Our closer exploration of Sointula was just long enough for the ferry to arrive, and I felt we were in the midst of a transition, the end of andera. Questions hung in the air - what will become of this place? There are so few children, and it's so difficult to make any kind of living here. People are not building the large summer getaway homes as much any more, and technology makes places like this difficult for anything except an escape. Will the old buildings just rot away like some of the local native villages?
Taking the ferry to Alert Bay meant going back to Port McNeill and then driving around the corner to get on the ferry again. We were the first car on, and placed right in the middle lane, allowing a superb view of the strait and the island in front of us. I have been to Alert Bay many, many times in my life, but always by tug, and always for only the hour or so it took to do whatever chores we had to do: unload wood frames, pick someone up, visit the hospital, attend a function. My grandparents (and great grandparents before them) were well known here, in part because this white family was into its fourth generation here. That was petty rare!
Grandpa's tug, the Gikumi, and its predecessor the Hilikum, made hundreds of journeys through every passage and to every island there was a settlement that needed milled wood, which was all of them at one point or another. Even in the 1970s, there were a few deserted and derelict native villages where we would sometimes go to have a picnic. I remember seeing the abandoned schoolhouse at Mamalilikala with broken glass, graffiti on the walls, and a piano strewn in bits across the floor. The site of that destroyed piano has stayed in my head. I was sad to see a symbol of western cultural destroyed so rampantly. All the old houses were rotting in the damp climate as were the old totem poles. Native culture intends for them to rot back into the soil, not to be rescued and restored, let alone sit in a museum. Here the silver grey of the cedar came through the chipping and fading paint colours. I saw a honeysuckle bush growing out of the eye of one Tsonoqua, the wild woman of the woods, her arms outstretched towards the sea, waiting to catch errant children who now never arrived.
Our night's digs, at the Alert Bay Lodge, was in an odd shaped building with four rooms. We were the only ones staying, so got the largest room. Resembling a native long house, with a giant beam running along the roof's ridge, it was crammed with beds, and could sleep a half-dozen fishermen easily.
Two New Zealanders were running it, Tash and Ian Lodge, the latter a paraplegic trying to get into the Sochi wWnter Olympic Games in 2014, competing in the new snow boarding paralympic sport. Inspiring. We talked a lot about the Olypmics, as the Vancouver winter games had recenty passed and later this summer we are travelling to London, England to attend the summer games.
We walked along the road, or rather on the road, as there was no sidewalk, and no vehicles either - no people, no vehicles, not even children on bikes. There are always children on bikes! We passed nice old houses
and the now shutterd hospital where my grandmother worked when she met my grandfather.
We sought out the oddities one always finds in places like this. Who would believe there is an elaborate Italianite section of the road, or palm trees, or a collection of London double decker buses?
Dinner was not the salmon we wanted but ribs and chicken, which seemed wrong, but I guess locals get sick of salmon. We started talking to a Dutch man here to do a film. He was bemoaning the grey skies, and the forecast for even worsening weather.
IToday is the longest day of the year, but with the thick clouds we had an even longer wait for dark, and no stars, just a quiet night in our choice of beds.
Taking the ferry to Alert Bay meant going back to Port McNeill and then driving around the corner to get on the ferry again. We were the first car on, and placed right in the middle lane, allowing a superb view of the strait and the island in front of us. I have been to Alert Bay many, many times in my life, but always by tug, and always for only the hour or so it took to do whatever chores we had to do: unload wood frames, pick someone up, visit the hospital, attend a function. My grandparents (and great grandparents before them) were well known here, in part because this white family was into its fourth generation here. That was petty rare!
Our night's digs, at the Alert Bay Lodge, was in an odd shaped building with four rooms. We were the only ones staying, so got the largest room. Resembling a native long house, with a giant beam running along the roof's ridge, it was crammed with beds, and could sleep a half-dozen fishermen easily.
We walked along the road, or rather on the road, as there was no sidewalk, and no vehicles either - no people, no vehicles, not even children on bikes. There are always children on bikes! We passed nice old houses
and the now shutterd hospital where my grandmother worked when she met my grandfather.
We sought out the oddities one always finds in places like this. Who would believe there is an elaborate Italianite section of the road, or palm trees, or a collection of London double decker buses?
Dinner was not the salmon we wanted but ribs and chicken, which seemed wrong, but I guess locals get sick of salmon. We started talking to a Dutch man here to do a film. He was bemoaning the grey skies, and the forecast for even worsening weather. IToday is the longest day of the year, but with the thick clouds we had an even longer wait for dark, and no stars, just a quiet night in our choice of beds.
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