Saltspring Island foray - there and back again

Cole and I set sail for Saltspring Island on Friday morning.  Back home Saturday evening.  Cole's purpose was to visit Bob McKay and interview him about his role in the restoration of the Old Ranch House in the 1970s and about how he got to the Slocan.  Bob did the kitchen cabinets, the eating benches, the roughly-planed panelling upstairs, the upstairs ceiling (with Cole) and …?

It takes a while to get to Saltspring on the "milk run"...

First stop - Sturdies Bay on Galiano Island

Second stop - Village Bay on Mayne Island

Third stop - Otter Bay on North Pender Island

Fourth stop - Long Harbour on Saltspring Island
(actually this is a leaving rather than a coming photo; we were stuck below-decks on arrival)

En route, the sky was grey but not leaking; the sea was silver ...

… and every piling at each ferry dock had its sea-gull or cormorant ...

In mid-channel, the captain announced a "man-overboard" drill.  A life-ring was tossed, alarm sounded, and rescue-boat launched from the top deck.  It all seemed a bit in slow-motion, but the life-ring-in-distress was duly rescued, the rescue-boat hauled back on board, and we steamed on to Long Harbour.

In Ganges, a Scrabble tournament seemed to have most hotel rooms booked, but we found a fine room for the night at the Seabreeze Inn just south, up the hill.  Then north on Robinson Road to Bob McKay's home and studio (201 Grantville).  (Our one previous visit to Bob and his wood-turning shop was with Colin, Teagan and Griffin - which March?)  A full two-hour conversation with Bob and his artist wife, Joanne Evans, followed by seafood chowder at the Harbour House Hotel in Ganges.  Lots of grist for Cole's Old-Ranch-House chapter.

To Ruckle Park the next morning - next posting.

shorts versus skirts

CBC news item today:

"Field Hockey player, Katie Cooper, was kicked off the field during a game for wearing shorts rather than a skirt.  She was told if she wore shorts to a subsequent game she would get a red card.  Today, the Vancouver Women's Field Hockey Association votes on whether or not to allow shorts to be worn during games."   Stay tuned!

In the meantime, for our favourite 18-year-old women's field hockey player it would seem not to be an issue.
……………………………
Feb.19th.  News flash.  Shorts allowed.  But on a team-by-team basis, all shorts or all skirts.

Victory Gardens versus CPR

Today was the day for the CPR to attack the community gardens along our stretch of the Arbutus Corridor.  On my way to Choices, I had my camera and also an altercation with the CPR man in charge - at least in charge of convincing pesky photographers that they (the CPR) were doing a necessary thing with great sensitivity.  They really need the space for storing rail cars!  I was not convinced, but I was a bit intimidated, so I biked back later (as the CPR crew was leaving down the track) for a scarecrow photo.

mailed to all nearby residents last week

view from 57th Ave - fruit trees "left for now" (except for the one on the left)

In red, a descendant of the scarecrow that startled Bess on our morning bike/run 10 years ago.
In black, the gardener who has just finished moving his stuff back behind the fence, off "CPR land".

same scarecrow - rear view

the gardener seems philosophical - considers it the City's fault for not telling him

It's true they have been doing a good job of moving gardeners' sheds and some trees.  But still ...

Valentines Day adventures

Feb.13th.  Hager's Books annual sale - 20% off everything.  Yum.  Owner Andrea was leaving a phone message with Cole (to make sure her loyal customer came!) as Diana and I walked into her shop.  My haul: "Frog and Toad" presents, a new "Bertie" by Alexander McCall Smith, Thomas King's "The Back of the Turtle", and "Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie" by a new-to-me author, Alan Bradley.  That ought to do it.

Feb.14th.  First, a prowl in the backyard.  Lenten roses.  Last year they all got zapped in a January freeze.  This year they have appeared in their full glory, seen out our bedroom window.

descendants of the "original" from the Watney garden

Then, to the Musqueam Cultural Centre Gallery, on the river edge of the Musqueam Reserve, to see an exhibit of artifacts from the Marpole midden - "cesna?em, the city before the city" - the native village here on the north shore of the Fraser River (straight down from Wiltshire Street) until 1500 years ago, when it seems that the village people moved down-river, to the newly-formed delta at the present Musqueam site.  (The Marpole village name, cesna?em, is pronounced something like "tsus-naam" and the e's are actually upside down - but how to do that on a Mac?)   Remnants of fishing gear, jewelry, basketry, cooking implements, mauls, adzes...  Descriptions of canoe-making, house-building…  All fascinating, and from right here!  There are two other parts to this exhibit - at the Museum of Anthropology and the Museum of Vancouver, so we just need to stir our stumps to get there too.

the Musqueam Cultural Centre

Musqueam land at the Fraser River's mouth, seen from the Centre

And finally, a "muddy walk" along the Southlands Bridle Path beside the Fraser River.

to our Valentines

A violet Valentine from Wiltshire Street, with much love, Meo and Doco ...

Meo's photo - "better in sun"

Doco's photo - "better in shade"

Too bad you can't add smell (when it's SO good) in a blog.

snowdrops

Not exactly snowdrops in this patch, but THINKING about snowdrops (see bottom)

Sunday thinking time ...

Who, me?

Well, as a matter of fact ...

 Doco was in charge of introducing the Unitarian service on Sunday.  Here are his thoughts:

"Let me begin with a few words about snowdrops.  They have been blooming, lovely as ever, for more than a week in the bed beneath the plane tree.  But they are early this year, and I am uneasy.  Early snowdrops.  Almost no snow on the North Shore mountains.  When there as a kid in mid-winter, stovepipes from the cabins below poked up through a dozen feet of snow.  When Europeans first overwintered along the lower Fraser -- at Ft. Langley in 1827 -- the river froze for five weeks.  It could be walked on inland for a hundred miles.  In the Canadian arctic, the active layer that melts each summer above the permafrost has been warming for as long as records have been taken, some thirty years.  The infinitely precious natural world of which we are a part is changing uncomfortably quickly.   The snowdrops, it seems to me, are speaking to us, reminding us by their delicate loveliness of the greatest gift of the past, the natural world as we have known it, and of its fragility."

(actually, Wiltshire Street snowdrops)

BC Gold Rush excitement

At 9am this morning there was a knock at the door and a film crew of five tromped in, armed with tripods, cameras, lights, baffles (and Purdy's chocolates).  Turns out, the Royal BC Museum in Victoria is creating an exhibit about the BC Gold Rush and, for this, had asked if they could come and interview Cole as part of a 15-minute film.  I was expecting one interviewer and one camera-man.  But no.  What with camera-men, interviewer, producer, script-writer, and curator, I think there were seven.  Then where to film?  Cole rather favoured the nook, but when we saw all the stuff ...!  Even the living room barely held it all.

My large harp wheeled out, the furniture shifted ...

… even the piano - and a movie set was created

The professor, in his favourite Ottawa-Valley chair, ready to talk ...

… then, pouring over Mike Kennedy's map of Chinese placer mining sites in the Fraser Canyon (in "BC Studies")

Not sure what they will make of Cole's talk, but, eavesdropping from out-of-sight in the back hall, I found it fascinating.  Cole just knows this time and place, and can put his thoughts into such good words.  I love it!  I always learn stuff.  Today, for example, that there were only about 200 non-native people on the BC mainland before the gold rush (in 1857) - mostly fur-traders.  Then came 25,000-30,000 men in 1858, mostly from California.  Mainland BC was not yet a British colony, but the Colonial Office in London acted fast and created the Crown Colony of British Columbia that year, pre-empting annexation by the US.  One consequence was that the eastern "Canadians" could now see the possibility of a trans-continental country.

Phew.  Wiltshire Street is now restored to its usual tranquil state.  I was told the exhibit opens in Victoria in May, runs through the summer, then goes to the Museum of History in Ottawa.  May see it there!