by Pat Ardley
He promised me he would be more careful next time. He thought that he had put the undercut in the right place, but as he cut through the back side of the cedar tree it fell on a slight angle, and that made it knock over an alder, which knocked over two more alder, and the boat was tied to shore right under them. Never again did I have to wrap up a baby to head out on a rescue mission for him.
High Tides and Pike Poles
George loved scuba diving. He thought we might be able to extend our fishing season with diving charters. He already had the gear to wear in the water, and we had the accommodations. So he just needed a compressor to fill the air tanks. The compressor arrived on the flight with the two men he called to come and explore interesting diving sites with him. There were many old fish-cannery sites from the time when everyone just threw their garbage overboard. The areas beneath the docks of these old places would be ripe with interesting finds. They spent a fun week diving a different site every day and coming home with old beer bottles, ginger jars, opium bottles with the end snapped off and lots of old china, some of it dating as far back as 1885.
Also, the sea life in the cold northern water is vibrant and varied, more beautiful even than in warmer climates. But it would be a challenge to convince a couple who could fly to Hawaii and stay in a hotel for a week, scuba diving every day in warm water for the price of the airfare into Rivers Inlet from Vancouver. We tried to promote the lodge as a diving destination but after a few years decided it was not to be.
I had been spending so much time housebound with our wee Casey that when George suggested that just he and I could make a quick trip to our favourite beach on Calvert Island, I jumped at the chance. We had a beautiful calm day and on the way we dropped Casey off for a playdate with our friends. We anchored in Pruth Bay and walked across to the beach, full of anticipation because we hadn’t been there for many months. As we approached the entrance to the beach through the salal bushes, we could hear the far-off rumbling of waves and taste the salt in the air. I leaped onto the log protecting the way and pushed through the bushes and then was suddenly racing down the beach, peeling clothes off as I ran. It was still winter but the sun was beating down on the white sand, and it was just so freeing to get rid of my heavy clothes. I turned and saw George running behind me throwing his clothes off as he ran. We ran past the winter-storm logs and piles of seaweed washed up in long lines and the grasses flattened by so many heavy rains. We ran past the craggy trees, the jagged cliffs and the windswept sand hills. Then we both slowed down and walked hand in hand to the far end of the beach. As we made our way back, there was the distinct sound of a helicopter.
Who is flying a helicopter near our wilderness beach in the winter? And there it was rising over the far-off treeline, shattering our peaceful day and heading along the beach. We dove behind a jumble of logs and crouched down hoping to hide from the intruders. As the helicopter flew slowly along the beach, the rush of air picked up our clothes and threw them every which way. This of course caught the pilot’s attention and he lowered the helicopter, tilted it slightly and started following the line of footprints until he was hovering right over our bare bottoms! We were shocked to see the helicopter, and I’m sure they were shocked to see us. All we could do at that point was give them a wave and a sheepish smile and the men inside the cockpit appeared to snicker as they continued on their way and then disappeared in the distance.
We found out later that there were many helicopters in the area, chartered to land on their pontoons next to large herring fishboats. The herring-roe market had suddenly skyrocketed, and overseas buyers couldn’t get enough. In order to be first on the scene as a boat pulled in its load of herring, the buyers were landing in a helicopter on the water beside a fishboat rather than using a boat to chase them down. It was like the Wild West on the fishing grounds, with buyers carrying green garbage bags full of cash and commercial fishermen shooting real bullets across the bow of another fishboat if it got too close. A lot of money was made in a very short season and I have not seen anything like it since.
We had another gorgeous sunny day after another storm passed a week later. We were having extremely low winter tides, so George thought we might be able to find abalones on some rocks closer to home where he had seen the tell-tale algae and seaweed that both abalones and rock scallops feed on. We again dropped Casey off with our friends for an hour and headed out in the open skiff with me sitting at the front, crashing down hard on the seat when we slipped off a large swell. George carefully approached the series of rocks, and as he got closer with me perched and ready at the prow, the boat rose up on the swell and George shouted, “Jump!” Of course I didn’t jump. I wasn’t quite ready. I have jumped at George’s command so many times over the years but this was not going to be another one of those times. I was teetering at the front of the low-sided boat with no good place to hold on to. I could feel the power behind the swell as it pushed the boat up toward the rocks then sucked the boat away just as I was supposed to jump. The boat was rising on the swell and there was a split second as it reached its zenith, when I should’ve actually leaped. It took several more tries and more frustrated shouts of “Jump!” for me to finally launch myself at the sharp barnacle-covered rock without killing myself or landing in the frigid water.
I did indeed find a few abalones and rock scallops there but would never tell anyone where they were. Commercial tourist boats had essentially cleared out the abalone in the Hakai Pass area by using divers to collect them at any tide. Since 1990, abalone fishing has been closed all along the coast for conservation purposes because they are taking so long to recover from overfishing.
Another sea creature whose harvesting has been closed to local gatherers for decades is the wonderfully delicious clam. I had made many a delectable clam chowder, clam fritters and clams Rockefeller over the years. Suddenly one day in the early eighties there were Fisheries signs posted that said it was illegal to harvest all bivalves due to paralytic shellfish poisoning (psp). The closure is still in effect today. Apparently, someone had recently died from eating clams about one hundred miles from us. Harvesting along the entire north and central coast had been closed. We had never seen the tell-tale areas of red colouring from psp in the water, and we disputed the closure. We asked if someone from the Fisheries office at Dawsons could dig clams and send them in for testing. We were told that it was expensive; they would have to test the clams on rats, and the best clam tides were too early in the morning. I suggested that we would get up early and dig the clams, drive them directly to Dawsons to fly out on that day’s plane to Port Hardy. And if all else fails, test them on Fisheries officers who simply wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. Too harsh?
Back at home, work continued. We needed more buoyancy under our woodshed float. It had a handy open-sided structure on it where we stored everything that needed to be under cover, and, as a result, the float had to carry more and more weight. Of course we had huge stacks of firewood but also old fire pumps, extra freezers, cleaning supplies, tools, plumbing and electrical supplies and a couple of speedboats overwintered inside.
Just ahead of one of the extreme winter high tides, George tied a huge cedar log on a loose line, and pushed it over to the far side of the bay where there is a straight rock wall. I scrambled up the hillside where I tied the other end to a huge tree. We headed back to the woodshed float, unhooked all the lines that were attaching it to the standing boom, and then George pushed the float over to the cedar log and I climbed up again, hauling cable behind me.
We wrapped the cable tightly around several massive cedars and back down to the float, so it was tightly held in place. The tide turned and was going toward a super-low tide, and we watched over the next six hours. The cables held the weight of the float as the tide dropped inch by inch. This made it possible for the log to roll underneath the suspended float. Then as the tide came back in, the float rested on the new log, making the float tippy in one direction
. It was brilliant! The next day, he brought another nice straight log over, and we tied everything up again with the woodshed turned around. This time the log went under, and it straightened and levelled the float. The power of the tide in the wilderness is awe-inspiring!
That winter, George also built a sixteen-foot-long hot tub on a float. He built the float itself with a dozen good logs to carry the weight of the water in the swim spa. Our friend Richard had been a fibreglass instructor and helped George build the hot tub part. He also built a pool house on the end of the float to house the 450,000-btu propane heater and did all the wiring and plumbing on his own. He hadn’t counted on the amount of gas flowing to the heater when he hooked up two hundred-pound tanks of propane. The first time he turned the heater on, the gas rushed out so fast for the burner that the propane tanks froze on the outside, from the dials on top to a third of the way down the tanks. The water in the pool heated really fast! We were playing in the hot water within three hours of turning it on.
We had a lovely day of rest at the beginning of May and before the fishing-season work started up again in earnest. We went to the nearby clamshell beach where we played catch with kelp bulbs and turned rocks over to show Casey all the sea life that scrambled away. We were on our way home in the afternoon and partway through Klaquaek Channel, when George noticed a disturbance on the surface of the water. He headed over, pulled alongside the bubbles and, lo, there was a halibut thrashing around just under the surface. With visions of many dinners-to-come dancing in our heads, we quickly looked around the boat but couldn’t see anything even close to fishing gear. So George picked up our twelve-foot-long pike pole! He pulled closer to the halibut and standing up, drove the hook into the side of the biggest fish we had ever seen. It was easily wider than, and seemed almost as long as, the twelve-foot boat we were in. I may be using typical fishermen’s exaggeration here, but it was big! He pulled hand-over-hand on the pole and the halibut slid closer to the boat where he hoped to get a rope through its gills. When it was almost within reach, a gigantic sea lion lifted out of the water and stared at George straight in the eye. George swore he heard it growl, “Mine!” I thought it was going to devour us. The sea lion leaned over and dropped across the halibut, dragging it off the hook and underwater, never to appear again. Drat—no halibut and chips for dinner every night for the next six months.
The hot tub was a popular place to relax after a day of fishing. We used it all winter.
Back at the lodge, I started packing my bags to fly to Edmonton to be with my sisters. My suitcase was open on the bed and every time I put something into it, one-year-old Casey would toddle over and take something out. I was getting nowhere, so I took Casey into his room and suggested that if he could play there for a few minutes I would come and get him and make a snack for us. I finished packing in double-quick time and was so pleased that Casey had kept himself busy. I didn’t like to disturb the quiet time but gently opened his door to call him for lunch. He stood proudly pointing at the windows. His room was quite bare. His windows were both flung wide open and he had been chucking everything out that he could pick up with his little hands. Books, train cars, stuffed toys, diapers, pillows, talcum powder. He had cleared every shelf that he could reach.
The back wall of his bedroom was within one log of the back of our house float. In front of and behind that log was ocean water. There was a gap of about two feet from the back of the float to the floating walkway that ran all along the back of the lodge buildings. There were a few books and toys scattered about on the walkway and a few random things on the log, but everything else was either floating in the water or had sunk into the depths of the bay. Well, that’s one way to tidy up a room.
Our next big improvement that spring of 1984 was to build a walk-in flash freezer. There were twelve contact-freezing shelves, and each shelf could freeze a dozen vacuum-packed coho fillets in less than twenty minutes. We also put radiophones into all twelve of the boats. They weren’t all guest boats: one was for the workboat, one was mine, one was for the fish master, a couple for the crew to use in their spare time, and there was one extra boat in case one broke down. They made it so much easier to keep track of the guests when they were out fishing. The guests could also get in touch with someone at the lodge if they decided to stay out instead of coming in for lunch. We would pack a basket with a lovely lunch with all the trimmings for delivery, making the guests feel very special. This was called the lunch run. Our fish master, George for many years, would make several trips out to check on the guests and make sure they were catching fish. He would deliver bait and extra snacks and sometimes a guest’s fishing licence that had been left in their room. This one was called the bait run. And then there was the evening run that involved rounding up any guests who tried to stay out too late. An errant guest boat was one thing that got our usually unflappable George angry. Unless the guests had a monster-sized salmon on the end of their line, they’d better not try staying out until dark!
It wasn’t a good idea to make George angry. One night a couple of men sat outside under the stars, talking and laughing so loud they kept the whole group of guests awake. In the morning, the two men didn’t feel up to going fishing so George stood outside their now open bedroom window and started his chainsaw. The two bleary-eyed fellows got the rather broad hint and dragged themselves in for strong coffee and then headed out in their boat.
Another time, a couple of men—again—kept most of the guests awake with their boisterous conversation out on the deck. The following day, one of the fellows got up after George’s wake-up knock on the door, but the other one stayed in bed and refused to budge. As everyone was getting ready to cast off the dock and head out fishing, George walked over to the sleeping guest’s boat and slipped the key out of the ignition. He suggested to the fellow who did get up that the boat wasn’t leaving until both he and his partner were in it. His friend showed up very soon after.
One night a guest boat came flying into the bay far too fast. The driver killed the engine partway across the bay and the boat drifted into the dock. The throttle had been stuck in full forward. It was still early in the evening and the guests had eaten dinner so I took them out fishing in my own boat. We came back in with the biggest fish of the night. A beautiful forty-eight-pound chinook. I never go fishing. Maybe I should.
The next group of fishermen were staying over the BC Day long weekend at the beginning of August. On Saturday afternoon, I opened the oven door of my new wood cook stove to put a roast in. The door spring cracked in my hand and the door was suddenly on the floor—snapped right off. This was an emergency. I had twelve guests to cook for and no oven in the kitchen. I grabbed the roast pan and ran down to the end guest cabin that had our old oil stove in the drying room. I cranked up the heat and threw the meat in the oven then ran back to the kitchen. Several times George tried calling the store in Vancouver where we bought the stove. Of course no one answered. It was not just the weekend, but the long weekend. Who would be around now? He then called his sister Gery and asked her to find an emergency number for the stove dealer and, if all else failed, to break one of the store’s windows to get someone down there to investigate a break-in. She did finally connect with someone who then went into the store on the holiday Monday, took the door off their floor model and delivered it to the airport in time for our flight that day. George always brought out the best in people!
George had the respect of all of our guests, our staff and our suppliers. He treated everyone very well but wouldn’t stand for anyone’s nonsense. He loved taking guests on sightseeing tours in the afternoon when fishing could sometimes be slow. Some people would try to catch up on their sleep but there would always be a few who would happily go on a tour. With the warning “Do as I say, not as I do,” he would flash between rocks that looked far too close together, fly around corners to catch wildlife doing what they do, and drift under low-hanging trees all while describing everything the gues
ts were looking at: rocks, fish, moss, eagles, seals, sea lions, grizzly bears, the old sunken jail cell and distant mountain ranges. There was always something to see. One guest once suggested that when you’ve seen one mountain, you’ve seen them all. This did not sit well with George, and that particular guest was never invited back.
Big Plans
We had been running Rivers Lodge for eight years now and we made plans to increase the number of guests that we could accommodate at one time. We thought it would be great to eventually build a separate lodge building, but life was busy enough at the moment so we thought we could at least increase the seating capacity in our house/lodge and add more accommodation for this summer.
We had enough resources to build another guesthouse without borrowing money. Our helper Anthony arrived and with the three of us working, we knocked together another lovely four-room guesthouse with bathrooms in each room, in no time. I was much better at carpentry at this point and didn’t spend as much time with injuries or swearing over bendy nails. Plus, we had finally moved on to ordering proper nails in a variety of sizes.
We retired the original guesthouse that had two bedrooms and used it instead for staff housing. We now had a fleet of eight guest boats as well as eight guestrooms for a total of sixteen guests at a time. Then George started work on our house so we could comfortably seat the sixteen guests.
One morning, George cranked up his chainsaw and started sawing through the front wall of our living room. The glass to put in a solarium-type window had just arrived on the freight boat. We could add an extra three feet of space to the crowded room by extending the wall out for the new window. We also took out the wonderful Jøtul brand fireplace to make room for a third couch and redid the carpet. The extra space added much-needed elbow room at the dining room tables as well.