and we decided to climb into our warm and cozy sleeping bags and deal with it in daylight. In the morning, George took the carburetor apart and cleaned the firebox and got rid of quite a bit of dirty grease and managed to get the oil flowing again. He turned the oil stove up and put the kettle on for coffee. Then he went in and chipped through the ice in the toilet. Once I started moving around, I could feel the heat coming from the stove and was warmed in my soul again when I heard the water start to boil.
We didn’t have a fridge, but we didn’t have trouble keeping things cold. We just stored them at the far end of the cabin, away from the stove. There wasn’t a lot of fresh produce to keep cool anyway. The freight boat Tyee Princess delivered groceries to Dawsons Landing every two weeks and there was never much produce to choose from. We had root vegetables, cabbage, apples and oranges. The rest of the vegetables and fruit were from cans. We also ate a lot of brown rice, which was easy to ship, store and cook and was full of nutrients. I could make a fresh healthy loaf of bread though. George still called it a brick of bread. It didn’t make a very good sandwich. Well, maybe an open-faced sandwich.
Shortly after we settled into Jack’s cabin, a friend of ours came for a visit. Chas Bowman was an architect in Vancouver and an adventurer always looking for new, wild and wonderful things to do. We did a little fishing while he was with us and had fabulous fresh cod and chips for dinner. George took Chas beachcombing and the two of them came back beaming and full of the beauty of the inlet on a sunny winter’s day. The air was crisp and clear and the snow on top of the Coast Mountains created a stunning contrast between the blue sky and the evergreen slopes.
I was quite content for the two of them to go on their adventures without me since it was only a ten-foot boat and having an extra person on board made it go too slow. And it was a boat. In the morning, we were taking our time at the breakfast table and just lounging with a second pot of coffee. I happened to look out the window and saw the Thomas Crosby V coming into the bay. Not a chance was I going to let them catch me in my pyjamas at 10:30 AM! With a squawk, I grabbed the milk jug off the table and scooped the corners of the tablecloth up with the rest of the dishes and breakfast things and ran clattering into the backroom. I raced back past George and Chas, who were still sitting at the table watching me with their mouths hanging open. Had I suddenly gone crazy? Apparently they hadn’t looked out the window. I ran to get dressed, and all was well and presentable by the time the minister and his wife were tied to the dock.
The OM
George just had to have the boat with the for sale sign on it. It was a twenty-four-foot very, very old wooden double-ended boat that looked to me like it leaked. Double-ended meant that the boat was pointed on both ends. George saw it as a great opportunity. I saw it as a disaster waiting to happen. The boat belonged to a young fellow named Ken Hall, who lived with his mother on floats tied to shore across the bay from Dawsons Landing. Ken called the boat the OM.
Ken was interested in selling and moving to town, so one afternoon we bought the boat and towed it home. George didn’t understand why I couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for working on it. He started to think that I was just being lazy. I couldn’t stand the thought of going anywhere in what I considered to be a hazard to navigation. The whole thing needed to have work done on it. The engine wouldn’t start, and it needed to be pumped out constantly to keep it from sinking. George built an A-frame at the stern and started the long, slow process of raising the engine so he could move it off the boat and put it undercover somewhere where he could work on it.
After hours of struggling with the engine, daylight was fading and he left his work to get ready to go out for dinner. We took our skiff to our log-salvaging friend John Salo’s cabin, which was about thirty yards away and tied to the same boom of logs that we were tied to. In actual fact, we were tied to John’s standing boom. We had an enjoyable dinner with John, then, at about 9 PM, headed back to our place. There was a very light, soft snow drifting down that seemed to mute even the sound of the skiff engine. I had a strange feeling as we came toward our float. I shone the flashlight onto the cabin and could see the whole end of it. The OM wasn’t there! As we neared the float George didn’t even stop to tie up the skiff; he leaped onto the float and ran to where the OM had been sunk. It was still tied at both ends but it was covered almost completely with water. After tying up the skiff, I joined him where he stood ringing his hands while I was wishing that I had an axe to help it sink the rest of the way. There were a few things floating up to the windshield, and in the flashlight beam I could all too clearly envision myself floating up to that window with a silent scream on my face. There was nothing we could do in the dark so we went to bed.
The next morning, George found a spot in the bay where the tide went out and left a natural beach that would support the OM. At low tide, he built a crib that would hold the boat upright as the tide went out around it. Then he cut down two alders hoping to use them to help keep the boat floating, but they barely floated themselves. He then borrowed two buoyant cedar logs from John and strapped them to the sides of the boat so he could tow it to the crib on the beach. He had to wait until the next high tide to move the boat. Finally, about an hour before high tide, he cut through the ropes that were holding the OM to the side of our float. It didn’t sink any further. That’s too bad, I thought.
Then he towed it over to the spot he had prepared and tied it to the trees that were hanging off the shore. As the tide went out, water poured from hundreds of different places on the sides of the boat. We had borrowed a pump to drain the water out as the tide went down, but we didn’t have to use it. This was not a good sign, confirming my opinion that this boat was definitely not seaworthy.
We borrowed a small empty float that belonged to another fishing resort. It was in Sunshine Bay for the winter for safekeeping. George worked day after day, building a proper cradle to hold the OM upright after it was pulled onto the float. He used his brand-new chainsaw and cut down several small trees and also used the first two alders that he cut down. When the boat was empty of water, and before the tide came back in, John helped pull the boat up onto the float with his tugboat. He used lots of ropes tied carefully into a harness and around the OM to protect the boat so it wouldn’t fall apart as he pulled it out of the water. I was somewhat dismayed by the care he took, as I was hoping that it would crumble with the force of the pull. George then built a frame around it, which he covered with plastic so the whole boat could dry out.
Once in a while I made dinner for John and another friend Warren Nygaard, who also lived in Sunshine Bay. The two fellows would come over for supper, and then through the evening we would play hearts, which I usually won. The three guys were all very competitive and watched the cards being played while I was up and down getting tea or treats and chatting while I had a captive audience. I never paid much attention to the cards, and this kept the fellows constantly guessing about my strategy and me constantly winning. Sometimes I won just because I ended up with 101 points, which is an automatic win! One afternoon I made a Chinese food dinner for the four of us. I spent three hours chopping, slicing, stirring, mixing and sautéing. We sat down to dinner and the food was gone in less than three minutes. What on earth had I just spent three hours on?! I don’t know if anyone even tasted it. But it was worth the work to be entertained by Warren’s stories of growing up in the wilderness of Rivers Inlet and the long Robert Service poems that John memorized while he was towing a boom of logs for thirty hours at a time.
The ill-fated OM hauled out on a borrowed float. George thought I should help work on it but I never had the confidence that this boat would ever safely carry us without sinking.
Other than winning at hearts and cooking or serving tea, it was hard to get noticed when I was always surrounded by men who were logging or fishing or hunting, or doing any number of real “men’s pursuits.” I spent a lot of time alone in the cabin, and when someone arrived I would be so excited and anxious for some real conversation that I would become tongue-tied. I usually
