by Pat Ardley
Just before dark, the guests would start arriving back in the bay. At the head of the line came George in Sportspage, towing three boats. Riding with him were four guests, his two fishermen as well as the third man from two of the boats and, finally, Casey in his boat with Jessy, rescued at last.
During dinner, while George was working to find out what was wrong with the engines, the lights went out. One of the main breakers on our new fifty-kilowatt generator had flipped because we were overloading it mercilessly with all the heavy equipment running at the same time. Casey and Jessy ran around turning off the pool jets, the vacuum packer, a couple of dryers and several heaters, while I raced out with a flashlight for George so he could get the lights back on and continue to work on the engines. He would have to fix the breaker later.
One of the boats had apparently sucked up some plastic into the impeller, which basically ruins the impeller. The other two engines were still a mystery, so George called, then left a message with the dealer. No call back. After dinner, one of the guests told me that there was no hot water in one of the guesthouses. I checked that out and found that someone had turned the water tank off. Who knows why? That was an easy one to fix.
There were twenty-four in for breakfast. Thankfully, one couple didn’t want to get up early. We would have an extra spare engine on the freight boat, arriving in the inlet shortly. George headed across the inlet to rendezvous with the ship so he could have the motor twelve hours earlier than their scheduled stop at the lodge. The freight company had just fired the skipper and the “apprentice ship-driver guy” couldn’t get the ship docked. He tried for an hour, and he just couldn’t do it. Five feet forward and then he’d panic and gun it in reverse. George floated around impatiently glancing at his watch, wishing he could just clamber on board and hoist the damn thing off himself. It’s a big ship and the new skipper is being careful, but seriously! “Sorry,” new guy says. He couldn’t get the engine off for George until he could dock the damn boat. Funny, because freight boats had smashed into our floats a number of times, breaking lines and crushing planks. He will practise on other docks in the inlet. Fine, we didn’t want him practising on our anchored dock, so we’d meet him later in the afternoon, somewhere else in the inlet.
One of the guest boats called in. They were having trouble with the steering, so George headed back over to help Casey look after the boats. I was on the phone, calling everyone. Engine-part places, couriers, airlines, grocery stores, coffee suppliers. Oh yes! Some groceries didn’t arrive the day before, and for the second time in a row the coffee didn’t arrive from the coffee place. I would have to find a new, more reliable coffee supplier. Coffee is very important for our guests who are getting up at 5 AM. I ordered more from the Port Hardy grocery store to be sent to the airport and delivered to the inlet that afternoon. The grocery store sent the coffee order to the freight boat warehouse instead, which by that time was empty because the freight boat was already bumbling around in the inlet. Yes, the same slow boat to China with the skipper who can’t dock the thing.
George and Casey enjoying life. Ah yes, they were always enjoying life!
Then there was another call: Who has some bandages? Casey ran back into the lodge with a guest who cut his finger and it wouldn’t stop bleeding. Dr. Ardley to the rescue!
Are you still with me? This is still only 8:30 AM.
George was still away, running from one boat to the next helping people. He had stopped in momentarily to pick up the boat with the new impeller to tow out to trade with the people with a steering problem on their boat.
Casey fuelled up and headed back out with our patched-up guest. George returned, towing the boat that had the steering problem. Casey came back in and fixed the steering.
Meanwhile, I was back on the phone, still calling for parts and trying to coordinate deliveries and flights. George had managed to borrow four pounds of coffee from another lodge and buy four pounds from the convenience store at Duncanby.
Casey headed back out to help guests and hand out bait and pop, etc. Some guests requested lunch out on the water. Then another and another. I ran over to catch the waitress to stop her from setting tables and to start getting lunch coolers out. Nine boats decide to stay out on the water for lunch. The fishing is great, and they don’t want to leave the fishing grounds. Four people came in for lunch, and I helped organize between cooler lunches and people who would be eating at the table.
George jumped into Sportspage, which by this point was full of lunch coolers, and zoomed out. Someone wanted Coors Light, but he didn’t have any on board. So he called me to send Casey out with some. Then the chef suddenly realized that they’d sent our wonderful lunches complete with a bottle of wine, corkscrew—but no wineglasses. I called Casey, “Quick, come back and get wineglasses for everyone!” And as he headed out of the bay again, I called him back one more time to come and pick up some Diet 7UP. He was getting dizzy.
You would think this was our first rodeo! But it wasn’t. More like a disorganized circus than a well-oiled machine. The guests barely noticed a thing because the fishing was so great and we were so good at conveying an air of effortlessness. Everyone was having a ball. Including George and Casey.
More Settled
After the 1996 season ended, I flew to town and looked at houses in West Vancouver with a real estate agent. The writing was on the wall: we definitely had to spend more time in town for the kids to go to school. Not just for the sake of the academics; I felt that it was really important for the socializing part too. We became well known at the school as the family who put their kids in school after Thanksgiving and took them out shortly after Easter. Casey and Jess were easily able to catch up on lessons in October, and, with our newfangled fax machine, they were able to finish the school year over the phone. By the time the kids graduated from high school, they had missed about four years of in-class time, but we always said that we didn’t want schooling to get in the way of their education. And the teachers usually appreciated our kids’ non-traditional view of life.
We bought a house in West Vancouver with an extra bedroom that became the office. I was still finding it difficult moving back and forth from the inlet to town. Not long after I felt organized with office work in one place, I would be packing up to move again. But we had the best of both worlds—three worlds really, since we spent every weekend throughout the winter at Whistler. Both kids moved through the levels of Ski Scamps and eventually they were both racing for the Whistler Ski Club. George did all the travelling with them when they had races away from Whistler, while I did more travelling with my sisters. An awesome trade-off for me. Casey would eventually become a beloved ski coach for the Whistler Ski Club. The kids he taught never wanted to advance to the next level because they would lose Casey as their coach. And Jessy developed a lifelong love of horses and show jumping.
We had a chef who had worked for us at the lodge for the previous three years. He was a very well-known name in food circles. I won’t name him, as you will see why later. He was teaching in our off-season so the arrangement worked well for all of us. The food was wonderful, following in the path that I had set. We had a breakfast cook/baker and designated a couple of dock staff to help with food prep in the afternoons. I was comfortable enough with the kitchen staff’s ability that I could sit and read in the afternoon. I was always out of sight of crew though, as I never ever felt that I could sit in one spot while there were people working for and around me.
Guests were catching lots of fish, and the summer was going very well when, again, boats started breaking down. George quickly determined that there was a spark-plug problem so he began zipping constantly from one boat to the next, changing the plugs, even though the boats could be miles apart. He finally started handing out spark plugs and a set of pliers to fishermen who he could trust to change the plugs without causing more of a problem. Whatever made me think that we could have a quiet summer with no
drama?
One night when dinner was almost finished and dessert was about to be served, there was a huge window-rattling explosion from the lodge kitchen. I heard and felt it in my living room and raced over, colliding with George as he was leaping down the stairs from the office above. The fearful look on his face said that he thought someone might have been killed. “Everyone is all right!” the waitress quickly called out to us. Thank God everyone was all right, but there was lemon soufflé and sauerkraut all over the ceiling, dripping off the light fixtures and oozing down the walls. Our well-known chef had prepared soufflés for our twenty-four guests, but wanting the oven rack to be in just the right spot, he used four, twenty-eight-ounce cans of sauerkraut to raise the rack to the perfect level. Unopened cans. In a 450-degree oven.
The blast just about blew the door off its hinges and it has forever worn its buckled indent like a badge of war. Somehow, because it was cans of sauerkraut, and we were all standing awestruck and gawking at the fermented cabbage drip and plop off the ceiling, it became funny!
The next day, I asked young Jessy what she thought might happen if I put an unopened can of sauerkraut in a very hot oven. She thought about it for a minute and said, “Would they explode with the heat?”
Not So Settled
By this time we had been operating for twenty-one years and some groups and couples or families had been fishing with us for over eighteen years. The lodge was like a private club in the summer. We held onto personal fishing gear from one year to the next for guests who would definitely be fishing with us again the following year.
One particular group always came in September. They would arrive with thousands of dollars’ worth of wine and whiskey and plenty of cigars for their guests. At the end of their stay, we would store the extra liquor in our locked office until the next season. That winter we hired an elderly commercial fisherman from Port Hardy as our caretaker. He lived mostly on his fishboat but he could also use our old retired guest cabin to spread out his belongings and entertain company if anyone visited.
When we returned in the late spring, he had left just before our flight landed. I can imagine that you know where this is headed. You are right. Our little old commercial fisherman had drunk his way through five thousand dollars’ worth of lovely wines, and the classiest bottles of scotch and port with not even an empty bottle left behind to show that they had ever existed. It’s a good thing that we had listed all the liquor before we left in the fall. Insurance is a lovely thing.
Guests savouring dinner. The lodge was like a private club in the summer. In the top right of the photo is a granddaddy of Rivers Inlet, a 105-pound chinook.
At least the fisherman had lasted through the winter. One year, we hired Dan, an ex-rcmp officer, who had just retired after twenty years with the force. He was looking for something to do, and thought that being a caretaker would be a nice change from such a busy job. He arrived at the lodge a week before we were scheduled to leave. It was the end of the fishing season and George and I, as well as the kids, were running in all directions at once, washing and tidying everything before putting all the equipment away for the off-season. It’s no good putting salty gear away because it will draw moisture to it all winter.
Dan set himself up in our caretaker cabin and came out once in a while to chat with us. He loved being there and was excited to tag along with George any time he headed out in a boat. We introduced him to the neighbours and made sure that he knew how to order groceries and how to run a boat. We finished the cleanup and finally got around to packing our bags. The closer we got to the day of departure, the more time Dan spent with us. He followed George and often stopped Casey for a chat. He even sat on the porch and had tea with Jessy. Finally the plane arrived and we left him with lots of instructions and supplies and numbers to call if he ever needed help. A few days after we arrived in town, George headed off to California to start working with a friend on an advertising plan for the lodge. And a few days after that, I received a call from Dan. He was in Port Hardy. The quiet had “gotten” to him. He couldn’t take it for “one more minute,” and called the airline to come and pick him up. He hadn’t lasted a week on his own! George called our friends, the Coopers, who checked on the lodge every other day, and I put a help-wanted ad in the paper. We were finally able to hire a couple who also lived on their commercial fishboat, but who proved to be honest and trustworthy and stayed until George returned to the lodge the following May.
The next summer was once again an interesting season for motors breaking down. This time it was a tiny part on the fifty-horsepower engines that had once been made out of metal. Someone in manufacturing had made the ridiculous decision to replace the one-dollar metal part with a two-cent plastic part, and of course the plastic part kept splitting. We had to tow several boats into the lodge, and placate several guests, before George figured out what the problem was. Once he saw what was happening, he replaced the part with a little zap strap. Then for the next several days he zipped around our guest boats with a pocket full of zap straps. The zap straps held for the rest of the summer.
George pointing out the best fishing spots to guests. George and then Casey always talked with the guests at the dinner table to go over the plan for the next day’s fishing.
The engine company had several reps in the inlet at the time, and they had a couple of mechanics with them. One engine had blown the bottom end when guests hit an immoveable rock. They had been on their way back into the lodge in the evening when they called for help. George towed them in and pushed the speedboat into the boathouse to be worked on later. Casey took one of the mechanics over to look at the engine. Casey asked the mechanic to help lift the engine off the boat using our overhead winch. The fellow told Casey that he didn’t work at 10:30 PM. It’s okay though, because I made the guy feel guilty in front of the others in his group for leaving fifteen-year-old Casey to work on the engine by himself. The mechanic shuffled back to the boathouse and gave Casey a hand.
Casey and Jessy, who was now twelve, both worked for the lodge. Casey had been helping his dad throughout the winter and then helped the summer crew every fishing season. Jessy started helping crew when she was three. Her first job was to walk along the dock with a wagon to carry the thermoses and lunch boxes that she picked up from the boats, then she stacked them in a basket for the kitchen crew. Both kids loved being part of the team. They had both advanced to be real help for the dock crew, which in turn helped everyone on the staff.
Halfway through August, I overheard the staff dividing the tip money from the group of twenty-four guests who had just left. I went in and suggested that it would be really nice if they acknowledged Casey and Jessy’s help by giving them a bit of the tip. Even two dollars from each crewmember after a group of guests left would be enough to show their appreciation for all the work that both kids did. Each crewmember would make hundreds of dollars of tips on a changeover day. Upon hearing my suggestion, our very well-known chef—the one who blew up the oven with his misplaced soufflés—who had worked for us for the past five years, slammed his hand on the table and said, “I quit!” I turned to him and said, “Pardon?” He clarified: “I will quit if you give Casey and Jessy tip money.”
We had three weeks left in our fishing season. We had two groups of twenty-four guests per week—arriving on Monday and leaving on Friday or arriving on Friday and leaving on Monday. That meant six groups of fishermen times two dollars for a maximum possible total of twelve dollars per crewmember to pay toward a pot to be split between Casey and Jessy. Because of my suggestion that twelve dollars be subtracted from a potential tip total of $1,200 to $1,500 in our last three weeks, our Very Well-Known Chef—oops, did I just say that?—quit in a huff! “Fine,” I said, “you can leave tomorrow.” And I left him blithering behind me. He came to my house the next morning and said he had changed his mind, but the damage was done. “Thanks, but no thanks,” I said. “I will finish cooking
for the season.” And just when things were going so smoothly for me, there I was—I would be cooking again for the next three weeks.
It’s Not All About the Fish
In the spring of 1996, Rivers Inlet, along with other parts of the BC coast, had been hit by an unprecedented non-retention of chinook salmon. It lost us a lot of credibility with many people wanting to book a fishing trip. Fishermen pay for the expectation of catching and keeping their fish. George was a sport-fishing representative on the Sport Fishing Advisory Board working with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (dfo). He and others in the sport-fishing industry strongly resisted non-retention of chinook salmon and put forward alternative conservation measures. The proposals were rejected by the dfo, and the impact on the sport-fishing community was devastating.
We had long known that our main source of income was sport-fishing guests. The ban was lifted for the following year, and we had charged ahead, promoting the fact that guests could once again keep their chinook. We were finally recovering from the ban, and we were again looking forward to a good fishing season.
In the fall of that year, we finally received our thirty-year foreshore lease, which was the only lease of its kind in Rivers Inlet. Patience pays off when working with the government.
We had lots of bookings for the fishing season in the following year. Things were looking positive again, and we were already planning our airplanes and bait orders and upgrading most of our engines. George was working with Monaro Marine in Vancouver designing a beautiful new twenty-seven-foot speedboat to his specifications. He had ordered it and paid the down payment when, in May of 1997, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans David Anderson announced that sport fishermen would not be able to catch or keep coho in the upcoming season. Newspaper headlines shouted that there was about to be a total collapse of salmon stocks along the West Coast.