Grizzlies, Gales and Giant Salmon

by Pat Ardley

  I could only imagine that it was not very happy when we showed up. George reached for my hand and we slowly backed down to where the boat was beached. My mind was racing trying to think of what we could use to protect ourselves if the cougar decided to attack. We both still had our life jackets on which might provide a bit of extra protection, and if we could reach the boat we could grab the paddles. We were almost there when the cougar burst out of the bushes and dove down toward us. We leaped at the boat, pushing it back into the water as we jumped aboard. With my back to the cougar I felt my heart pounding in my chest. As soon as the boat was free of the sand, it started drifting away and down the river. We both seized paddles and paddled as fast as we could away from the beach. When I looked back, the cougar was turning away toward the bushes with a great chunk of fish in its mouth. There is a tiny possibility that the cougar hadn’t even noticed us on the beach—it was so set on steelhead for dinner!

  We finished the end-of-season cleanup at the lodge and let John now that we would be working elsewhere for the summer season. We had both applied for and gotten jobs looking after the sport-fish float for the federal Department of Fisheries for the summer. We would both be issuing permits in an area at the head of Rivers Inlet called the “permit area.” The permit area had a boundary line that kept fishermen from fishing too close to the mouth of the Wannock River, where the trophy chinook were heading to spawn. Fishermen were required to bring their chinook catch back to the float, where we would weigh the fish, take scale samples and record the information under each permit. We made a quick trip to Vancouver to pick up food and supplies since we would be on our own but living in the Fisheries cabin at the head of the inlet from early July until September.

  We stayed with George’s mom and dad at Lake Cowichan and while we were there, I happened to pass the animal shelter. There was a sweet little dog that seemed to be a cross between a border collie and an Australian shepherd. After much wheedling and cajoling, I was finally able to convince George that it would be a good thing for me to have company during the endless hours that I was alone. We brought little Tuki, named after my Icelandic mom’s term of endearment, home to Sunshine Bay with us in our next boat, which George found through the Vancouver Island Buy and Sell newspaper.

  The boat was old, eighteen feet long and had a hardtop over the front seats, a 110-horsepower engine on the back and a flat bottom. It moved over calm water very fast but, because of the flat bottom and George’s propensity for speed, it was the most uncomfortable boat I had ever been in when travelling over choppy water. I felt every wave jangle up my spine and crack and crunch the vertebrae in my neck. Where, oh where was that skyhook when I needed it? We drove the boat up the coast from Nanaimo to Port Hardy, tied up to the government dock and stayed overnight at the Seagate Hotel. We planned to get a super-early start the next morning. I was dreading crossing Queen Charlotte Sound again, but since we had spent just about every dime we had on the boat, if I was going back to the inlet, I was going in a boat.

  We headed out at first light with the boat loaded with supplies, the dog and me. George wanted to get away before the afternoon westerly started to blow. It was now the middle of June and the weather was clear and sunny. I jacked up my deep-breathing, sang songs in my head and held onto Tuki. There was not much swell as we turned out of Goletas Channel and onto the open water, and there was almost no wind. The crossing was quick because George didn’t have to slow down very often, and we were safely back in our cabin in Sunshine Bay in time for a late breakfast. I had survived another crossing of Queen Charlotte Sound.

  We visited Ed and Dottie Searer at the head of the inlet again. Most of the fishing guests that they had with them in the summer were from the Deep South and loved the way Dottie cooked. She fried everything in hot fat and served just about everything with delicious baked beans. Everything she made was delicious. She told us that she packed a lunch for her fishing guests with the leftovers from the previous night’s dinner. If there were baked beans left over … they got baked-bean sandwiches. One guest was moved to tears to be given a wrapped baked-bean sandwich just like his grandmother gave him when he was young.

  The Searers’ cat had several wild kittens, and we were hoping to catch one. Dottie went out behind their cabin and threw a box over the head of a tiny grey one. Then she quickly taped the top of the box closed with air holes in the side so the cat could breathe on the way back to our place. When we got home, I opened the box inside the cabin. The kitten was wild all right. It ran along the perimeter of the wall looking like a rat, ran out the door and hid under the cabin for the next two days. I knelt down near the steps with a dish of milk and called, “Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty.” The name stuck. I don’t think Tuki liked having a kitten around. I happened to look out the window and saw her walking gingerly across the stiff leg to shore, carrying the kitten in her mouth. I think she wanted to get rid of it. We had to go to shore and poke around under logs and roots to find the kitten before the mink, marten, otters, eagles, cougars or grizzlies found her. Kitty was staying very quiet just like her new mom would want her to, but we finally found her stashed in a little hole in the moss at the bottom of a huge cedar.

  I was looking forward to starting work for Fisheries in a few weeks. The sport-fish floats would be tied up at the head of the inlet in the permit area. I knew that I would have more time to explore the area with George since the permit office had hours posted and we would work in shifts. We loved living in the inlet and so in the meantime, we made plans to earn enough money to pay our expenses so we could continue to live in the wilderness.

  There were not many jobs available in the area. George had done his share of logging during his university days and was not about to go back to it, and I would never make a good commercial fisherman given my fear of the open sea. That left the sport-fishing industry, which we had experience with—and working for ourselves made sense to us. Why work sixteen-hour days for someone else when we could work eighteen-hour days for ourselves? We would start our own fishing resort.

  Lady Pamela

  The first thing I heard was “Lady Pamela!” in a loud, anxious British accent. It yanked me out of a deep sleep, and then I heard it again, more strident this time. I had to find out what was going on. It was my turn to sleep in but this could be fun. I leaned over and pulled the curtain back just enough to be able to see to the front of the float where the permit office was. There were several people milling about, including our friend Warren Nygaard, who worked as a fishing guide for the Good Hope Cannery Lodge.

  The fellow calling for Lady Pamela was dressed in a very spiffy sporting outfit—with a vest full of pockets with spots for hooking fishing gear to—as well as an ascot and lovely shiny shoes. Very dashing sort, but possibly a little too dramatic. We were on a floating raft about forty by one hundred feet with two small buildings on it. Lady Pamela could not be too far away, and was even less likely to be lost. Indeed, Lady Pamela had walked to one side of the float and was mesmerized by the towering cedar trees that were draped in Spanish moss. She didn’t answer because she didn’t feel like answering. She didn’t feel like answering because she was Lady Pamela.

  As I headed out the door of the cabin, I could hear the British fellow sweetly asking Her Ladyship if she would please sign the permit. Warren started to explain that she required the permit in order to fish in the area. Lady Pamela turned away from him mid-sentence as if he wasn’t speaking. Apparently she didn’t think she required a special permit. I thought, now I understand the British class system. When one is part of the upper class, one would no more talk to a working-class person than talk to a cow. This was a new concept to me in reality—it was funny in movies, but not so funny in person. George was quite delighted though, and was able to explain with quite sincere remorse that unfortunately, Lady Pamela would not be able to fish for our monster chinook salmon without signing for a permit.

  One of the lodges nearby often sent o
ut several boats carrying guests to fish at the mouth of the inlet. Each boat also had a “guide.” One day, one of the guests hooked into a huge halibut. There is no easy way to pull such a big fish into the boat, and it’s not a good idea to do so anyway. The fish is one huge muscle and can break the seats out of the boat—and possibly fishermen’s legs—if it starts flopping around. We had learned to use a long-handled harpoon to kill the fish, then disconnect the wooden handle from the harpoon head, which is attached to a long rope attached to the boat. This rig works well and you don’t have to try to lift the big fish into the boat; you can tow it home. The commercial fishermen usually shoot the larger fish as it is pulled close to the side of the fishboat. On this day, the guide in the guests’ boat hauled the huge halibut into the little metal skiff, and while the guests were leaping out of the way of the thrashing, the guide shot the halibut as it lay—in the bottom of the boat! Yes, we have had fun telling that story over the years.

  Another day, right at dinnertime, a Fisheries officer pulled into the dock and yelled at George to “get in the boat!” George hopped aboard, and they took off at full speed. I got the story later. They pulled up to the dock at the lodge on the other side of the inlet, barely took any time to tie up and raced together up to the kitchen. There, all over the griddle in all their fresh, net-caught glory, were dozens and dozens of pieces of sockeye salmon. The lodge had bought “Indian food fish” to feed their guests. Very much against the rules. The salmon caught by First Nations people on fishboats could not legally be sold to non–First Nations people. The officer wrote the owner a “notice to appear” and had the staff scoop all of the salmon into buckets and carry them to his boat. I still wonder what they fed their guests and crew instead that night?

  One afternoon, George watched as a Seabee float plane broke loose from its mooring and started floating toward the shore. Earlier in the day, the fellow who owned it had landed in the bay and quickly dropped his anchor just fifty feet from the shore, unstrapped a little boat from the side of the plane, climbed in with an armload of gear and headed out fishing. There was quite a chop on the water because of the afternoon westerly, and later in the afternoon the airplane dragged its anchor and was quickly heading into the rocks. George grabbed a rope and jumped into our skiff. He carefully pulled up beside the plane and threw the line around a spot that wouldn’t get damaged when he towed it away from imminent disaster. He slowly pulled the plane over toward our floats, and I helped get it to a place along the front of the dock where the wings wouldn’t bang into either of the buildings. A Seabee plane’s propeller is situated behind the aircraft’s cabin so we didn’t have to worry about the propeller getting damaged. George secured the plane to the float, and we waited with anticipation for the owner to return. “What would the reward be?” we wondered. Many hours later the fellow finally returned and climbed onto our dock to retrieve his airplane and to thank George. He said, “I want to give you a little something for rescuing my airplane.” He pulled his wallet out and thumbed past hundred-dollar bills, then past fifty-dollar bills, past the twenties and the tens. Then he picked out a five-dollar bill and two one-dollar bills. Seven dollars for saving his airplane that was worth well over $100,000. He really did mean “a little something.” George almost handed the money back.

  One of the perks of working on the permit float was getting to eat fresh salmon without even putting a line in the water. And I don’t mean like the two women who ran their boat all night through the fishing fleet and made more money than the fishermen without ever getting their net wet. Since all chinook that were caught in the area had to be brought in for us to weigh and take scale samples, there was a good opportunity for us to eat as much salmon as we wanted. Many private boaters arrived to weigh their fish and then used our cleaning table to either fillet their fish or even just cut the head and tail off so the fish would fit in their cooler. We often asked if we could have the parts that they cut off for bait for our crab trap. Sometimes there would be several pounds of beautiful fresh salmon on these pieces. We didn’t actually have a crab trap, but we sure enjoyed eating for supper the salmon that they would have thrown overboard!

  Late one day I took over operating the weigh scale while George worked on our new/old flat-bottomed and hardtop speedboat. The boat pounded so hard in any waves because of the flat bottom that George wanted to strengthen its floor beams and floorboards. We called our new boat The Page, after the boat that George painted on a batik picture when we were at the lighthouse. He liked the idea that this new life of ours was a new page in our lives. Someone later said, “Oh, it’s the first two letters of your names!” We stored The Page in the Fisheries boathouse where George could work even if it was raining. He dismantled the seats and then cut the floorboards out. He didn’t have the wood for the beams or floorboards yet, so we used the Fisheries boat until the end of the season and we would finish the job the following spring. He did continue to prepare the inside while he had the cover, so he used a power sander and sanded the fibreglass all around where he had removed the framework. This created terrible drifts of very fine dust that worked its way into George’s beard, his shirt and up his pant legs. Fibreglass dust makes you very itchy, and it was a nasty, messy job. After a couple of hours, George came out to get me and asked for my help. I was glad that he had asked me and excited for a job. When we walked into the boathouse, George handed me a broom and pointing at the piles of dust inside the boat, said, “Would you please sweep that out?”

  Me on our first speedboat, The Page, in front of the cabin we rented in 1974. George loved to drive fast, so my spine took some brutal jarring as we pounded through the waves in the afternoon westerlies and bad winter weather. He wasn’t called Hurricane Ardley for nothing!

  I won’t say that he was acting like the nobility, but I had the distinct feeling that I was being treated like a lower-class person. We were in the middle of the wilderness, we had to rely on each other, we were both doing the same job working for Fisheries, and the only time that he wanted my help was to sweep? I don’t think so! This was where I drew the line. Okay, you want to live in the wilderness. Okay, you want to start a fishing resort. It’s not okay to think of me as your underling. If I was going to make it in this man’s country, I was not going to do it as a servant. As I handed the broom back I told him, “Call me when you have a real job for me,” and I marched out of the boathouse.

  Fisheries, Old-Timers and Floats

  On our days off from the Fisheries job, we took the Fisheries ­fourteen-foot Hurston speedboat and followed the shoreline, poking into every little bay and channel toward the mouth of Rivers Inlet. We were searching for our own space to start a fishing resort. We had decided this would be our next adventure, and it would finance our love of living in the wilderness. We needed a safe, calm bay that would have plenty of fresh water even after several weeks of dry summer weather.

  Following close to the shore you could sometimes surprise animals if you zipped around a corner quickly. We saw mink, otters, occasionally wolves, black bears and grizzlies. Several times over the summer, we watched pods of fifteen or more orcas working like a coordinated wolf pack as they gobbled every salmon that was unlucky enough to be in the area.

  On the Darby Channel side of Rivers Inlet, there are many small, low islands and several larger islands with tree-covered hills reaching up to about six hundred feet high. There are many safe little channels and bays tucked into the lower islands, but they didn’t all have a freshwater supply, which would be necessary for a resort. A safe place to tie up floats in winter and a good freshwater supply that was still flowing at the end of summer were our two main criteria for continuing to live on our own in Rivers Inlet.

  One day, we motored into the back of a little bay known locally as Sleepy Bay. It was on Walbran Island, just across Darby Channel from Stevens Rocks, just south of where the channel narrows, about halfway between Fitz Hugh Sound and Dawsons Landing. The bay was about 150
yards wide and about the same in length. On the east side of the bay, there was a narrow channel that went past a tiny island, and we could see a small bay on the other side of it. The small bay was shown completely blue on our chart, which means the depth of the water is shallow at low tide. Over the summer, we went back to that bay every chance we had. The water supply was low by the end of summer, but there was still water coming down from the surrounding hills.

  During the summer of 1975, we heard about two old fishermen, long-time residents of Rivers Inlet, who were anxious to sell their floats and move to the city. We visited both men and bought their buildings and floats as well as the contents of each. Our plan was to continue to work for Fisheries till the end of the fishing season and then start working on the buildings and floats and turn them into a first-class fishing resort. Our intent was to open our resort the following summer.

  First we bought the floats—which included a house float, a wash-house float, a tool shed and boathouse with a small skiff—from Axel Johnson, an old-timer who had been mauled by a grizzly bear a few years earlier. He had been on his way home one day after felling trees when he was attacked. He pretended to be dead as the bear flipped him over and chewed on the calves of both of his legs. He remained motionless and finally the bear covered him with leaves and moss and wandered away. Axel dragged himself down the hill to his rowboat and rowed three miles back to his cabin. He managed to make it to his bed where he ­immediately passed out.