum—where’s that at?”

  Jory laughed. “We have a museum?”

  His fieldwork began in an old brick Scandinavian church owned by Monashee Power and leased to the Shellycoat Historical Society. On the outer walls of the building, interpretative panels showed black-and-white photos of orchards and mills, narratives of the past. Elmer Kindiak, the head archivist, was a bald little man in his late fifties who tended to bustle from filing cabinet to storage room as if to avoid making long conversation. He clearly found it strange that someone who wasn’t from Monashee or the Society was in the building of his own free will. Paul asked for a list of the names of people who’d been displaced by the dam.

  “A lot of them have died,” Elmer said. “Or moved away.” He showed him a ledger book, the jacket made of thick, scuffed leather. “This’ll get you started, the Acquisition and Resettlement Commission. A record of the transfer of property deeds from private owners to Monashee.”

  Paul flipped randomly through the ledger. “It’ll give me names and compensation prices?”

  The archivist gave him a conspiratorial wink. “Between you and me, I wouldn’t trust the prices listed. The numbers don’t tell you much. But the names are important, you can track down the living.”

  In a sudden flurry, Elmer grabbed papers and books from different rooms until he’d practically buried Paul with maps, articles, and folders. A series of black-and-white photos of Lambert taken in 1910 showed a docked steamship loaded with boxes of fruit, rows of cherry trees in bloom, a man standing underneath, his face grainy and indiscernible except for a white walrus moustache. Wagons full of nursery stock, rootwads wrapped in burlap, a dog sleeping by the wheel. A farmhouse surrounded by flowering trees, the lake in the background.

  “They used these photos in promotional pamphlets,” said Elmer. “To bring settlers over from Britain and the prairies.” He brought out aerial photographs of Lambert in 1956, reproduced onto large sheets of paper. Contour lines, property boundaries, and lot numbers, marked in white, overlaid the physical features, the differing shades of blue ink.

  Lambert was fan-shaped, a flat delta at the base of hills and forests, bisected by a creek hedged with dark conifers, fringed by cottonwoods along the shore. With a magnifying glass, Paul could pick out the wharf and ferry landing, the adjacent warehouses and fruit-packing sheds, and, farther inland, houses and perfect rows of fruit trees. Most lots were perfectly rectangular, and included expansive orchards and pastures. He found the lots from Hardy’s letter easily enough: 4209 to 4213 were the largest and ran the width of the delta, from forest to orchard to pasture to beach. Elmer leaned over his shoulder and pointed to a contour line. “1,450 metres is the high water mark.” The contour curved and cut through Lambert—most lots would be completely submerged. Paul hovered uncertainly above the monochromatic blue world.

  “Well,” he said. “Now I know how much I don’t know.”

  “Always a good start,” Elmer said.

  He met Gina for a late dinner at a Thai restaurant, a dozen tables squeezed into a narrow and cozy space. Gina, for some reason, was babbling. “This used to be a Chinese smorg. Ten years ago, we had three in town. Then a Mexican place.” She fidgeted and stirred her rice noodles.

  Anxious, like on a date? A lingering awkwardness from the sauna? Unlikely—the awkwardness that night had been all his. Or was it the people? The young, attractive women in yoga gear didn’t pay them much attention. Same with the loner boys with their stringy hair tied back, staring at their food and at the walls, stoned and astonished. But there were the lanky, middle-aged men in oil-stained fleeces, fresh off work and spooning up red curry, a tall glass of beer at their elbows. They stole quick glances at Gina and muttered to each other.

  For the benefit of their audience, he swung the conversation around to something professional-sounding, thanked her for the names and ideas she’d given him, and described some of the literature Dr. Tamba had recommended: a study of the Allegheny Tribes displaced by the Kinzua Dam, articles on the nearby Arrow Lakes, and The River Dragon Has Come! by Dai Qing. Tamba, deeply skeptical, was demanding a bigger sample list of participants, proof that Paul was committed to the project and already engaged in the research. He needed volunteers, and quick.

  “I’m glad your mother has agreed to this,” he said.

  “She hasn’t. I only suggested her name. She doesn’
t like to talk about those days. Could be a tough sell.”

  Paul’s fork wavered in front of his mouth. “How about your father?”

  “They divorced in the eighties. Might be in Fort St. John. That’s where my brother works—we don’t talk much. I’m sorry about Mom, but don’t worry, she’ll come around.” She talked between mouthfuls of pad Thai. She tossed out a few names and he jotted her suggestions down on a notepad.

  One of the men kept trying to catch his eye. Paul leaned closer to her and whispered, “I feel under the microscope.”

  “You get used to it.”

  “Do you?” He pictured a bar brawl, chairs and fists flying. When they rose to leave, one of the men said, “Gina.” He cocked an eyebrow and thrust his chin, just slightly, toward Paul. She said nothing.

  They stood outside the restaurant, in view of the fogged windows. “I should go rescue the babysitter,” she said. “She’s got school tomorrow.”

  “That wasn’t your ex in there, was it?” Paul said.

  She chuckled without much enthusiasm. “No. No, that would have been a different scene altogether. Believe me.”

  “Something to look forward to,” he muttered.

  “Those were his sledding buddies. Snowmobiles,” she added when he gave her a confused look. “I’m glad you decided to stay.”

  “Are you?” he asked. She looked tired, her face blank, eyes heavy-lidded. He couldn’t help but wonder again if he’d disappointed her back at camp. Or maybe she was worried he had expectations and would be constantly phoning and following her around. She didn’t let him walk her back to her car, and in full view of the restaurant windows, they went their separate ways.

  Peter Woodbury, forester (b.1900–d.1983)

  I spent part of the afternoon at the Shellycoat Historical Society watching a video tape of an interview conducted in 1980. The tape was in rough shape, the VCR ancient. I transcribed bits of the interview, just the things that jumped out at me. I worried that if I rewound the tape too much, the machine would eat it and Elmer would banish me from the archives.