We spent the next two years living in Burnaby, out by Deer Lake. The area is all city now, but it was farm country when we lived there. Our home was quite close to the Oakalla Prison Farm. We lived right beside a creek that flowed into Deer Lake; this was one of the tiny creeks that fed Deer Lake.
I remember gathering stinging nettles along this water course with my dad, and how it took me so long to learn not to touch them. This was my first time gathering wild food with my dad, who had been taught about wild foods and medicines by his mom, my grandma Lizzy. I did not realize yet that through my dad, I, too, would learn my grandmother’s teachings.
Though it was a small, treed area where the creek flowed, it felt like a wild mountain river canyon located deep in the wilderness to me. I can still smell the mustiness that seemed to permeate the whole creek bed. It was a wonderful smell of decay and rebirth. Salamanders and snakes moved about beneath the forest ground cover, while frogs seemed to fill the creek waters. Flying insects swarmed in the air. I found my love for insects in this creek, as it was alive with them. The sounds of these creatures were a constant hum, a melody of the hidden ones. There were so many dragonflies of such beautiful colours and designs flying all around me. They looked like little sky jewels. When they would land on me, I would freeze in excitement until they flew off again. It was breathtaking.
In the early years, when my mind was less cluttered with a lifetime of information. I would sit in wonder, watching the ballet of these beautiful beings of the small world for hours, while all around me the sunlight danced on the forest floor and sparkled through the trees as they swayed in the soft summer breeze. The background music for this epic show was provided by the babbling creek.
The forest seemed to talk to me in a language only known to the innocence of youth. I knew unquestionably that if I sat quietly in the shadow of the trees, I would feel an almost mystical connection to everything around me. It was like an invisible force binding all things together. I felt the magic of the woodlands in a far more profound way back then. Sometimes, though, even now, when I am deep in the forest, I still sense this magic that now lies just beyond my adulthood reach.
On one side of our yard was a farm where we would buy our milk, butter and eggs. Some mornings, Mom would ask me to walk over to this farm for one thing or another. She would always tell me to take the road, as going through the farmer’s fields was too dangerous. I would always cut through his fields to get there. Occasionally, it required me to run past farm animals. Never had much trouble dodging the big ones like goats and cows. But his geese were another thing; they would come at me like an angry flock of little demons. They had no teeth, but they could deliver pain with those beaks; teeth seemed not to be needed. I was afraid of them, and my fear was well placed. They were not easy to outsmart.
Living close to a prison was scary sometimes. On occasion, prison guards would show up to warn us that an inmate had escaped, and a guard would be left to keep watch until it was either deemed that the inmate was no longer a threat or that they had been captured again. This would be both alarming and, at the same time, quite exhilarating.
I was young during this time of living in Burnaby, and I have only a few memories, but one of them is a very vivid memory. It involves the first puppy I ever had. A few months after getting this pup, it was run over by a car on Royal Oak Ave right before me. I hugged him tight as he died in my arms, and I felt such sorrow. It was the first time my heart felt such pain, such loss. It was devastating. The anguish I felt that day has not fully left my heart, and indeed, it has been compounded by the passing of so many other pets since that day.
Mom and I carried my dog out along the brook by our house, where she helped me to bury him. All the while telling me that ”God would take him to heaven”. The next day, I went out and dug up his grave to ensure god had taken him, and to my horror, my pup was still there. So I picked him up and ran crying to my mom, yelling that god did not take him, that god did not want him. Mom was appalled at the sight of her 4-year-old child holding tight to this small, bloody, dirt-encrusted, dead creature. She did her best to explain the concept of the soul to me as we reburied my pup. I tried to believe her, but in the back of my mind, I found that I did not think much of this God she put her faith in so strongly. If you asked me if I believed in God, I would honestly have to say no. Sometimes I would try to believe in him, but I always thought that if he were real, he could not be a good god. He always seemed to be looking to his followers to prove their devotion; was he this insecure? This vain? This did not seem very godlike to me. But then again, I was very young back then.
I had a strange upbringing as a child; my mom was a full god-fearing, church-going catholic woman who was constantly trying to get me to go to church with her, and my dad was a man who had no use for the Christian religion or any religion for that matter. Dad would always say that the forest was his church. I tended to agree with my dad. My dad was a man of the forest; he understood the ways of the plants and animals. He would say that all things had a spirit and you needed to show respect for everything, even the very stones of the earth. He would point to the sun and tell me, “That is the father.” he would put his hand to the earth and say, “This is the mother”. To him, this was something you could see and feel, unlike this god that Mom worshipped; her god was invisible.
In 1960, we moved out of Burnaby to Vancouver. After settling in, Dad decided to take us all fishing. No matter how hard Dad searched, he could not find a place to cast our rods among the factories and pollution that seemed to be everywhere. Every time Dad thought we had found a spot, the no-fishing signs would be out.
Dad finally found a farm. A trout farm. This was not a normal farm; it was a farm where you could fish for trout in big, round, black container ponds. There were a number of these containers, and many people were fishing in them. We did not fish there. We went home. That was it for Dad; he said we were going to move. He set a plan in motion that had us headed for a small Vancouver Island community named Campbell River. I was quite excited about this turn of events. It took time, but we finally packed up our stuff and shipped. Dad secured a job as manager of the EB Hosreman store and lined up a house in Campbell River. All that was left was to load up the car with us kids and drive us all out to Horseshoe Bay in the Plymouth. This was where we would catch the ferry to Vancouver Island.