After arriving back on the coast, I figured I would rent a house and see about finding work. `I ran into an old friend of mine, Jim, we had been pretty good buds when we were kids. He was looking to do some hand logging along with old Jim Sumner and his boy Mark. They needed a cook, he also said that it was good clam digging in the area and I could dig clams under his licence, I had made good money clam digging in the past. So I signed on for the adventure. Jim had this awesome trawler, it was heavy and great for pulling wood to the beach, a good boat for logging. The other boat was far too light to pull logs to the beach but the old man Sumner and his boy Mark would use it to sleep in. The old timer was going to be the boomer, and Jim would be yarding wood with his boat. The young fella Mark would be doing most of the falling. I would be helping out wherever needed, I would also be doing the cooking. Along with this, I would be commercial clam digging on all the good tides It was October 5, 1979. when we headed to the harbour.
Blunden Harbour is a place of waterfalls and rivers, of deer and wolves, of birds and seals. A place of deep forests gently covered in a blanket of mist. A place where dreams come from.
The Harbour is located on the mainland, directly across from Port Hardy, at the entrance to Bradley Lagoon. At the turn of the century, the village at Blunden Harbour was inhabited but it has mostly returned to the forest and the sea now, but if you take the time you can still see the remains of the longhouses lined up on the beach. The old chimney is all that is left of the house that was tucked around the corner from the village site. A few of my wife’s older uncles were born here.
Old man Sumner had brought up a float with a small house on it a week back and secured it to the beach just where the outflow of Bradley Lagoon flows into Deep Bay, the bay is part of Blunden Harbour. The float had a 12-volt generator system along with a propane fridge and stove, it would be our cookhouse. The generator system was a series of 12-volt cat batteries, hooked up to a 12-volt gas generator. I would fuel up the genny, start it and let it run until the fuel ran out. It would run for 3 or so hours, charging up our batteries, this was all that was needed to keep the lights on.
On arrival in Blunden, the first order of business was offloading the boats, setting up the propane and lighting the pilot lights, firing up the generator to charge the batteries and stowing away the food. The old timer told his boy who was 16 to get the propane going and the rest of us went about other jobs. The young fella was gone for a bit before he came and said he could not find a match to light the pilot lights. He was given a pack and back into the cabin he went, then there was a big boom that shook the float and blew open some windows. As we all turned to look, the young man flew out of the cabin, all excited like. Seems while he was looking for a match, he had left the pilot light going. We all had a good laugh after ensuring he was alright.
Later that day Jim was checking out the saws, making sure they were ready to work, one of the saws was 090 stihl, this was a big saw with a 4-foot bar. They needed this saw as there were quite a few big trees on the claim. These saws are never easy to start. The young fella came along and I thought he was going to struggle in starting it, I was wrong, he just picked up that saw and fired it up like a pro, he was a tough lad after all, I had worked for a couple of his uncles on Gilford island in the past, and they were highball loggers. This young man was cut from the same cloth.
One day this young man had forgotten his watch and asked me the time, so I removed my tin hat to look up at a stick-on clock that was inside and told him the time. He thought I had used my hat to somehow tell the time by looking at the sun. So from then on, he would ask me the time while looking at his watch, it seemed I was always dead on. You could see him all day long holding his hat up, squinting towards the sun trying to figure out how one could tell the time in this fashion. Never did let him in on this.
They had hopes of bringing out six sections of wood by Christmas. But from the very start, it seemed that reaching this goal was going to be tough. Every day the boys would start with high hopes. But by day’s end, they would look back on saws that wouldn’t run, and brand new lines that would break. Logs that would hang up where there was nothing to hang up on, and when they would finally get logging, the wind would come up out of nowhere and force them into hiding. Here it was the morning of Dec 15th and they barely had 3 sections of wood in the water.
Over breakfast one morning, Jim said he felt today was going to be different. He didn’t know how right he was. They started to log at high tide and had only a few logs in the water. I had just taken a skiff over to the logging show to help out when the wind started to blow. It was a funny sort of wind, it would start like a child’s breath but would build up until it seemed to be a thousand voices screaming at us through the rigging of the boat.
The wind was hitting the boat from all directions and my buddy was having a hard time keeping it straight to the beach, so he gave me a shout and told me to take the skiff to shore to bring the youngster and his gear to the boat so we could get back to the float house. By the time we got his gear on board and the skiff stored away on deck, the wind was howling at us from all sides, if we didn’t make it into the harbour soon, we weren’t going to make it at all. Getting into the harbour is a bit tricky when it’s calm out, it’s near impossible when you are fighting storm-force winds. The entrance to the protection of Deep Bay is a narrow channel between a reef and a sandbar. Jim thought if he could stay as close to the reef as possible we might just make it.
We were about halfway in when the wind hit us broadside with a blow that tore loose anything that wasn’t lashed down. The wind seemed to be a living thing as it picked us up and slammed us down on the sandbar. We tried to back us off but we were stuck fast. I ran below deck to check for damage and the other two went out on deck to look the situation over. We had water coming in from a couple of spots, but the auto pumps would handle it. The story outside was a whole lot worse, I got back on the deck just as a wave crashed over the boat and rolled us hard to the port side.
It was just starting to get dark and the wind was still increasing, you could almost hear it laughing at us as it screamed through the rigging. Then it started to rain. The kind of rain that, when pushed by 100-knot winds, leaves welts on exposed skin. Every wave that crashed over us rolled us a little farther towards disaster. If the boat went over, the waves would break it up and that would be the end of us.
Jim hollered that we would have to cut up one of the stabilizer poles to brace the boat. So we lowered both the poles and cut the leeward pole into two pieces. We left the windward pole out for balance. I took a piece of the pole and jammed it into the sandbar while they climbed out on the windward pole to roll the boat back as far as it would go. I got the pole lashed to the side of the boat. We put the other piece in the same way.
The danger of rolling over was taken care of, but we were still stuck on the sandbar with the waves crashing over the boat, anything that wasn’t tied down was washed away. The skiff was gone. The rain was so heavy you couldn’t see one end of the boat from the other. All we could do was wait and hope the waves didn’t break the boat up. We spent the next little while securing anything that was left on the deck. The young feller was working the hand pump out on the deck. This young man impressed me.
I have always enjoyed being in challenging situations and this certainly was one. When you are put in survival mode, your adrenaline gets pumped. I was thinking about this as another huge wave smashed over the boat, you could hear the bottom grinding against the sandbar. My buddy went below to see how much water was coming in. When he came back he said we would have to take turns on the hand pump out on the deck. You could only handle the wind, rain and waves for about 15 minutes before you had to come in, so we took turns on the pump.
The wind felt like it was trying to drag you loose from the boat when you were out there. Over the next few hours, the winds slowly decreased and with every gallon of water we pumped out, the boat sat a little higher in the sea. By 11 pm. the wind had died down considerably and the boat rose high enough with the incoming tide to let us pull off and limp into Deep Bay, half frozen, dead tired and soaked to the bone. The old timer was happy to see us when we arrived, he said he had been worried that he had lost us all to the storm.
We pulled out with their 3 sections of wood a few days later. But our adventure was far from over. The first night was one of those incredible times that are remembered with awe, the moon was full, no clouds in the sky. The sea was flat as a mirror. Jim was sleeping and I was at the helm. The old timer and the kid were at the back of the boom pushing with their boat while we were towing and it was a pretty cool night.
Hard to believe that just a few days before we had been fighting for our lives as we were stranded on a sandbar in hurricane-force winds. Jim woke up early and took over the helm as I went to create some breakfast. We turned on the marine weather and they were calling for another storm packing winds up to 100 plus knots. We were not far from Broughton Island and decided to duck in and tie the boom up in Ralph Bay and head across to Port McNeil empty, as we wanted to make it out for Christmas.
By the time we had the boom secured and gear stored below deck, the winds were getting pretty wild. When we pulled out from the bay and entered the Queen Charlotte Straight the storm was blowing extremely hard, the top several feet of the 8-meter waves were blowing off with the winds. We would ride up a wave and then drop into the trough between to be covered by the next wave then bust up through the next wave only to drop into the trough again. We had green water flowing past our windows. Things were flying about the cabin, and broken glasses and plates littered the floor. Then one of the support cables on the remaining stabilizer pole broke loose and was whipping around outside with a coupling on the end, if it broke a window, we could sink. Jim hollers “You have to get out on deck to secure that cable Bud”. So I tied one end of a rope to the boat, the other end around my waist and put on a life jacket.
He knew if he heard me hollering, he would know that I got washed overboard and would need to pull me back to the boat. I then went out on the deck and damn it was pretty wild out there. I tied myself to the boat before trying to grab the cable, I was lucky and got hold of the line quickly, I proceeded to secure it back to the boat, every time a wave rolled over the cabin I would hold on with all my strength while it washed over me, then get right back to the chore at hand. So much water was flowing over me that I was surprised I did not see any fish swimming by. I got it done and back inside. I quickly changed out of my wet clothes to warm up. I spent the next few hours with my head on the radar looking for logs, boats and whatever else that was floating out there. I looked for the other boat and saw it was running not far from us, As I watched the boat, I saw a large and heavy 45-gallon drum we had lashed down on his deck fly up into the air and disappear into the storm.
The rest of the journey across was wild but uneventful, except for the need to slow down to allow an out-of-control sea span tug and three barges that were running sideways in the storm in front of us. When we finally pulled into Port McNeil Harbour, I think we all ran up to just put our feet on land. We had made it, the rest of the way home was by road. After Christmas was over, they went back and picked up the boom. After dropping off the boom at the sort, I was paid out and I was back to being unemployed. It was a great adventure for both myself and my dog Cody.
Cody enjoyed the times we got out in the middle of the night to dig clams. I had a pole with a hook on it that I would stick on the beach and hang my Coleman lantern on, this provided a circle of light. I would dig out the area illuminated and then move my light, the digging was great. Outside the lit areas, you could sometimes see the shine of sea wolves’ eyes in the glow of my lantern and hear them talking to each other. Cody would stick pretty close to me and growl back at them. These nights were awesome and the experience was just awe-inspiring.
I spent the next year logging in various camps, fishing and hiking in between. By winter, I was employed at Protection Point, up in Knights Inlet for a heli-logging outfit. I was working as a chaser in the landing, it was pretty tough work, the landing was almost half a km long and knee-deep in mud caused by the winter rains and machines running through the site. I was looking forward to getting out of here for the winter shutdown. The only thing that kept me going was the fact that the Minstrel Island Lodge was only a 5-minute flight by helicopter and they had off sales. We made the run more than a few times. It was a beautiful lodge, painted a light blue colour. It had a clientele that hailed from all parts of the world. I hear it is closed now and being reclaimed by nature. The pub here used to get pretty busy with loggers and fishermen.
When Christmas was just around the corner, and we were about to shut down and head to town, we got hit by very dense fog. There were just seven of us left in camp at this time and we all wanted to get out for the holidays. The airline tried to get a plane in for days but could not beat the fog. Finally one got in. The pilot said this would be the only flight so all seven of us had to cram into the beaver plane.
It was tight and I being the smallest had to sit on top of our gear behind the back seat, in the tail of the plane. It was a long flight out as the pilot had to keep low over the water to stay out of the fog. When we were just a few minutes out of Campbell River and flying past Deep Water Bay on the north end of Quadra Island, the fog dropped to the water’s surface and we could not see anything. The pilot was doing his best as he tried to navigate blind, when all of a sudden, we hit the water at full speed. We almost flipped but the pilot kept us level. It was so wild that we all screamed out in fear as the plane bounced from one float to the other. The pilot got us stopped and we all checked our drawers, damn scary that was.
We were in deep fog and could not see more than 10 feet. The pilot said we would have to taxi the plane the rest of the way, and we still had to get through Seymour Narrows. The pilot told us to watch for boats as he was attempting to avoid any whirlpools and back eddies. Lucky for us it was almost high tide and the waters were fairly calm. We did pass quite close to a seiner though, we could just make it out in the fog. To them, it would sound like we were flying extremely low and they must have wondered what the hell we were doing, we could just make out the crew on deck, waving their arms about trying to let us know we were so low. We finally made it to the dock.
Over the years, several planes have flipped locally and they usually sink in minutes with the occupants unable to open the doors due to water pressure, most go down with no survivors. We were lucky to have a great pilot that day.
During the summer of 1980, it was extremely hot I was laid off for fire season. Some friends and I decided to canoe the Salmon River, it would take 4 to 5 days and we thought it would be a fun trip. The fishing was phenomenal and the weather was sunny. The water was low, making the rapids great, but on one set of rapids, one of the canoes sustained a pretty serious hole. We were kind of perplexed as to how we could repair the damage. I looked down and saw one of the ice cream buckets we use to carry our cameras in to keep them dry and a thought hit me. I pulled one of the pump-up fuel tanks from a Coleman stove, pumped it up, turned the fuel on and lit the end of the tube on the tank like a blowtorch. Then I took the lid from one of the ice cream containers and melted it over the hole. Worked like a charm, this canoe was never properly fixed after that and never leaked again.
This trip was the first of many adventures on the Salmon River, most trips after this were done in January when the river was running high. My dog Cody was my constant canoe buddy. One thing that was constant on these river runs, was you simply forgot all your worries for 4-5 days. The wildlife you could see was always the highlight of the trip., you might see deer, herds of elk, black bears and just maybe a grizzly bear on these journeys. There were many other smaller creatures also.
We would put in at the Big Tree Creek crossing. After unloading the gear we would take all vehicles and park them behind the Salmon River Inn down at the mouth of the river, and join the others back up the river leaving one ride there. We always planned our trips to end on a high tide allowing us to pull right up to the inn. We would go in and have a few beers in the pub, then load up the cars/trucks with our gear and after retrieving the vehicle left at Big Tree Creek we would head home. I loved these trips.
Moving To Coombs
In the spring of 1981, I was offered a job in Coombs and contacted a buddy who had a lease on an old farmhouse along with 10 acres to see if he had room for me, seems a few old buds were living there, they had a spare room that I could have so I took the job. The job was working as a saw mechanic on a spacing contract that would employ 40 people. This was a government-sponsored UI (Unemployment Insurance) make-work project jointly run by BCFP and the Government. Workers on UI who were employed in this project would see their UI raised to the max allowed and their claims extended to the end of the job. It was scheduled to run for 10 months. This was a spacing contract.
It was a cold spring but I was supplied with a truck with a large cube box that was heated, my job was to keep the saws running. I would repair saws daily and if I had no broken saws, I would go out and walk the line, listening to and tuning up saws. The guys liked this as they would get a smoke break while I worked their saws. I remember one day as I stopped to check a guy’s saw, he asked if I had light, so I quickly gave him a light and just as I was lighting his smoke a forestry checker came upon us. He fired us on the spot, It seemed that the smoke I lit for this guy was not tobacco but a joint and it looked like we were going to smoke it. I had no idea. I was ready to punch this guy out, he had cost me my job. I challenged my firing and won my job back. After this, I did not walk the line anymore and only worked out of my truck.
After the completion of the saw work, I took a job in Parksville, I was hired on as a foreman at the kingfisher fish plant, where we processed everything from prawns to herring row. We had 50 ladies working on the floor who had been there for years, they were all much older than me and took me in like a son. We would work 5 days a week. On the weekends, the owner and I would work creating hand-made seafood sausage, it was sold to local Vancouver Island stores and always sold out. After 6 months of working at the plant, it shut down due to the owner having health issues. It was a good job where I could work 7 days a week. I would miss all the old girls very much.
A week later, I secured a job as a foreman on the construction of a huge commercial greenhouse system for Errington Greenhouses. This new system was created in China and the U.B.C. was funding part of the costs as this was a new way of growing food. All the boxes came marked on the outside in big letters, “Red China”
We built 5 separate greenhouses that had fully automatic heating and cooling systems and tables on rollers where the product was grown. Each greenhouse could be managed by 1 person. It was an interesting job, learned a lot. Not only was I the job foreman, but I also took on using a builder’s level to ensure the new greenhouses were level. This was something I had to learn on the job. You use a builder’s level in the construction field to check elevations across the project. It is an optical instrument used mainly in surveying. It was fun learning how to use it.
Before we started the job, I had to fall a number of large trees along the property line. I used a portable sawmill to cut these logs into lumber and used it for various projects at the site. I built a large flat deck on a 5-ton truck with some of the wood. Over the 9 months of the job, we had a variety of workers, at the height of the construction, we had more than 25 people working. I enjoyed the job and made many friends. But eventually, the job was over.
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