The Denman people who came to these events were an interesting cross-section: “I was at school in High River with W.O. Mitchell’s kids.” “I worked in Prince Rupert at the CBC station, and I remember the cloud of cigarette smoke when Peter Gzowski was in the studio.” “We knew Jack Hodgins, who’s still a friend, back in the days when he taught high school in Nanaimo, and, boy, he got so nervous before his class!” (And there were visitors, like Tina from Read Island, who asked me: “How’s my sister doing, next door to you in Toronto?” This is a small country.)
I especially liked the door prize draws that were a feature of every night. One of the friendly volunteers who made all this work, Stewart Goodings, would get on stage with Del Phillips’s pretty daughter in her cocktail dress made from a torn-up thesaurus (“Very nice to read you,” I said), and she would draw the winning number. My favourite prize, which demonstrated that Denman was a real rural community, was the Free Septic Tank Pump-out donated by Able & Ready Septic Service. The winning ticket was greeted with a genuine whoop of joy. No sceptics there.
A final note about my Denman visit. The festival billets its visitors with friendly hosts, who often prove to be remarkable. That was the case with John and Marion Dillon, who looked after me. I learned that they had left the Prairies to go to Yellowknife, where soft-spoken John ran the prison service for the Northwest Territories, and Marion taught kindergarten. When I asked John to tell me something about today’s North that I didn’t know, he told me that over sixty percent of the convicted criminals there are in jail for serious sexual assault. He and his officials ditched the rule about segregating sex criminals from the general prison population because they made up the large majority. Astonishing.
John and Marion intended to go to the North for just a couple of years, but liked life in Yellowknife so much that they stayed for more than twenty.
The Dillons also gave me a glimpse of Denman’s unique society, with PhDs apparently clustered along every quiet country road. One morning John left breakfast early “to look after his butterflies.” I was due to take a walk through Boyle Point Provincial Park, right beside their house at the south end of the Island. I duly strolled through the silent trees until I reached the lookout to Chrome Island with its lighthouse. On the clifftop, as I studied the colony of cormorants clinging to the island’s nearly vertical rocks, a bald eagle soared alongside me, within a Ping-Pong ball’s throw.
But butterflies?
The final morning of my visit, still impressed by the ecstatic reception of Maude Barlow’s talk (not to mention the fine talks by the seafaring Derek Lundy and the Harper-grilling Chris Turner), I set off to see “the butterflies.” Apparently a little butterfly named the Taylor’s checkerspot is threatened. It survives only in Oregon and Washington — and in two places in B.C., Denman and Hornby Island. A neighbour of John’s, Peter Karsten, is the famous retired head of the Calgary Zoo, and he has set up a lab beside his house to breed the threatened butterflies. John joins him, as he told me, to help the little pupae “by changing their diapers.” It’s microscopic work. Just next door Peter is breeding a spectacular group of Pekin robins, and next to them he’s breeding a range of hardy cacti, in unheated conditions. Some university labs are much less interesting.
You’ll understand why I went off “to catch the ferry” stunned by what I had found on little Denman. At the wheel I was mindful of the visitor guide’s polite warning: “Like many rural areas, the roads are winding and narrow; pedestrians, cyclists, horseback riders, and deer have to share them with cars, so please observe the speed limit and drive carefully.” As we lined up for the ferry — the great equalizing island experience — I was not surprised to see a serious-minded great blue heron standing on the beach by the dock, apparently there to bid me farewell.
As I drove off the ferry I noticed the long, lanky figure of Zaccheus Jackson, walking ashore. His style of writing — as a spoken-word performer in poetry slams who drew on his tough times living on the street in Calgary and Vancouver as a crack cocaine addict — like his life, was very different from mine. But I had enjoyed meeting him, and admired how he was working with kids. His best Denman story was about his triumph in losing a big slam poetry final to a shy young woman he had persuaded to get into the game. We had hit it off. So I called over, “Hey, Zach. Can I give you a ride to Comox?”
“No thanks,” he said, “I’m heading the other way. I’m fine, thanks.”
The next month, visiting Toronto, Zach was struck and killed by a train. He was thirty-six.
In 1982, the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts held their first literary festival in Sechelt. For those outsiders who aren’t sure exactly where it is, it’s the part of B.C. that lies northwest of Vancouver, cut off by mountains and sea running northeast, so that access is by ferry. Even people who haven’t visited by ferry may know it. This is the scenic area popularized by Bruno Gerussi and The Beachcombers TV series. Readers may recognize it as the setting of the series of crime novels by L.R. (“Bunny”) Wright, featuring the local policeman Karl Alberg. (As my earlier book records, Bunny was the Calgary author who was stunned by the live interviewer, all hair and teeth, who asked her off the bat why her novel “had no pictures?”)
“The Sunshine Coast” may sound like the invention of a hotel-chain marketing whiz, but the area’s exposure, facing the Georgia Strait to the south and the west, encourages a fine climate, and peaches and apricots grow there, and even palm trees. Certainly the weather was perfect as Jane and I skimmed up the coast, over islands and lighthouses and ferries, before landing at Sechelt. There we were met by Sally Quinn, a welcoming volunteer who identified herself brilliantly by displaying a copy of my book … always visible to an author’s eye at 100 paces. A quick tour of Sechelt took us to the Festival site, where we met Jane Davidson, the festival director who had caught my unzipped show in Vancouver and invited me to her festival the next year. Really, that’s the way this whole tour has developed: one event leads to another.
Jane Davidson was astonishingly relaxed, given that over the next three days she would be receiving more than twenty performing authors from across the country, including Michael Crummey from Newfoundland, and Linden MacIntyre, fresh from Edinburgh.
My own history with the festival, as a publisher, goes back to the very first year, when I was glad to send Jack Hodgins. If he had been able to come directly, as the raven flies, from his home in Lantzville, right across the Strait of Georgia, it would have taken no time at all. As one of the five authors attending that year, he enjoyed himself, and reported back with such enthusiasm that over the years I sent a steady stream of authors west, assuring them that they would “have a great time.” They always did.
This year, in my new role as author, I got to see for myself. Jane Davidson took us to the hall where all of the readings/performances take place. It is an impressive, all-wood structure, the ceiling held up by tall pine poles, giving it the air of a West Coast longhouse (“crossed with a cathedral,” as one admirer put it). Ten seconds on the empty stage were enough to show me that this was a very special theatre space, open yet intimate.
Since one of the strengths of this fine festival is that all events take place there, on the big-log stage, with no competing events at different venues, Jane and I were able to spend many happy hours in the audience at that theatre over the weekend, enjoying the varied readings, discussions, and performances. My own show was thoughtfully introduced by my old pal Andreas Schroeder, who was also our host at his local oceanside cottage.
Andreas and his wife, the author Sharon Brown, live beside the sea in nearby Roberts Creek. (Over time, we warned them, they may change from “Roberts Creekers” to “Roberts Creakies.”) I have known Andreas forever, and admired his efforts as a crusading member of the Writers’ Union to secure royalties for library use of an author’s book. Incredibly, he stick-handled it all through, against the odds, so that the Public Lending Rig
ht is now the law of the land. As a result of that triumph I once saw him being carried shoulder-high out of a Writers’ Union meeting. Given the physical condition of most of the cheering writers, I was relieved that Andreas is a small, trim figure. Also, as a keen motorcyclist, given to roaring around the high country, he was used to bumpy rides.
As a writer, Andreas has shown great range. He has written non-fiction, such as his prison memoir, Shaking It Rough, which came out in 1976, after I had left Doubleday. Andy was not the first or the last bright kid to fall afoul of the drug laws, and was able to write an “inside” account that showed, in his words, that “prison is simply not a face-off between long rows of malicious, sadistic uniformed gorillas on the one side, and an equal number of deranged, slavering mother-raping murderers on the other.”
He has also written fiction about deeply eccentric characters such as the hero of Dustship Glory (1986), and has drawn on his own Mennonite background with novels such as Renovating Heaven (2008), a favourite of mine. His strict Mennonite parents discouraged the reading of books, so he had to steal them from the Agassiz Library. Then, since he was an honest little boy, he would smuggle them back in. It was an unusual twist on the usual pattern of parents nudging their kids to become readers. His crusading zeal to encourage reading shows up to this day on the road outside his house where he has created bookcases protected against the weather, but full of books open to people out there waiting for a bus, who could use a quick read.
He has also written journalism, poetry, and criticism, and is now the distinguished head of the Creative Non-Fiction Writing program at the University of British Columbia. There, he is such an inspiring teacher that a Globe and Mail article by Marsha Lederman in 2012 described him as “the godfather of B.C.’s non-fiction boom.” The prize-winning writer Andrew Westoll was notably direct in his praise: “Andreas Schroeder is really single-handedly responsible for me going into creative non-fiction.”
Much more important than all this trivia, however, is that in the 1990s he gained fame on CBC Radio’s Arthur Black show, Basic Black, for his cheery series of reports on enterprising crooks. In the late 1990s I proudly went on to publish the series of books that resulted — Scams, Scandals, and Skulduggery; then Cheats, Charlatans, and Chicanery; and Fakes, Frauds, and Flimflammery. Alliteration always assists all authors — and the books bring bountiful benefits, too, since they are all great fun.
So is staying at Andreas and Sharon’s place, where the path from the house down to the superb guest cabin right beside the saltchuck is so steep (at 116 steps, it leaves John Buchan’s thirty-nine far behind) that he has devised a sort of funicular mechanical escalator to handle it. Over the years a parade of interesting authors has glided down those stairs to enjoy Andreas and Sharon’s hospitality, Naomi Klein and her husband, Avi Lewis, among them. The list goes on to include my friends Myrna Kostash, Annabel Lyon (I published her father, Jim), Charlie Foran, Susan Swan, Newfoundland’s Russell Wangersky, Zsuzsi Gartner, Robert Bringhurst, the dear departed Paul Quarrington (whom I once had to introduce at a musical event within a month of his death, which we all knew was coming), Susan Musgrave from Haida Gwaii, and Silver Donald Cameron and Marjorie Simmins all the way from Halifax, and another saltwater home.
An amazing list. And as for the blackberries! Words fail.
We had a fine time attending all of the sessions with Sharon and Andreas, who, for all his accomplishments is a typical laid-back, jeans-and-leather-vest West Coast guy. One of the festival’s strong points is that at the end of each session the Great Hall is cleared, and everyone files out to drink, or buy a signed book, or chat, or — usually — line up for the next session. As a result, the placid queues along the rhododendron-lined paths are great places to meet old and new friends, and to chat about books and authors.
The local support for this annual festival is what you would hope for, and people are proud of what they’ve built up over the thirty years. One retired man who sought me out to get his copy of my book signed said it best. When I commented on what a great thing for the community this festival must be, he said, “This is why we moved here.”
Haida Gwaii is the sort of place where unusual things happen sooner or later. I made my third visit to the island right after our Sunshine Coast events, flying from Vancouver to the magnificently named Sandspit Airport. The bus took us to the ferry, then on to Graham Island, and to Queen Charlotte City, where we were dropped off right at the door of the auto shop that was fixing the car Richard and Nancy Self told us we were free to use. No problem. Within minutes we had taken the island’s main road north to Tlell, and settled in to James Houston’s former home, Bridge Cottage, right beside the famous fishing river.
Courtesy of Richard and Nancy, the plan was to spend our days trying to outwit salmon, with the help of cunningly tied fishing flies and barbless hooks. Every morning our friend Noel Wotten would appear at the door (at 8 a.m., then 7:30, then 7:00) and lead us to places where we stood thigh-deep in water and cast our flies for fish. Our casting was highly satisfactory in every respect, except that of actually catching fish we could retain. Coho, our desired targets, were leaping around us, but we caught only cutthroat trout or sculpin. But Jane and I had mastered the key to fly fishing, which is the zen-like point that catching fish doesn’t really matter. That’s just an agreeable by-product of a wonderful time spent as part of the river, absorbing the sounds and sights. Twice a shadow on the water made me look up to see a giant bald eagle flying low overhead, almost ruffling my hair, using the river as a highway through the tall cedar, spruce, and hemlock trees that Emily Carr knew so well.
Thanks to smart work by some local friends, a show was arranged for me in Queen Charlotte City on Wednesday evening. We went with our friend Noel (who brought his mouth organ along for the drive back … “Four Strong Winds,” “Summer Wages,” and much else) and found the Legion Hall, which doubles as the Anglican church. Presumably “Onward, Christian Soldiers” is a popular hymn there.
The show drew forty-two interested people. The best moment came when I was walking around, greeting people as they came in and found a seat. I shook hands with one lady in her sixties and introduced myself. “Hello,” she responded, “I’m Jane Austen.”
“I’m very pleased to meet you, thank you very much for comin—” I said, then stopped and gaped at her. She confirmed that, yes, that was her name, and told me that an over-awed teenage girl once asked her to sign a copy of Pride and Prejudice.
Anyone who takes writers and writing seriously has the same thought when visiting a famous author’s house. What would it be like to sit at the desk where the author did his or her work? How would it affect your own writing?
(This, by the way, is a central theme in the 2014 novel by Terry Fallis, No Relation, where a luckless author given the name Earnest Hemmingway tries to solve his writer’s block by visiting every Hemingway site he can find. The results are unexpected, as you’d expect with Terry’s work.)
I had the chance to experiment with this, in a minor way, when Jane and I were staying at Bridge Cottage, for many years the summer writing base of my friend James Houston. The conditions were scientifically perfect, since on Haida Gwaii Jim wrote in the early morning (check), by hand (check), and — above all — in the chair at the desk in the writing cabin that had been constructed for that very purpose (check, check, check).
Obviously, the piece of writing that you’re reading now is no “Kubla Khan,” but at this precise moment in its creation a Person from Porlock arrived to interrupt my writing. This Person had every right to do so, since it was our fishing friend Noel Wotten, the man who had built the writing cabin for Jim, in 1981, as the plaque outside “Hideaway Studio” reveals.
James Houston (1921–2005)
I resumed my experiment a full day later, after a fishing trip with Noel to Port Clements, farther up the island. Here I once visited the scene of the ecological crime so vivid
ly described in John Vaillant’s book The Golden Spruce. I’m sorry to report that the once golden icon is now a grey, shrunken, felled tree carcass, rotting away quietly in the water where it fell. Noel, I should note, is the man who chain-sawed the path to the tree that is now taken by mournful tourists.
As I’ve hinted earlier, the versatile Noel is a noted expert on fly fishing, having cast weightless flies great distances on salmon rivers around the world, landing the fly gently on the ripple most likely to provide shelter for a lurking fish. I’ve noticed, too, that after the fly has landed, Noel leans eagerly forward, artfully working the coils of line in his left hand, imagining the fish just beneath the tempting fly. Far from being just a skilful mechanical exercise — cast, float the fly, swing it back, cast again — it’s an act of faith and imagination, making fleeting contact with that other world that lies beneath the surface.
These thoughts are, just possibly, channelled by the lingering spirit of the man who sat here writing. Often, as in the third volume of his memoirs, Hideaway (1999), written here, Jim deals with fishing. He openly admitted that it was his addiction to salmon fishing that brought him to the Queen Charlotte Islands, and to Bridge Cottage, and to the river Tlell in the first place. And, just as he did while writing Hideaway, I’ve just found myself getting up from my chair — his chair — to check up on the river.
The river Tlell dominates every moment you spend here, only an underhand stone’s throw from its banks. Unless you are asleep, or deliberately turning your back and actively ignoring it, you always know which way the tide is running — upstream, or down the few kilometres to the salt water of Hecate Strait — and you know how high it has climbed against the bridge timbers, or how low it has fallen, to reveal sand beaches. The river dominates the view, decides our activities, and turns any thoughtful resident into a water creature.
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