After getting kicked out of school, I went logging for Elk River Timber along with another lad who was of the same age and had been kicked out of school as well. He and I were hired on as one man, and we had to split a paycheck. Worked out to about $1.50 an hour each. They just called us the kids, all you could see of us were our hardhats as we moved through the fireweed.
We were quite small, this other lad and I. We were like a couple of hobbit loggers, but we were hired for the job because of our small size. You see, the company had fallen trees right into the Elk River and fisheries wanted them removed. They hired us because we were light enough to get out on the logs in the river to set chokers. I never really thought about the dangerous aspects of this job, I don’t think anyone did. I was just happy to have a job. The camp we stayed in was called Camp 10, it was just past Drum Lakes, heading towards the north island. I swam in these lakes many times after work.
I owe a lot to this logging company for giving me that first job. The work was tough but it got me into logging. I bulked up over time and became good at my job. I spent more time in camp than I did in town, but even on my days off, I was hardly ever home. I would only come home to see my mom, give her some money and, make sure she knew I loved her. I quite often booked a room at the Rainbow Motel. It was good to be on my own.
Over the next couple of years, I logged for various outfits up and down the coast. I went from being a snot-nosed kid to being well on my way to becoming a man. Seems I was raised by loggers. I learned what it was to be a rigging rat. and loved the job. They taught me to drink and fight. I did enjoy a good fight after a few beers.
Our family was a logging family. My 3 brothers all became loggers, even my brothers who were in the military became loggers when they left the service. One of my sisters was married to a camp cook. My other sister was married to a logger who died on the job up in Call Inlet.
There was a good reason for my need to be on my own. You see, my dad drank quite a bit and would get to beating on us boys when he was drunk. My mom on the other hand was a wonderful lady. She always had a smile for and treated everyone as if they were the most important people in her life. When my dad was drinking though, she was like a sow grizzly bear, protecting her young from harm. She could stop Dad in his tracks, with just a look. But my dad drank a lot, and my mom was not always around to look out for us. So, once in a while, Dad would lay a beating on one of us boys. Even from a very young age, I had been looking forward to leaving home and getting away from my dad’s bouts of drunken anger.
When I think back on how life was during my home years, I always seem to remember those times of celebration, Christmas, Easter, birthdays and so forth. They would start as joyful times but after the beer and whisky got flowing, Dad would start up fighting with one of my brothers and it would become a brawl of fisty cuffs with tables overturned and things broken with my mom sitting in a corner crying. I would run off and come home after the fight. I can tell you, there is not one time that I can remember when there was no fight. Every bloody time it was the same damn shit.
I’m not here to bash the dead though, and to be fair about it all, I must truthfully say that when my dad was sober, he was pretty cool. Everything I know about the bush I learned from him. He would take us boys fishing and hunting all the time and was always teaching us about the ways of the animals. My dad had such an understanding of the forest and its inhabitants. It was amazing how he could just look at the forest, and tell us whole stories on what he was seeing. He would say it was like reading a book, written in another language, all you had to do was learn the language. He had such a knowledge of the plants and animals, he knew many of the healing plants, and just how to use them. When you were in the forest with him, he was always telling you what was good to eat and what was not, or what could be used for medicine.
Dad’s mom was Mohawk, I only met my grandma once, and I truly remember very little of her. I do remember that the year after I married Georgina in 1985, I received a phone call to inform me of her death. She was 105 years old. She was born in 1881.
My Grandfather was a tugboat Captain on the St Clair River when he met her. She lived on the river. He fell in love with this beautiful lady and married her. They had quite a few children. I think there were 8 boys and 4 girls. My great-grandma Anna from the Logan side of the family helped raise the boys when Grandpa and Grandma were out on the tug.
When Dad was not quite a teenager yet, he worked with his dad on the tug, it was the start of a lucrative decade for tug boat captains. Prohibition in both Canada and the USA had just begun. In the states, alcohol was deemed illegal and could not be sold or even brewed. It was also illegal in Canada but could be brewed and sold out of the country. The tugboats of St Claire River found new customers, the Americans. The American border was the center of the river. All they had to do was run across the river in the dark of night, drop off the load and get back to the Canadian side before the feds got you.
It all started in the 1920s, at first, it was a free-for-all until the North West Mounted Police set up a headquarters in Sarnia to get control of these rum runners. The Americans also created a special force to hunt down these smugglers. They brought in six boats for patrols. These boats were the fastest on the river they declared.
The money was good so Grandpa set about being what they called a rum runner. My dad worked the boat with him. After the patrols were beefed up, the price per load was increased, and my Granddad would be the owner of several tugboats by the time this all came to an end. It was all very exciting for my dad and my brothers.
My dad came from a very different time than I did. He came from a place in time where you hunted for your meat, grew a big garden, and your medicines came from the forest. He gained much of his knowledge from his mom and grandmother when he was a boy. They taught him everything from animal husbandry to the gathering of edible and medicinal foods and plants. Sometimes it seemed you could sense their presence as you walked in the forest with my dad. It was a comfortable feeling.
My dad without knowing it, was an environmentalist. On our walks, he would tell you to stop, and put your ear to the ground, then ask you what you hear. It was always the sound of a drumbeat. As you listened, he would say that is the mother’s heartbeat, look after her and she will look after you. I was young and impressionable then, and now realize that it was my heartbeat I was hearing echoing in my ear. Long before we knew that the mother needed protection, my dad was instructing us to do just that. That is pretty awesome. I do try to look after the mother.
Due to a snowy spring, E.R.T. had not called me back to work yet. So I contacted some buddies to see if they wanted to go camping at Roberts Lake, it was early March. We planned on being there for a week or 2. My dad gave me the big bell tent we had used when we drove across Canada. It would fit us all with room to spare. The center pole had come up missing so we tied a long pole between two trees and threw a line over it to hold up the tent. Having no center pole was great. We built a stone ring in the middle of the tent and would pile up rocks we had heated up in the fire outside. These hot rocks would last most of the night.
During our first week there, we all hiked up Menzies Mountain, it was snow-covered, the type of snow that has a very hard crust on it, allowing us to walk on top. It took us 7 hours to reach the summit. We had wooden staffs that we used on the way up.
When it came time to head down, we came up with a plan to slide down on the hard-packed snow. We took our day packs and put our legs through the straps with the pack now acting like a seat, then with our staffs used as a rudder. We began to slide down the snow-covered, steep mountain at a high rate of speed and it was frightening and exhilarating at the same time. For brakes, we used our feet, on one occasion, my boot dug in and I did a complete somersault, landing back on my pack as if it was done on purpose. Once in the timber, we had to swerve around trees and rock bluffs using our improvised rudder system. It took us about an hour to reach the bottom of the snow-covered areas. It was so much fun that over the next few weeks we did it several more times. Eventually, the snow melted.
We had planned a short camping trip but sometimes plans just go awry, we were enjoying ourselves and before we knew it, summer was on us. We had outgrown the army bell tent and had built ourselves a temporary home made of logs, driftwood and plastic sheeting, with a wood-burning 45-drum stove and homemade furniture. We kept the bell tent up and friends who would come for a few days could use it.
One of my buds and I found a vein of gold on the backside of the mountain, or at least we thought it was gold. We spent a week digging it out and gathering it up, thinking we going to be rich, instead, we were just fools, as this yellow stone was nothing more than fools gold. I still look for gold wherever I go and think that one day, who knows?
We hiked every inch of that mountain, gathering wild onions and other herbs and edible plants. We explored the lake by canoe, gathering up wood that we used to build a wharf that we could fish from, and the fishing was awesome. Grouse were plentiful and very tasty. We often made freshwater clam chowder, gathering the clams by diving into the bottom and grabbing them by the handfuls. Did you know that freshwater clams can live for more than 100 years, I did not at the time or maybe I might not have eaten so many.
Roberts Lake is just north of Campbell River on the North Island Highway. There was a nice little store and restaurant there that used to serve awesome food and pastries. This is now closed. There are still several cabins that you can rent. When I was a lad, the old guy who owned it had this gravity fuel pump, you would tell him how many gallons you wanted. He would operate a hand lever on the side of the pump to load up the glass container on the top, it had gallon markers on it. After adding your fuel, he would put the nozzle in your tank and open up the tap allowing the gas to flow into your car. Although no longer used, the pump is still outside the store to this day. Sometimes we would drive out during power outages and get our fuel there, as no power was needed to run the pump. His daughters worked in the store back then and tough young ladies they were. They are still friends of mine today.
Suddenly fall was upon us and thoughts of work began to surface in my mind. It had been a pretty awesome summer but it came time to pack up and head to town. Booked a room in the Rainbow and started to look for work.
I was offered a job right away logging for an outfit up on Nootka Island, it was a 15 and 6 shift. When the job was confirmed, I was told to be in Gold River the next morning at 11:00 am where a flight was booked for myself and a few other crew members. The flight in was uneventful and after a bit, we arrived at camp. As the guys grabbed their gear and headed up to the bunkhouses, the boss came down onto the float and said, leave your gear beside the covered boat that was tied up to the float and head up for lunch at the cook shack. Beside the boat, there was a bunch of boxes filled with food. I placed my gear there and saundered up to the cook shack.
As I was eating lunch, one of the cooks asked if I was heading to the outer camp, seems like it I replied, that’s tough said the cook. Just as I was about to ask the cook what he meant, the boss came in and said to head down to the boat and load my gear and the food boxes on board and he would join me in a minute. I got everything stowed away on board. We boarded the boat and headed out. I asked him where we were headed, he said they had a small camp on the edge of a huge tidal flat, on the outer shores of Nootka Island.
The island was quite beautiful, with lots of big trees and rocky shores along with incredible sandy beaches, we rounded the corner at Yuquot and were now looking straight out into the Pacific Ocean and the sea was getting a bit rougher. We finally stopped offshore, right where a tidal flat met the sea, there was a small shack that had been dragged up on shore and it looked like they tried to level it off, but with not much success. Out from the shack came a muscular young man wearing a dirty white apron and sporting a thick red beard that reached down his chest. He grabbed a big wooden skiff from the upper beach and pulled it to the water’s edge.
As 3-foot waves were hitting the beach, he just pointed the skiff into those waves and with some powerful pulls on the oars, he beat his way through the waves. He looked like some sort of Viking. Once in the rollers, he easily pulled up to the boat. He was the cook. He had not been out of camp for a while and was a bit bush crazy, but a nice fella all the same. We loaded the food, my gear and myself into the skiff, said goodbye to the boss and headed to the shore. On the way, he told me that we had to surf our way in on a wave and that he needed me to hop ashore as we came in and help pull the boat as far up-shore as we could. The cook jumped out with me and we both pulled the boat higher to avoid the waves. I began to wonder just where I had got myself. I felt like I was on the edge of the world.
We packed up the supplies and my gear to the bunkhouse/cook shack, there were only 4 of us in camp. The shack was not very level but by putting your bed on the bottom side of your room and pulling your mattress part way up the wall a bit, it was not too bad for sleeping. One end of the old shack had our rooms and the kitchen, wash area and dryroom were on the other end. There was the cook, our hook tender, the tower operator and myself staying here.
The rest of the crew lived in Yuquot and they were picked up daily in a sort of crummy. I say sort of as it consisted of the back wheels and rear compartment of an old crummy. They would use a 404 Timberjack Skidder to hook onto the front of this and pull it up with the winch. Our tower operator ran this contraption. He would then head to Yuquot over a very rough and muddy trail to pick up the rest of the crew. When we got out to the yarder I saw it was a madill but it had a rigged wooden tree for a pipe. There was no loader. When I looked out to where the rigging was going, I saw it ran through the middle of the lagoon which was high with the incoming tide and I wondered how we got out to work.
One of the boys choked a log in the landing and the engineer lifted the butt rigging until the choker was tight, at which time, he hopped onto the log and held onto the choker. The engineer slowly pulled him across the lagoon where he hopped off, the engineer brought it back for the rest of us. While we were waiting, I was told that we only needed to do this when the tide was in, the rest of the time we could walk across where it narrows down by the beach. About a week later, the tide was high at day’s end and we were required to use the log technique to get out of the bush. The log was small. When my time came, I was pulled out to the middle where the engineer stopped, he then started to lift the log up and down trying to knock me off, eventually he just lowered the rigging down until I had no choice but to fall in. This was something they did to all new guys, it sucked at first but it was quite hot and it turned to humour pretty quickly.
Sundays were days of rest where one could hike around a bit. I hiked out to Bajo Point one Sunday and found what appeared to be a missionary cabin. The walls were stuffed with old newspapers from the 20s, they were quite fragile, but could see the dates on some of them. There were a few crosses still on the wall and a bit of other stuff scattered about. I had originally hiked here to see if I could make it to Calvin Falls in a day but decided that was not possible and did not try. I saw the falls once from a distance when I spent a few weeks on a trawler and would have liked to see them up close. There is a trail that takes you right past them now.
There was a nice lake about halfway to Yuquot and one Sunday I took a walk there to swim, it was great. On the way back, I walked along the gravel beach where we would drag our logs down and coal deck them until we had enough to fill a boom. There were about 10 feet between the logs and the water, the water was pretty calm and I sat against a big log butt and pulled out a book I was reading, it was Dune. The sun was shining and there was a warm breeze blowing, it was a beauty of a day.
All of a sudden it was like the kracken himself was reaching up to drag me into the sea. It was a Grey whale running along the edge of the beach, just at the drop-off. I think they do this to ease an itch. I got soaked in the process, the whale was only about 3 meters from shore. Scared the shit out of me. After a bit, I began to laugh over this. He was so close that I could have jumped onto his back.
This developed into a story I used to tell tourists in the bar, it was a story of whale riding. The story got good over the years and some of my friends knew it so well that they could join our table halfway through the telling and step right into the story. The gist of the tall tale was how we would wait along rubbing beaches at the ready, we would be wearing cork boots and carrying a gaff. When the whales ran along the beach, all you had to do was run up the side of him. Once you reached the blowhole, you would use the gaff hook to hold it open. The whales would not dive until you released the blowhole. I suspect the book Dune I was reading had a big influence on this story.
Did you know that when Dune was published in 1965, it was not put out by a regular novel publishing house? None felt it was a good book. So Chilton Publishing took a chance and reproduced it, Chilton usually publishes auto repair manuals.
Whenever I was in town from camp, the first thing on my agenda was to see Mom. Ever since I was a child, my mom cared for me, she worked very hard to keep me healthy despite all the health issues I suffered that came with being a preemie baby. As far back as I can remember, I have visions of Mom holding me in her arms as she sat in her big wooden rocker softly singing to me as I would fall asleep. Sometimes when I was having a bad bout, mom would sleep on our big old sofa, holding me in her arms. I loved my mom deeply and we had a real bond.
As I got older, I can remember running into her room in the mornings where she would hug me tight and tell me she loved me, I would answer with an “I know you do” and she would say to me “How do you know that” and I would reply “because you just told me so”. This was a ritual we went through every day. After Mom and Dad had moved back to Vancouver and Dad had passed on, I would go home to visit as often as possible. Mom was suffering from dementia and quite often would not know which one of her sons I was. I would prompt this ritual and she would realize that I was her boy buddy and she would hold me tight.
When my parents lived in Campbell River, my mom had befriended a young First Nations mother who worked with my older brother Bob. They both worked at the fish processing plant that was located at the bottom of Peterson Hill. Mom took her under her wing and helped her with life issues. She took many young ladies under her wing. My wife remembers my mom and how her mother would always send her down to see my mom (Dot) who would help her shop for new clothes. My mom worked at Robinson’s clothing store at the time and many people loved her for her kind ways and friendly smile.
On my days off from Nootka Island, I was home visiting my mom. she asked me to check on a young 6-year-old girl, whom she was babysitting. She was in our backyard, and mom just wanted me to check and see if she was OK. When I stepped out on our back porch, she was on our swing, but not swinging. Her head was down and she was shuffling her feet on the ground, as I looked in her direction, she lifted her head and it literary touched my heart with such sorrow as I have never felt before. She was such a forlorn-looking little thing, she had big doe eyes that you could see had just been shedding tears with some still running down her cheeks. I felt a connection to this child, almost like she was someone I knew, it was quite disconcerting. As she looked up at me with those sad eyes my heart went out to this child. Her tear-covered face was forever imprinted on my memory. It was the first time that I had felt such empathy for anyone. For years that image of her on my swing haunted me, those dark eyes holding back tears got to me. I walked back into the house and asked Mom what was going on.
Mom then told me that the girl’s parents were divorcing in court that day, and that was why the little one looked so upset. She told me that the mom had been beaten almost to death by her dad in a drunken rage, right in front of the child, it happened on Christmas day. The little one was confused, frightened and feeling lost. She had to run to the police station, which was several blocks away, to get them to come and save her mom. This child of 6 watched her mom get loaded in an ambulance and taken to the hospital with lights and sirens blaring. While her dad was put in cuffs and hauled off to jail. As my mom narrated this story to me, she started crying with tears running down her cheek. My eyes may have shed a tear or two as well.
I worked up on Nootka through the winter and spring, right up until logging had been shut down for fire season that summer. During this time, I booked back into my parent’s home. It was a Friday night and I had come home around midnight. I had been drinking and was inebriated. My dad was passed out drunk in the living room and my twin sister was in bed sleeping. My mom was in Vancouver and my older brother Howard was still out.
I was hungry and decided to pan-fry some chips, so I loaded up the pan with oil and sliced some spuds. While I was waiting for the oil to heat, I went to the washroom, got seated down and started to read a magazine. I forgot about the oil and was only reminded of what I was doing when my twin sister started screaming. The house was on fire she was yelling, I quickly ran out and sure enough, the pan was in flames and the cupboards above the stove were burning. I told my sister to call the fire department and then get out while I went to wake Dad. Funny, but I seem to have sobered up and become clear-headed.
I could not wake Dad, and as he weighed close to 300 hundred pounds and I was a bit over 120 pounds, there was no way that I could carry Dad. So I pulled him from his chair onto the floor, flames were now in the room and the smoke was burning my eyes, and causing me to cough.
I grabbed my dad by his wrists and started to drag him across the room toward the front door, the flames were all around us but I was not leaving my dad. I was struggling to get him across the room. Just as I got him to the door, the windows blew in and all hell was unleashed into the house, the ceiling tiles came crashing down, all except right over us at the door. The past winter we had sprung a leak there and Dad had to replace a patch of tiles in that spot, these stayed up, giving me time to get the door open.
Flames were shooting out the door just above my head as I was crouched down trying and get my dad out the door. I was having a hard time maneuvering Dad over the sill. My hair, face and arms were getting burnt, the heat was very intense, the air was hot and it was hard to get a breath. Just then I heard a car come to a squealing halt and a young man of 19 came running up to the door and took hold of my dad with me and we half carried, half dragged my dad to the other side of the street. My dad had some burns but thanks to this teen, he was saved. This young guy’s name was Fred. I still see Fred now and then and we chat about the fire.
Just as we got my dad across the street, my brother came home and not realizing that dad was safely out of the house, he tried to enter. Police and firemen were holding him back but he was fighting to get free and into the house, some of the police and firemen sustained black eyes and bloody noses before I was able to get through to him that Dad was safe. At this point, we were able to calm him down. No charges were brought against him as he was just a 22-year-old young man trying to save his dad.
Mom was going to be home the day after the fire, we had no way to contact her, so we waited for her to pull up. She never fully recovered from the loss of all her memories and I still feel the pain of being the one to have caused it all.
Later that week, Tony Simnett, editor of the Islander Newspaper ran a full front-page story with the title in large print that said “sixteen-year boy dashes through raging flames to save sleeping father” It would have been more honest if it said, Drunk son starts house on fire and nearly kills his drunk father. I was no hero that day, but Fred sure was. Quite often I have nightmares about the fire and how I almost lost my dad that day.
My parents had moved to Vancouver after the fire, and my twin sister left with them. My brother and I stayed in Campbell River. When my dad passed away in 1974, I was logging up at the head of Bute Inlet for Butler Brothers Logging. Dad passed on in the fall and due to inclement weather, I was unable to get a plane into camp so I could get to Vancouver in time for the funeral.
It was a cold October and there was snow up on the hill, down at camp it was raining heavily and the wind was screaming through the trees. It was a big camp, up along the Cumsack Creek, just below Mount Waddington on the BC coast. Cumsack Creek flows into the Homathko River just up from the head of Bute Inlet. There were over 250 workers in the camp.
The head foreman did his best to get a plane into camp for me, but Bute Inlet is a pretty dangerous place for a plane during a big storm, a pilot did give it his best shot but could not make it in. They managed to get a plane in the next morning but by the time I got to Campbell River, the morning flight to Vancouver was long gone and I needed to wait for the next flight. I missed Dad’s funeral.
My brothers and sisters were pissed at me and they started into me right away about missing Dad’s funeral, they all said I did not try hard enough. I left after spending the day with Mom, I went back to camp. I told Mom I would visit her soon. She knew I was the black sheep who always seemed to come up short when my siblings compared me to themselves, at least in their eyes.
I did write a story to honour my dad.
“Spirit Island”
A time of sadness had come to my village. A respected Elder had set his prints on the spirit trail. He had been a wise and honest man. His kind and generous ways had earned him many true friends who would mourn his passing. Myself included. For as long as I can remember, he had taught me the old ways and customs. I had thought we would be together forever. Now he was gone and he had left me with a void that will be hard to fill.
I contemplated that as I stepped out into the early morning light, and looked upon the sea. There was not a breath of wind, and the water was as smooth as jade that had been polished by the timeless tides. The dawn’s mist shone with a golden light in the glow of the rising sun. One might think the Great One himself was present today. As I glanced at the forest it seemed, for just a moment, full of shadows slowly moving among the giant coastal trees. They seemed to be spirits of my people coming to guide one of their own back home. But as I watched, I saw it was but the morning’s mist rising with the coming of the day’s warmth. I turned my eyes back to the sea and searched for the Island that was out in the bay in front of our longhouses. By squinting, I could just make out the giant trees that stood facing the village from the island shore. The swirling mist made them appear to come alive and dance.
The Elder was at the beginning of his greatest journey, for today we would take him to the Island. I was to be honoured with saying his farewell. I could see the canoes were loaded and the men were patiently waiting for me as I walked down to the beach. I reached the Elder’s canoe and was placed in the bow at the head of his cedar box. I shed silent tears during the passage to the Island. My mind was full of thoughts about this Elder, and all the things he had taught me during the time we had spent together. Including the stories and the legends, he had told me. The healing plants we had gathered together. The endless days during which we had studied the ways of the animals.
The last words he had spoken to me from his deathbed were echoing through my mind as we arrived at the Island. He had reached up from his bed to take my hand, and said, “Always follow your heart, for the truth lies there”. “I will try”, I had replied, then he was gone. The Elder’s box was lifted from the canoe by six of his sons and carried to the highest tree on the Island. They placed him there, among those who had come before him. They each then placed a gift at the foot of the tree. It was now time for me to say farewell. As I went down on one knee and bowed my head, I silently placed an eagle feather among the other gifts to aid his flight to the forest of the Great Spirit. I sang a song of goodbye to this elder, and as I looked up through my tears at his place in the tree, a great sorrow overwhelmed me, and the farewell words flowed from me like a river rushing to the sea.
I tried to honour him with my speech, though in truth I had little knowledge of what I was saying. All I could think of were his last words, “Always follow your heart, for the truth lies there”. The mist was in my eyes, as I spoke the final words of my speech to him. “You are in the forest now and my heart is with you. I will miss you, I will always honour you, Father.”
I was still a teen and he left far too soon. I do miss my dad. I still get teary-eyed when I read this story as I wrote it from my heart.
When I was back in camp, I did a lot of thinking about my dad. At first, I was mostly thinking about how Dad would beat on me and how even though I always tried to live up to my dad’s standards I always failed miserably at this. I remembered how he would always say “Why can’t you be more like your brothers”, or how he would say to me whenever I screwed up, “your never going to amount to nothing” and it was bringing tears to my eyes.
Eventually, as I lay on my bunk thinking of these things, I came to understand that they were not just tears of shame but that they were also tears of loss, the loss of my childhood, and the loss of my dad.
I began to remember all the good things about my dad. Right from the time I was a toddler, my dad would take me out and about with him and always introduce me as his little buddy, thus my nickname. Sometimes he would take me to the horse races and tell me if I was able to stay small, I could become the greatest jockey in the world. This was a real dream of my dads. He loved the track and I loved horses. But to our dismay, I just grew too big. Even though I never became that famous jockey, I did cowboy for years and made a living from the back of a horse. I think my dad, if he was still with us, might have been proud of me because of that, who knows eh?
My dad was only mean when he got into alcohol, I will admit that was pretty common. But there were all the other times when he was sober and teaching me about the forest, about medicine, about the animals and about who we were. He instilled in me a true sense of our history, about our ancestors, about our family lines and this was truly a gift he gave me. When he talked about the animals, plants or medicines, it was always fascinating and he would tell me the other kids had no appetite for this learning and how I always seemed to absorb it with great anticipation. I wish I could have been there for his funeral to say goodbye.
I left the Bute Inlet camp in early November after my dad passed. I had a problem with the timekeeper, so I punched him in the nose. It was over something stupid and I threw away a good job over it. The job had another employee and I running a chokerman school using a mini tower, they were hiring so many green guys that we needed to teach them the basics of logging before sending them out. It was a good job.
During the 72/73 winter layoff, I took a room with the parents of a buddy. (Lots of loggers would room and board in homes.) Another friend of ours came over one day to invite us out for a logging road trip in his 64 Ford Meteor. He had just done a brake job and wanted to test them out. This sounded like a good idea, so 5 of us plus the driver all piled in the car and off we went. It was Dec. 1, 1972. We had fun, smoked a few joints, and had a few beers, while we raced around the logging roads behind town. Then on our way back into town, on a downhill slope, the brakes failed. We were whipping along pretty fast when we noticed an off-road fatboy logging truck coming up the hill toward us. We met him on a one-lane bridge, we were doing about 60 when we hit him head-on. We went right under him, the car was crushed pretty badly but all 6 of us survived, 3 of us not so well, and 3 almost walked away. I broke a few bones, shattering my left leg in numerous places, along with serious compound fractures, I was pretty messed up. Another buddy broke his back in a few places and the driver dislocated his hips. We were lucky that it was a fat-boy truck, if it had been a highway truck, we would all be dead I suspect. More room under the fat boy.
They had a hell of a time getting us out of the car as we were lodged between the front wheels of the truck, and the truck was loaded. Once we were extracted, they stacked us up in the ambulance one over the other and off to the hospital where we went. Three of the boys were released at the hospital. The other two got out of the hospital rather quickly, but I was there for quite some time. I was the last to get out. At one point, I was put in a 2 man room beside a taxi driver whose feet had begun to rot. He had black wounds all over them. It was a staphylococcal infection. I had open wounds under my cast that were open to the bone. I got the infection and it went into my bone marrow.
I did not know I was infected until the gland at the top of my leg swelled up like a baseball. I called one of our young nurses to come check out my swollen gland, as I began to pull my blankets down so she could look. She ran out of the room, not sure why until the head nurse came in, she was a real battle axe lady and she began to yell at me about the whole thing, it seemed they thought I was being rude until I finally got it across about my gland. Everyone had a bit of a laugh. They then brought in a bone saw and cut a window into the cast to take a look. As they pulled the cut out away. you could smell the infection, my leg was rotten. The flesh had to be removed right to the bone in the worst area, this was done to stop it from spreading. I was put in isolation and on heavy antibiotics being administered intravenously for weeks. After getting out of isolation, I had to take medication orally for more than a year to stop this infection that had moved into my bone marrow. Never understood why they would put me into a room where this type of infection was. Slowed my recovery.
The memory of the accident was mostly blank for quite some time. When I came out of the coma I had been in, it was quite disconcerting, as I found myself standing in a hospital hallway. I must have come to and in a daze, ripped the IV out of my arm and there I was, walking down the hall, wondering what the hell was going on. The last thing I remembered was watching TV at my friend’s house and then it seemed like I blinked and the next moment I was in a freaking nightmare, I had a cast on my leg, and I was covered in blood. Then I looked down the hall and all I saw were doctors and nurses running towards me. It was like some old horror flick. It took me a while before I was able to remember the accident.
My coma had been created from being under so long on the operating table, it took 3 doctors 6 hours to put me back together again. I got out in the early spring and spent another 16 months recovering from this accident. My leg had a terrible bow in it and was an inch shorter, but heck, I still had it. Having one shorter leg wasn’t so bad, as long as it was on the uphill side of a logging setting. My leg was never the same after this, but I made due. Before the accident, I loved to run but this was gone now, it was like having a flat tire. I did most other things just fine though. I could still log so all was good.
After healing up as best as I was able, a logging outfit out of Echo Bay offered me a job on the rigging up on Gilford Island. It was a good company to work for. It was a small operation with a decent camp. I was a rigging handyman.
The crew was always joking around. We all got along well. One day, I was working as the landing man, it was a wet and windy day and I was soaked, I was tight up against the yarder, trying to stay out of the driving rain. As I was huddling there, I saw there was a golden fluid hitting my hard hat. All I could think of as I leaped away was how sometimes the operator would come out and take a piss just about where I had been pressed up against the machine. I looked up in horror to see him holding a half-full cup of tea that he had just been slowly pouring over my hard hat, grinning a big grin.
Earlier in the day I had to trim the ends off some 7/8s wire that had been cut with a torch. I needed to get him back. So I started fooling around with one strand about 4 inches long, I spread the strands out and it started to look like a spider. This guy hated spiders. So I took some thread off my coat and tied some cedar bark on as a body and damn if it didn’t look like a big scary brown 7-inch spider. The lunch kits were in the crummy so I took his and put this spider in it and closed it up again. Come lunchtime when we were all in the crummy staying out of the wind and rain, I watched him out of the corner of my eye, he lifted the top off his box and for about 10 seconds sat there just looking at his lunch box before, all of a sudden, he throws the lunch kit up and jumps back before realizing it was not real. Payback is a bitch.
Partway through a shift, one of the guys had to go to town, so I was put pulling rigging on the sidehill. It was early morning. I was standing on a small bluff fighting a big cedar hangup. As I turned to say something to my chokerman, the debris I was standing on slipped over the bluff. I went down with it, catching a rock outcropping with my left knee. The pain was so intense that I was feeling dizzy and felt like throwing up. This was my leg damaged in the logging accident.
My chokerman ran down to see how badly I was hurt, I told him that I banged my knee and would need to take a rest for a few minutes. I asked him to help me up the bluff, as I put my arm around his neck and went to take a step with my left leg, the pain was excruciating. That’s when I blacked out.
There was a faller in camp who was a big Norwegian. He was 6.6 and twice as broad as me at the shoulders. When I came too he was packing me in his arms up to the road, he was saying “Hang in there little buddy”. He was packing me like a child. When he got me to the road, they put me on a stretcher, loaded me in the ambulance and raced me down to camp.
Once in camp, they took me from the ambulance and tried to get me into the first aid shack. There was a door with a porch going into the shack, but it was a 90-degree entrance and they almost dumped me trying to get the stretcher around the corner. The stretcher could not make the turn. So they took me into the cook shack and laid me out on a table. A plane was called and a stay in the hospital ensued, and a knee operation would be required. They booked me with the bone doctor. Dr Leet said it was going to be the spring before he could make it happen.
I was going to be off now right through next spring. Once I was out of the hospital, I booked in with a friend at his parent’s house. They were such nice folks. They were quite outdoorsy and loved to fish and hunt. They also loved shooting traps and after trying it, I was hooked. I went out and purchased a nice browning pump action 12 gauge shotgun. Then we all chipped in on getting a reloading kit and I started to reload shells that I gathered after gun meets. I would sell half of our boxes of reloads at shoots and this covered buying the shot, powder, casing, wads and primers.
I rigged up a shop out in the backyard and set up a reload station where I would sit for hours loading shells. I kept all the stuff out there and could go anytime I wanted and reload. The more empty shells I had, the more boxes I could load. They would all sell at the meets, as I charged half price for them.
Shooting trap was a blast and when you were at a meet, you could have your abilities recorded. During a competition shoot, you would shoot a total of 100 shots. When you hit 100 clay pigeons out of 100, you get a pin saying you accomplished this. I got 99 out of 100 so many times without getting the elusive 100 pin. All in all, though, it was such a fun pastime and you would meet so many other folks.
There were 5 concrete sidewalks that fanned out towards the pigeon launcher building. Each had four spots for shooting, each 5 feet further back from the pigeon launcher. The first round was shot from the closest end, you would shoot 5 times then move across to the next sidewalk until you shot from all the points, you then move back and do it again. When you had moved through all the stations and distances, you would have shot 100 times.
When we were not at a meet, we would go to the range and practice. One day my friend, his dad, his little sister, and I were up at the gun club practising, there was no one else around. I was throwing pigeons as my friend took a turn shooting. At one point he turned towards his dad and sister to say something, with his gun pointing down. As he turned his trigger came into contact with a set of keys hanging off his belt. The gun went off, hitting the concrete and then ricocheted up into their legs. They went down and then the dad jumped up, grabbed his daughter in his arms and started to run to the car, my friend was in shock until he saw his dad fall on the way to the car. Dad was unaware that he had been shot as well and it was adrenaline that took him that far.
I picked up the girl and my friend grabbed his dad and we got them to the car. They both were bleeding quite badly. My friend had a pretty hot car that went like stink and he just hit the gas. He had no concerns about speed limits. Right away, he blew past a cop going in the opposite direction, who pulled a U-turn and started to chase us, and then we began to pick up more of them as we flew through town. By the time we reached the hospital, we had a long line of police cars, lights flashing and sirens screaming behind us. It must have looked pretty wild, like something you would see in a movie. Our town was not very big and this was not something you would ever see. All in all, even though it was terrifying, it was pretty exciting.
When we turned into the hospital, they realized there was a reason for the high rate of speed. My friend jumped out of the car and ran into the emergency ward for help while I talked to the police. They were pissed off and blasted my friend for driving so fast, but they did not charge him with anything. Dad and daughter both had some of the pellets removed and wounds wrapped at the hospital before being sent home. They picked more pellets out of their legs for quite some time. They both had full recoveries, although they did have scarring in their legs.
That winter, I was dating a girl who was pretty, adventurous and maybe a bit wild, kinda like me. I thought her dad had a dislike for me until he offered me a job as a camp watchman at Darcy Point, up in Loughborough Inlet. I was still waiting for my visit to the bone butcher and this was something I could do with my bad knee, so I took it. The thought of spending the winter holed up in a coastal camp with my girlfriend was cool.
He flew his daughter and me in and we got the gear and food offloaded, he showed me the diesel generator, and a big freaking engine and told me to make sure I fuelled it up at least once a week, it had a big tanked right beside it. We filled up this tank as the generator had been running for several days. There was a hose running from the main fuel storage tank and he showed me how to use it to fill up the generator.
The camp radiotelephone and heat were electric and if the generator ran out of fuel, there would be no contact with the outside world and no heat. It was a big diesel that would need to have all its pistons primed to start again if it ran out of fuel. So I would be on top of this for sure.
He took me up a trail along the creek to show me where the water line was located and how to keep it running. We fired up the propane stove and then he called his daughter and told her it was time to go. For some reason, I had thought she was going to stay with me, I stood there watching them fly off and then I was all alone, just the camp cat and I. I now know it was his way of keeping us apart.
At least I had a truck, 30 miles of road, my gun and a fishing rod. I took a drive that first day to see if there were any lakes, rivers or creeks that looked like they might hold some fish. From the moment I fired up the truck, I realized there was a problem, there was about half a turn of slack in the steering wheel. The roads were never level, as they twisted and turned, the slope would go from one side to the other and you would need to catch the slack by turning the wheel quickly. I found by reading the road ahead I could keep the truck going straight, sort of. It was no big deal as I would be the only truck on the road all winter anyway.
I got back to camp and proceeded to look over supplies and put things away, my food supply was awesome, had several deep freezers filled with frozen veggies, various types of meat pies, ice creams and as much meat as I could eat. The cupboards were stocked full of everything else. On the kitchen counters were huge containers of various flavours of cake mixes, pancake mixes, and gravy powders. There was a camp cat but no cat food. Jack had said to just feed him from a case of canned sardines. I fixed up a meal of steak and eggs and then headed down to the wharf to sit back and watch the boats go by.
Right away I saw a guy I know from Quadra Island, he owned a converted tugboat that he lived on. He seemed to be heading my way, and as he came up on the dock, he noticed it was me, he tied up and we had a good chat, seems he was contracting with fisheries, he would stop at all the creeks to count how many spawners he could see. When he found out I was to be here all winter, he asked if he and a few others I knew could stop by for showers and rest and I said for sure. The following week a friend and his wife who lived in the homefree commune on Quadra Island dropped by on their sailboat for a few days. His wife baked bread and several pies for me and a load for them. She also made me a big cake. I was sad to see them go but they said they would be going by every couple of weeks and would stop in for a few days.
When we flew in, I noticed an old cabin about a mile down the beach from camp, so one day at low tide, I took a walk to investigate. It was an old loggers’ shack, out the back was a wooden logging road that headed off into the forest with a very old logging truck sitting on it. It was so old that it had solid rubber tires. This truck was being taken over by nature. It was a GMC from around 1910-1920.
There was a door in the back of the cabin that I had trouble getting open, as I dragged it through the duff, it rolled up a grizzly skull and bones. It was then I saw that there were a couple of bullet holes in the door.
In the cabin, you could see stains on a counter where sandwiches had rotted right beside a couple of old leather lunch kits, There were cross-cut saws and other logging tools scattered about. Looks like they were having grizzly problems and had to shoot the bear through the back door, then just left out the front door and never returned. Looks like I was the first person to visit the cabin since this event. About 15 years later, I was back at Darcy Point working for the BC Forest Service. It had been logged where the cabin once stood, and there was no sign of it or the truck now. A coastal story that almost remained untold.
The winter rains came and the creek got flowing pretty bad and it washed my water line down and tangled it in a bunch of flotsam. Took me forever to get it loose again. I had to lay it out and up to where I could reset the gravity bag. Once I had it all laid out and hooked up, there still was no water. Had no idea what the problem was so I had two connectors along the line, I thought maybe one line had stuff plugging it, as this is PCP black waterline the only way to check was to undo each connector. So I undid the one closest to the gravity bag, water was flowing there and I got soaked hooking it back up again. Move on to the next one, when I pulled it apart, there was no water, but I could hear water up the line. Then it came out hitting me in the belly, soaked again. It was tough to get it hooked up again. But still no water in the cookhouse. So undo the line where it goes in under the cookshack, soaked again. After that, we had water in the cookhouse. Noted the need to get shutoff valves for these connections.
The camp cat was giving me trouble, he was always letting loose with a runny shit in the cookhouse and no matter how many times I would rub his nose in it, he would just do it again. I had no idea why until I tried a can of those sardines. I quickly got sick, and could not even get out of bed except to get into the washroom, sometimes I had to crawl through the snow to get there. Then the generator died. It had run out of fuel. I was in and out of delirium and I am not sure how many days it had been since I ate those sardines. I was still getting sicker. I tried to call someone but could not get a connection. I knew I had to get to town. I took the truck down to the wharf and when a tug or fishboat would go by, I would use the lights to signal S.O.S.
l had learned how to do this from being in sea cadets. But it was to no avail, they would just flash their light back at me as if to say hello.
I figured my only hope was to get the generator up and running, it was tough but I did it. I then used the radiotelephone to call a friend to come and replace me while I went to town. Had our pilot bring him in and then he flew me out. They kept me in the hospital for a few days, a bad case of food poisoning. I lost a bit of weight but made it through the ordeal. When I got out, I headed back to camp, and I took a big bag of cat food with me. The cat recovered as well and all was good. My knee operation happened in the spring and it went fine after a few weeks, I was able to return to work. In the meantime, the boss’s daughter had found a new love and we were done.
By the fall, I was employed by a logging company on Hardwicke Island. The camp was pretty cool, it was old school. In the wash house, there was one set of taps. Then there was a long wooden counter that ran down along the wall. There were round holes cut into this countertop with mirrors on the wall above. On the other wall were metal wash basins hanging. You take one down, fill it at the taps and move to the hole in the board that fits these basins. When you were done, you poured the contents down the drain at the taps and rinsed the basin before hanging it back on the wall. Our bunkhouses were big round rooms, all the bunks were on the outside by the walls with tables and chairs spaced around a center stove making up the inner part of the room.
I remember one day as we were heading up the hill to go to work, the fellers came careening around the corner hell-bent for leather and came to a sliding halt beside our truck. Your donkeys on fire one was hollering, so we picked up the pace and got up the hill as fast as we could, and sure enough, there was our yarder, burning out of control. The chaser had built a fire the day before in the landing to keep warm and although he had put it out before we left the site, it must have gone underground and come alive during the night. Landings were usually just pushed up wood and dirt. It was a total loss, but instead of laying off the crew, the company just moved us around to other jobs.
I was put to operating the rock crusher at the pit, this crusher could crunch up rocks as big as trucks and put out any size of gravel that was needed with just one adjustment. It was a scary old machine built back in the days of crank starts. The first thing you had to do in the morning was start an old model t motor by cranking it over by hand, now this crank could take your arm off when it kicked back and the crank handle sometimes would come flying off and bounce around in the engine room, and it was always tough to start. Once it was running, you would use it to turn over the big diesel engine that ran the crusher. There was a small pulley on the diesel engine and a big pulley on the model t, there was a belt between the two that was slack until you used a tensioner pulley that was on a lever, you would hold it tight to turn over the crusher motor, pretty cool system. After getting the big motor running, you would slacken the belt and turn off the model t until the next day, when you do this all again.
If a big rock got stuck in the jaws, I would go out to the bin and using a full-length rock drill steel, I would move the rock around until the jaws started to grab it. You had to do this quite often. Most times it was uneventful. There was one time when I was doing this, the jaws caught the steel and threw it and I forward where my fingers got caught against the edge of the hopper. As I let the steel go in pain, it came back and hammered me in the forehead, damn near knocking me out. My hard hat went through and was pretty flat, it was my favourite tin hat. Like I said, this was a scary old machine.
A road-building contractor who was working for the logging company asked me to come to work for him on his rock drill, this would be an awesome job. Drill holes for a few days, load with powder and blow the shit out of stuff, always did enjoy blowing things up so this appealed to me. So I jumped right at it. Over the next few months, I got pretty good at it. Blew up a lot of rock faces. Built a lot of roads. I can remember sitting out on the boom which was extended out and up, right against the rock face where we had drilled holes. I would have several cases of dynamite between my legs, and blasting caps in my mouth as I loaded and wired up holes to blow the rock away. It was a pretty awesome job. I worked there until winter shutdown.
In the spring I went back to logging, I returned to logging and spent some time rigging back spars on grapple yarders, it was tough work, but I liked it. By the time I was 19, I was working up on Haida Gwaii in a place called Juskatla. I was throwing tongs on a chunk truck. I still remember the first day I arrived at camp, I was standing in the door of my room in the bunkhouse as the crews came home, looking to see whom I knew. One would always find others that you have logged with in other camps. Across the hall from me was a big fella, a Haida man, he was about 6 ft 4, and as wide as a house at the shoulders. As he ducked to enter his room, he asked me my name and after I told him I was Bud Logan, he said, any relation to Howard, and I said ya, he’s my brother. Now it turns out my brother had been working here just a few months before I arrived, he had got into an altercation with this Haida man and my brother had to use a 2×4 on him, beat him pretty well was the word in camp. Thankfully, the man did not decide to take it out on me, and we became friends. His name was Tiny.
Juskatla was a big camp, more like a small town, with large married sections with houses and bunkhouses for those who were single. Huge cookhouse and we ate like kings.
The scenery here was fantastic, the deer were so plentiful that there was no limit to hunting them when I arrived on the islands but shortly afterwards, they put a limit of one deer a day. These were Sitka deer and were about as big as a mid-sized dog. But there was another animal that was hunted here, one you could only get 1 tag a year for, one that could fill your freezer. These were Scottish long-haired cattle, or as I liked to call them, hippy cows. It seems that at the turn of the century, a man attempted to start a cattle ranch on Haida Gwaii to raise beef for the sailing ships that stopped here. It was a complete failure and was soon abandoned, however, the cattle were left to fend for themselves and over several generations, had become wild. Now they could be hunted as food, could you imagine, a whole beef once a year? The people ate well. Not sure of the status of these cows now.
When my 2 sons became men, they were both compass men on timber cruising contracts, they worked up on Haida Gwaii and I got to see the islands again through the photos they sent home. I enjoyed this.
In the following winter, a few friends and I rented a house in Campbell River, we were all working in the bush. I was logging for a small Gypo outfit up in Smith’s inlet. This area of the coast is not for the faint of heart, it has to be the steepest ground I ever logged on. It is a long flight to get there and if you get on the milk run, it is an all-day trip. The worst thing about Smith’s inlet was the black flies. These guys are hungry. I know that after this I would never hire out to any camp up there again.
My boys both got the chance to experience Smiths Inlet and they both feel the same way about this coastal hellhole. My youngest was so badly bitten that his face and neck were dripping blood. Even though he was wearing a bug face and neck screen.
One time between shifts, I was in town and had gone out to the bar for the evening and was pretty drunk by the time I got home. I flopped on the couch and passed out. Not sure why, but during the evening, there was an explosion and it blew the back of the house to smithereens, and a blast of flames came down the hallway hitting the couch where I was sleeping, throwing it across the room with me on it. I woke up from my nap as I was flying through the air.
I landed on the floor by the front door, and I saw the flames go back down the hallway and then they came back as I was diving out the door. I had lost everything I had. The flames were kissing my butt as I landed on the grass. I had to run across the road and down to the public phone at the Duncan Bay store, shirtless and with no shoes.
At the time of the fire, I had no idea what caused it and when the fire department arrived I told them that it could be my roommate who was the cause and he could still be in there. The others were in camp. As they were fighting this inferno, I realized that if he was in there, he was toast, no pun intended. But not long after this, he came home.
The fire left me with nothing, not even a pair of shoes. I borrowed a pair from a friend but they were 3 sizes bigger than I needed and looked like clown shoes on my feet. With no other choice, I headed into town to see if welfare would help me out. They said no. The funny thing was is there was a man next to me at the counter who was getting a voucher so he could buy his dog food. Now don’t get me wrong here, I am not mad that he was going to get food for his dog and thought it was awesome, it’s just that here I was, completely destitute and they said no.
I phoned my lawyer to see if he could do something to make them change their minds. He just told me to come to his office where he gave me a check for 1000 bucks and said to get some clothes. Gerry Sinnote was a pretty awesome lawyer.
I went shopping, got some new duds and shoes, ate and paid for a week in the Quinsam Hotel. I still had 500 left to eat with, so it was OK. My brother came by to see how things were going and said maybe we should go on a road trip. I said to him that I was in.
My brother along with myself and a couple of other friends got to talking and we decided to head up to the northwest territories after the fire. It was a trip where we wanted to just get out and see more of our Country. The journey was awesome, the scenery was beautiful but it was cold, it was still late winter and the land was frozen.
The second night found us staying in a fancy hotel in Edmonton, out on the white mud highway. We were interested in having a sauna, so the desk gave us a key to unlock the door. A man, an older guy about 70 came in and joined us thinking it was an open for all sauna. My brother and the others decided to leave and as a joke, my brother locked the outer door. The older guy was in the process of leaving while I stayed in the sauna, about 10 minutes later, the guy came flying into the sauna from the changing room screaming that we were locked in. Not a big deal to me, someone would let us out. The other gent however was claustrophobic and went into a panic, by the time someone heard his pounding on the door, and his screaming, he was in bad shape, and I thought he might up and die. When we got out, he followed me to our room where my brother was. He was pretty feisty for an old guy and attempted to fight my brother. The police were called and we got kicked out. We went to another motel and slept the night. The next day we continued our way to the Northwest territories.
Just after we crossed the border from Alberta into the Northwest Territories, we stopped at the Alexandra Falls trailhead on the Hay River and hiked in to see these falls. The falls drop about 33 meters straight down into a deep straight-walled canyon that runs as far as we can see. Now in the summer months, these falls are pretty impressive but the best time to see them is during the cold winters. What we saw was a river locked in ice with the falls shooting out of a cone of ice that stuck out over the falls by at least 15 meters, the river was coming out the end like water from a hose. It went out and down in a big arc and shot into what looked like a large ice volcano, disappearing back under the ice to continue its run to Great Slave Lake.
It was bloody awesome. After seeing the falls, we headed into the town of Hay River, a small town right on the shores of the lake, not much to see when got there, but one thing that stood out to us was when we attempted to purchase some beer, we had to sign an affidavit stating we were not first nations, we lied, got our beer, but thought this was pretty strange. We then headed towards Yellowknife, but the ice road was starting to deteriorate and was shut down. The ferry that runs during the warmer months was not able to operate as yet because of the ice. This happens in spring and fall, there can be weeks with no access to Yellowknife. So we turned around and headed back south. After we got back into Alberta, we headed towards the Peace River area and back to BC. Then we headed south.
The trip south was fun, we stopped at many places, McKenzie, Prince George, and Quesnel and then we arrived at Williams Lake, and for some reason, this town appealed to me. This could be because cowboys have always fascinated me, and Williams Lake is a true cowboy town. I was an avid reader of Louie L’Amour’s books, and like most kids, the life of the cowboy had always been my dream from a very early age.
We booked a room in the Chilcotin Hotel and spent the next few days exploring the area, and all it had to offer. We went out west as far as Sheep Creek Hill. Explored some caves located there, and found cave art within one cave. We then went east to both the little towns of Likely and Horsefly. Both these towns are very tiny but have such a rich history. I told my brother that one day, I was going to come back to this area for a longer visit. After checking out the sights we headed back to the island.
Once back home I began looking for a place to rent and found a 2-room cabin in Campbellton.
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