Island Time - Part Four

Lewis Channel and Discovery Islands - northern tip of Cortes Island on left

There have been times in my life when a serendipitous moment has presented itself to me… something wonderful, and unexpected. Like the time I was checking out of a small hotel in the German Alps and the clerk asked, “Are you going to the cow festival?” I had no idea what a cow festival was, let alone that one was taking place… but I leapt at the chance to find out. Later I watched, and listened to the echoing clamor of cowbells as cows were being brought down from their summer grazing spots in the mountains… a great procession of herders, and their festively adorned prize cows. It was the German version of a county fair, complete with vendors selling farm equipment, a beer garden, and country folks making ribald jokes about bulls and heifers. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. And so too a February night ten years ago when we slipped through moonlit trees and found Gorge Hall.

Sunday Night at Gorge Hall

We were only going for a short walk, to get some fresh air on this Sunday evening, our last in Gorge Harbor. Instead we were transported back into another time. As we walked through the woods along a gravel road, we could hear the sound of music coming through moonlit trees. Curiosity drew us closer. Numerous cars were parked around an old wooden structure known as the Gorge Community Hall. Soft lighting spilled through multi-paned windows, and when we drew closer we could hear scattered applause.

We stepped onto a covered porch, past neatly stacked firewood and into an entry. There was no one to sell us a ticket or hand out a printed program, only the welcoming feel of warm air against our chilled cheeks, the woodsy smell of smoke, and an inviting fire in a side-room fireplace. Through an open door we could see some thirty people seated in casual rows of folding chairs, children sitting Indian-fashion on the floor or standing at the edge of a small, illuminated stage. The only other lighting in the room was candlelight. A man and woman were on the stage, each with an acoustic guitar. The man lightly joked about his Jewish heritage and his playing partner’s Catholic background. She was colorfully dressed in a red velvet vest, dark patterned pants and bright orange silk scarf wound artfully through her black hair. They began to sing a folk ballad about a friend turning in another friend to the Mounties... “Is that being a buddy? No! No! That’s not a buddy.”

We were strangers here and yet as we slipped into the room, the eyes I felt upon me were accepting. I settled into the folding chair and became one of them for a while, tapping my toes, laughing, joining in when the audience was asked to sing the chorus, “No! No! That’s not a buddy.”

There was no self-consciousness about these folks. People come and go - to have a smoke outside, to check on a youngster up front, and see to the wood stove in back. A young woman walks quietly with her baby to a long bench at the rear of the room. She leans against the back wall - her nursing child at breast - she laughs and sings with the rest of us.

To some this place is a backwater, but there was nothing backwater about these performers. They were touring professionals playing to a small, appreciative audience of oystermen in gumboots and duct-tape-patched jackets, grey-haired retirees, a young couple wearing matching Nehru-style hats, children of assorted ages, and a teenager with Rastafarian hair. This is an island of rugged individuals. But on Sunday night at Gorge Hall, it is a community.

During our month-long stay here, Scott the store manager kept pointing to the bulletin board outside the Marina General Store, urging us to attend some of the events at Gorge Hall. “It’ll give you a chance to see the island folk. Everyone comes.” Stepping out into the cold night air as we left the Hall later, Bob turned to me and said, “What a perfect way to end our stay at Gorge Harbor.” I agreed. (February 1998)

… P. L. Morningstar
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Island Time - Part Three

People thought we were crazy to sail north into British Columbian waters at wintertime. Perhaps we were. But despite the gales and snowy docks, there were no crowded marinas, and we found it easier to be accepted by the locals. We weren’t rich yachties… we were just that eccentric couple dressed in matching yellow foul weather gear, who had come in winter with a cruising sailboat, two cats and a Japanese bonsai on deck. Almost without exception, we experienced a friendly openness that would be missing in the summer boating crush. I found it touching to discover the American flag waving next to the Canadian flag the day after our arrival at Gorge Harbor (Cortes Island). There were even better things to come. Bob wrote this piece about the marina’s general store:

The General Store

My mother has told me stories about general stores and how country life had centered on them during the Great Depression. How the proprietor was the de facto postmaster, banker, purveyor of news, and local historian. How all of that was gone now.

Then we walked into the Gorge Harbor Marina Store and met Scott. Here was this affable, thirty-something guy with urban sensibilities, running a very small but complete general store. Well-stocked food shelves, freezer, and fresh produce. Hot coffee – Starbucks!! - and fresh baked goods at a two-stool counter, one of which needed repairs - “Don’t lean back on that one, but it’s okay if you sit still.” Video rentals, fishing gear, charts, and a fax machine that provided daily marine weather reports. All very contemporary, but just under the surface was the country store. You only had to be still, and listen, and watch. So I sat on the one good stool and had some coffee.

“Sure, you can leave your mail - put it in that box lid with the others - I’ll take it to Whaletown tomorrow or into Campbell River on Thursday if it’s important.”

As I stood by the display of videos, coffee in hand, I heard Scott telling another customer - an oysterman, I later learned - “No problem, I’ll put it on your tab,” and he took out a shoe box from under the counter – a box filled with little notepads - and entered the amount, and then carefully rechecked the transaction with her. She left with produce, and pride intact.

The store had one of only two gas pumps on Cortes Island, so people stopped by throughout the day for fuel and food and news... the main topic seemed to be the clear-cut logging on Twin Islands. All sides of the argument were represented as the day went on - including the loggers themselves who came in at the end of their workday. Later two Mounties came in - everybody got polite - and quiet. There is no Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment on Cortes, so they were here on business. Outside, several people waited to use the two public pay phones. These phones are rare enough that they are marked on maps of the island.

Later that evening, Morningstar and I walked back up to the store just before closing time. Quiet now, Scott is turning out the lights - shutting it down. But he stops to tell us about local events at Gorge Hall which might be of interest and also offered to take us into Campbell River on Thursday if we had ‘city business.’

So while the country general store and its proprietor fade from my mother’s memory, I have this new set of images. And with this writing, I can in turn share it with her. And maybe - just maybe - reassure her that some of those things she found so important, and thought were gone - some of those things are still here in this place.

As he turns out the light, Scott calls to us, “Be sure to check the bulletin board by the door. I try to keep it up to date.”

… Bob (February 1998)

Island Time - Part Two

Over these past months we have written about the independent and self-sufficient people who live in our area of northern British Columbia. Our stories describe colorful, eccentric, resourceful, hard-working, and just plain good folks. We were first introduced to this kind of community while spending a month on Cortes Island ten years ago. It was like revisiting my past… life as it was lived a quarter of a century earlier. I don’t know what Cortes Island is like now, but here is what it was like then…

Ferry Godmother

Everyone told us that there should be no problem hitching a ride along Whaletown Road, especially on “mail day” when the locals drive to the Whaletown Post Office to pick up their mail. This is Friday - a mail day - but having newly arrived, we didn’t realize that the ferry landing is not actually in Whaletown, but down a road just short of there. The car that picks us up takes us only as far as the turnoff.

We still have a ways to walk, but we’ve allowed ourselves plenty of time, so we continue at our leisure, walking past hippie-style homesteads scratched out of the hemlock and cedar forest. In the early morning hour a rooster crows and two domestic geese cross the road in front of us. I can smell wood smoke and see the wispy tendrils that rise from a chimney into an overcast sky.

Cars are already parked on the steeply sloped ferry landing; drivers sit idle at the wheel, waiting for the 7:50 a.m. ferry; some snooze, some smoke. Then I see a young woman pushing a cloth-draped wheelbarrow up the ferry lane. She is probably in her early 30’s, with light brown hair pulled back into a tidy bun. The wheelbarrow is filled with hotpots of coffee and hot water, a selection of tea or cider packets, orange juice and fresh from the oven apple-strudel muffins. Her name is April. I heard that someone had stolen her wheelbarrow a few weeks ago from behind the ticket booth where she stores it between ferry departures. She had written a plea in the island flyer, asking that her ‘livelihood’ be returned to her.

TO WHOMEVER BORROWED MY WHEELBARROW:
Please return it promptly since you have also taken my livelihood.

Thankfully it was returned, and we buy two cups of coffee and two muffins from April. We sit down on a wooden box to eat them, and watch April push the wheelbarrow up the line of cars, stopping now and then to hand cups of coffee or muffins through open windows. When she reaches the last car, she returns the wheelbarrow to its place behind the ticket booth, puts the coffee, tea and muffins into her pickup truck and leaves …to return at the next ferry departure in two hours. Around here, April is known as the “Ferry Godmother.” (February 1998)

… P. L. Morningstar
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Island Time

This is the slow time of the year, the lull between winter and spring. Slowing down for an American is not an easy thing to do… but we are learning. Our first experiences with this slower pace came while we were sailing in northern waters ten years ago. We called it “Island Time.” It was February and we were moored in Gorge Harbor on Cortez Island. Then as now, I wrote daily in a journal, trying to capture the moment.

IF IT’S MONDAY
IT MUST BE MAIL DAY

Situated on the northern end of the Strait of Georgia, Cortes Island is a remote, densely forested and sparsely populated island. About 800 inhabitants live on the south end, the north end consists of Crown land and Klahoose First Nation tribal land. While residents of Quadra Island are only a ten-minute ferry ride from Campbell River (Vancouver Island), the nearest city of any size, residents of Cortes must add to that a 45-minute ferry ride to Quadra and a 10-mile drive across the island to catch the ferry at Quathiaski Cove. Fishing, oyster farming, logging and alternative-lifestyles typify this island where time is measured by days, not hours and minutes.

“Tell us a little about the character of Quadra and Cortes Islands and how they differ,” Bob asked Nancy the Realtor.

She laughed. “Let me sum it up with what Campbell River merchants say... when the Quadra/Cortes ferry arrives, you can always distinguish Quadra residents from Cortes residents by this... people from Quadra ask what time it is; people from Cortes ask what day it is.”

I nodded, thinking I knew what she meant. That was before I had been to Cortes. Now that I have been here on Cortes Island for a week, I can say I REALLY know what she meant. If you forget what day it is on Cortes and show up at the tiny grey-shingled Whaletown post office on Tuesday, you will find it closed... it is only open on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Of course, you also need to know the time because post office hours are 8:30 to 9 in the morning and 1 to 4 in the afternoon. To old timers, mail day is still called “boat day” because of the connection to the days when the Union Steamships made weekly mail runs to these islands. Ferry service did not arrive on Cortes Island until the late 1960’s. If you don’t have a car and need to hitch a ride, the locals say to do it on Mail Day, when there is more traffic on the road.

Dr. Phil Foster is the island’s only physician... office visits are by appointment on - you guessed it - Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at the Community Hall. However, he does make house calls.

Time is illusory here and we find new ways of marking it. When we were moored near the ferry landing at Heriot Bay (Quadra Island), we became very familiar with the ferry schedule, and the gentle rocking of the boat in the ferry’s wash became our clock. Here at Gorge Harbor, our alarm clock has become the BCtel (British Columbia Telephone) Beaver floatplane arriving at the dock with a work crew at 8 every morning.

Little by little our own pace slows – matching our time with ‘island time’ and getting to know the folks who have chosen to live here. (February 1998)

Sailing and living in the Discovery Islands of British Columbia, introduced us to a different way of living. Author Henry Miller once said, “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” Our 1998 winter passage led us to rediscover our place in nature, changing forever our view of the world and how we want to be in that world. Our needs were few and easily satisfied, helping us to realize that we are truly rich in all that matters. Those lessons paved the way for living off the grid in the north.

... P. L. Morningstar
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