Grizzlies, Gales and Giant Salmon
Grizzlies, Gales
Giant Salmon
Life at a Rivers Inlet Fishing Lodge
Pat Ardley
For
Casey and Jess
Our Hearts Beat as One
Copyright © 2018 Pat Ardley
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca, 1-800-893-5777, [email protected].
Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.
P.O. Box 219, Madeira Park, BC, V0N 2H0
Project editor Peter A. Robson
Cover design by Setareh Ashraf
Text design by Mary White
Map by Roger Handling
Cover and interior photos courtesy of the author
Excerpt from “Dream #2” by Ken Tobias reprinted with permission of Ken Tobias
Printed and bound in Canada
Printed on forest-friendly paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council
Harbour Publishing acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. We also gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Government of Canada and from the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Ardley, Pat, author
Grizzlies, gales and giant salmon : life at a Rivers Inlet fishing lodge / Pat Ardley.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-55017-831-9 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-55017-832-6 (HTML)
1. Ardley, Pat. 2. Rivers Lodge (Rivers Inlet, B.C.). 3. Fishing lodges—British Columbia—Rivers Inlet. 4. Autobiographies. I. Title.
SH572.B8A73 2018 799.17'56097111 C2017-906451-7
C2017-906452-5
I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.
And nothing
happens! Nothing . . . Silence . . . Waves . . .
—Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?
—Juan Ramón Jiménez, “Oceans”
Preface
“You are living every man’s dream!”
I can’t tell you how many times I have heard that line in the last forty years. I would be standing with my husband, George, and a few of the guests at our isolated fishing lodge tucked in amongst the tree-covered islands at the mouth of Rivers Inlet on the Central Coast of BC. Guests would wax poetic about how wonderful our lodge is, how great the staff is, how amazing the food is, and how beautiful and wild the country is. Their eyes would light up as they told story after story of exciting adventures out on the boat, catching fish, watching whales, seeing a bald eagle pluck a salmon out of the water and struggle to reach shore. They would turn to George and tell him how lucky he is, what an amazing life he is living, how they would love to trade places with him. I was all but invisible. If there was a woman in the group, at this point she would no doubt turn to me and ask, “So, what do you do all winter? Aren’t you bored the whole time?”
How could I be? I was living in the wilderness with the man people called “Hurricane” Ardley! Together he and I had built a world-class fishing resort in the middle of the remote and wild British Columbia coast. This is my side of the story!
Prologue
When he walked in, I barely looked at him but I did notice that he had a moustache and was wearing an old army jacket and a casual shirt with khaki pants. Another fellow at the table said, “George Ardley, I’d like you to meet a dear friend.” George gave a curt nod in my direction, reached for a glass of beer and knocked it back. We were at the pub in the Ritz Hotel in downtown Vancouver, with a group of friends who often went there after work for a beer or two—or ten. The place was dark and smelled of stale beer and old cigarette smoke. It was 1972, and I was twenty years old. I was with my friend Janice Cruickshank who worked nearby at Placer Development, where the company had recently installed a brand new computer system that took up an entire floor. I had just arrived from Winnipeg and was staying with her until I found my own place and got my feet on the ground.
A few nights later, Janice invited all of her Vancouver friends to her parents’ hotel room on Denman Street for a cocktail party. Her parents were visiting from Regina, and Janice wanted them to meet her new friends as well as see old ones who had also grown up in Regina but had recently moved to Vancouver. I was having a lovely time catching up with childhood friends that I hadn’t seen since I was thirteen and moved to Winnipeg, when our host, Mrs. Cruickshank, greeted someone at the door and ushered George into the room. She tried to take his jacket to hang it up but he said, “This? This old thing doesn’t need to be hung up,” rolled the army jacket in a ball and tossed it behind an armchair. Well, really! I could see the look on proper Mrs. Cruickshank’s face was one of distaste. I thought, “Oh my, a rebel, a renegade!” No one had ever done such a thing to Mrs. Cruickshank, the socialite wife of Judge Cruickshank. I was intrigued.
I learned from a mutual friend that George had grown up in Lake Cowichan on Vancouver Island. His parents used to own a grocery store and a café there, but now owned The Lake News newspaper, which
