The Brain Bleed began innocently enough. After working on my site all day, I found myself with a stiff neck. I decided to go to bed and see how it felt in the morning. I just figured it was from bending over my computer all day. I had no idea what was in store, when all of a sudden, in a flash of almost visible light, I felt like I had been hit in the forehead by a baseball bat, or perhaps that I had been shot. The pain was incredible. I remember leaping out of bed and yelling at my wife to call 911, and then collapsing onto the floor, puking my guts out. It was a massive diffused brain bleed. I can barely remember the next 24 hours, but I do recall brain scans in Campbell River where they had trouble stabilizing me to transfer me to a brain ward in either Vancouver or Victoria. It was late the next morning before they could move me by ambulance to Victoria. There had been much debate about flying me but they were afraid to have me in a high elevation. As they were loading me up, my best memory of the whole event is still crystal clear in my mind, in the ambulance open door was not only my whole family, but several of our foster kids as well, all looking in with scared faces all tear-stroked. I might have said that I would see them all soon, but I am not sure. Then a nurse came and gave me a shot of morphine and I don’t remember much after that until I woke up in the brain ward.
I woke up in a dark room, all by myself. I was hooked up to many machines that were all beeping away and I could not remember why I was there or even where there was. It was quite disconcerting, to say the least. I was disoriented and in severe pain. A nurse came in to check on me and ran out when she saw I was awake. Several doctors came back with her. They asked me how I was feeling and I said I hurt like hell, what happened to me. They told me I was in the Victoria Hospital and that I had a brain hemorrhage, I was informed that I was very lucky to still be with the world and that it was going to be a slow recovery. They gave me more morphine.
I was in that dark room for about 3 days, I think. I do remember my wife and kids came to visit me, but can barely remember it. I must have looked pretty bad because they cried the whole time they were there. Eventually, I was moved into a room with a window that let in some light. There was even a plant by the window. I spent 4 days there while they did tests on me multiple times a day. They had put a shunt in my inner thigh that allowed them to insert a needle in and travel up my spine to my brain with it. I was able to watch on a monitor, it felt like I was in an episode of Star Trek. After 4 more days, they moved me into a bright room that just seemed full of life.
Since this first happened, I have been suffering horrific migraine headaches. The morphine was great at reducing the pain, but it was giving me terrible nightmares. I had demons running through my dreams, chasing, catching and eating alive, little creatures that could talk with me. I saved as many as I could, but many were eaten. Sometimes I could see them while I was awake. They had on little tweed suits. Reality was elusive.
On day 9, a male nurse came in with a shot of Morphine to which I said I did not want it, he began to get a bit aggressive as he tried to give me that shot. Then I began to get upset, I told him if he pushed it, we would get into it. He left to call the doctor, who said to see how it goes without the morphine. The headaches got pretty bad, it was from the blood that had pooled on the surface of my brain. I still refused the shots though and my mind started to lose its haze and clear up. I began to remember things, but could not remember my family members’ names and this scared me. A few days later, my memory began to come back and I was feeling pretty good, I could remember my wife’s and kid’s names once more. Headaches were pretty bad, they said they would be with me until the blood dissolved on my brain. This could take months.
On day 12, after breakfast, I asked the nurse if there was a Timmy’s downstairs, she said there was so I asked her for a pair of slippers and a house coat so I could go get a coffee. She said I could not go, so I told her this was not a prison and if she would not get me slippers and a house coat I would be going down barefoot and in my open in the back gown. She brought me some slippers and a housecoat. A few minutes later I was sitting outside, in the fresh air having a coffee and a chocolate Bavarian cream doughnut and it was good. When I got back to my room, my doctor was waiting for me. He told me that if I was able to go for coffee, I should be able to go home. I phoned my wife in Campbell River and told her to hurry before they changed their minds. It took 5 hours for her to get there and she found me in my room, sitting upright in a chair, all my clothes on and a bag of other stuff on my lap, looking quite like Forrest Gump. Man, I was just itching to get out of there, I never did like hospitals.
Had to go see my doctor the day after getting home and he told me that he had never thought he would see me again. He was surprised that I had survived. He said more than half the people who go through this are dead before they hit the floor and many more die in the hospital. Took a few weeks for my memory to return fully and 6 months for the headaches to stop, life goes on.
I have always enjoyed getting out and hiking in the forests of Vancouver Island. I mean, after all, we do live in one of the most amazing places on the planet. Our island is the largest island on the west coast of North America. It is a little over 32,000 square kilometres in size and is 460 kilometres in length, 35 to 80 kilometres wide. It is separated from the BC Coast by several straights, the Juan De Fuca Straight on the south island, the Johnston Straight on the central island and the Queen Charlotte Straight on the north island.
The west coast of the island is a wet and wild land of wind, covered by (historically) ancient forests of giant trees, some of the world’s tallest trees can be found in these forests today. This side of the island is breached by many deep inlets surrounded by high mountains that seem to spring from the sea and go straight up to the sky. The average height of these mountains is 800 metres with some reaching upwards of 2200 metres.
The Pacific storms that pound the west coast throughout the year and more so in the winter months are laden with moisture that must be dropped to rise up and over the Island mountains. So the west coast receives much more rain than the east coast of the island. Truly a rainforest. The west coast is spotted with small islands, hot springs and many large rivers reach the sea there. An incredibly beautiful place. A place of waterfalls and hidden lakes. A place of mists and trees. A place of wonder.
The east coast of the Island from Campbell River down to the south Island has a very different type of terrain with broad gently sloping shelves that go from the sea to the eastern slopes of the Island mountains. Deep, slow-moving, nutrient-rich rivers that are teeming with fish, empty into the sea, building deltas of rich farmland.
Most of the Islands people live from Campbell River down the east coast of the island to Victoria including the south tip of the Island. Victoria is the Capital of B.C. and has an economy based both on Government employment and tourism as well as a minimal amount of resource-based industries. There is a strong agriculture presence on the east coast of the Island and dairy farms dot the south Island.
The north end of the island is still very much resource-based with logging, mining, and fishing, and the spin-off industries being the main form of employment. Tourism is starting to make a marked increase in the tax bases of local communities and I am sure will continue to have an increase in these economies in the future. Some communities are beginning to fully embrace tourism with incredible results.
Before my brain hemorrhage, I was working independently as a wildness guide, I would mostly take out photographers looking for a variety of subject matter. Illegal dumpsites were becoming a big issue and my guests began to notice this. No matter what logging road you took out to get out to the forest, it was there, and in increasing amounts. People were coming out and dumping in the forests by the truckloads. The photographers that I would guide were always asking why we allowed this to go on. They would say how they could not understand how we could spoil such a wondrous place. I had no answer.
One day I was riding my mountain bike on a logging road that was only a short distance from my house. As I road along, I started to take a good look and was appalled at just how much trash was there. So the next day I went back with my camera and made a 15-minute video of the mess. I posted it to YouTube and was surprised to see that it had gone viral overnight with tens of thousands of views. I went back that day and redid the video but with a request for help cleaning up the mess.
I had always thought about illegal dump sites and cleaning them up, but life always got in the way. After having the brain bleed, I realized that there were no guarantees in life and it could come to an end in a flash. It was time to stand up and get it done.
Once the video was out, help began to flow in. The Regional District offered dump waivers, a container company gave us two of their biggest containers and a driver from the company provided delivery and the haul to the dump for free. Another company gave us the use of a front-end loader with an operator. Home Hardware gave us boxes of industrial-strength garbage bags and gloves. A local radio station had me on the air to inspire volunteers to come and give a hand.
On the first day of the clean-up, so many people showed up to help us that I was overwhelmed by their generosity. Some of the volunteers were too old or unable physically to help, but they showed up with thermoses of coffee, juice boxes, donuts and sandwiches. There were people stretched all along the road, some were dragging items up the banks to the road, and others were loading trucks and trailers with garbage. This was quite the sight, my daughter was down in a creek, up to her knees in wet baby diapers, loading up bags. My other boys were hauling up old beds and tires, sometimes they would set up a Tommy Moore pully and use a truck to pull up large machine tires and barrels. By the end of the second day, we had removed 88,000 pounds of trash. That is 44 tons. I was so proud of everyone.
After we pulled this off, I had meetings with some of the companies and organizations that were involved, and they all agreed to continue this help if I were to start a society to keep on doing cleanups. I talked it out with my family and friends who were involved. They all agreed to keep helping. So the Society Of Forest Stewards was born. Over the next couple of years, we cleaned up many more tons of trash. The local newspapers and radio stations covered our cleanups and this helped to keep our base of volunteers which had now grown to 300 informed about cleanups, not all would show up, but we always got enough to facilitate a good cleanup. We also started a rumour that we had hidden cameras set up at problem areas, we did try to get the funding to do this, but could not get it done. But you know, just the rumour had the desired effect and we began to see a reduction in illegal dumping. In the fall of the first year, we were presented with a green award for our work by the regional district, this was presented to us on the late Roderick Haig Brown’s land in Campbell River.
In the fall of our third year, I got a phone call from CBC National, they wanted to do a story on trash dumping, it would be about all of Canada, and my society would be for the West Coast segment. At first, I was very excited about the story, it would help so much with fundraising. Then I came to realize that they picked this area because it was one of the worst areas in our whole province. Then I was very ashamed.
They started the Westcoast segment in my art studio where I was painting a large painting, we then jumped to my volunteers doing what they do every time we do a cleanup. The whole story is both inspiring, because of the efforts of these people and at the same time, disturbing because of the people who do the dumping. The news story was over 7 minutes in length and was shown on Thanksgiving 6 o’clock news, right across Canada. You can see it on Google, just search for “Trashing Canada”.
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