After arriving back in Campbell River, I figured I would rent a house and see about finding work. `I ran into my old friend, mine, Jimmy Morgan. We had been pretty good buds when we were kids; he was looking to do some hand logging along with an oldtimer and his son. They needed a cook. He also said that it was good clam-digging in the area, and I could dig clams under his license. I had made good money clam-digging in the past. So I signed on for the adventure. Jimmy 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 timer and his boy would use it to sleep in. The old timer was going to be the boomer, my buddy would be yarding wood with his boat. The young fella was going to look after putting the timber hitches on the logs to have them yarded to the water; he would also be doing most of the falling. I would be helping out wherever needed, and 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 windy forests gently covered in a blanket of mist. A place where dreams come from.
Blunden 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. 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.
The old timer, Jimmy 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, and we had a stiff leg set up for this. 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 car 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. I had known Jimmy Sumner for a few years, always calling him “old timer”.
On arrival in Blunden, the first order of business was offloading the boats, setting up the propane, lighting the pilot lights, firing up the generator to charge the batteries and stowing away the food. The old timer told his boy, Marc, 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. Seems that 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, Jimmy was checking out the saws, making sure they were ready to work. One of the saws was a 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 with 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, 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 December 15th, and they barely had 3 sections of wood in the water.
Over breakfast one morning, my buddy 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 into 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. Jimmy thought that 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 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 began 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.
My buddy 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 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, and there were no clouds in the sky. The sea was flat as a mirror. Jimmy 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. My buddy 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, and 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. My buddy 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 had been 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. The other boat was running over with us; we had secured a heavy steel 45-gallon drum to its deck. I watched it fly up into the air and then 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 me 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 awesome.
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. The pilot finally made it in.. He said, 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 slack tide and the waters were fairly calm. We did pass quite close to a seiner, though, and 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, a number of 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.