Grizzlies, Gales and Giant Salmon Read online

  Grizzlies, Gales and Giant Salmon

  Grizzlies, Gales

  and

  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

  www.harbourpublishing.com

  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 2018799.17'56097111C2017-906451-7

  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 kept them very busy. George often went back to Lake Cowichan to help with the artwork in the paper. He had gone to the University of British Columbia to become a dentist but then decided he preferred drawing and became a draftsman instead.

  Over the next few weeks, George’s friend urged him several times to take me out on a date. Of course George ignored the suggestion because someone was trying to tell him what to do. But then one day, while our group was drinking beer and discussing the car rally being organized by George’s baseball team that coming weekend, George, who didn’t own a car, turned to me and asked if I would like to do the race with him. I owned a car but didn’t have enough money to pay for gas. “Sure,” I said. “If you fill my gas tank.”

  I was the driver and George was the navigator as we followed the clues from checkpoint to checkpoint. It was total chaos with one hundred people bombing around the country roads just outside of Vancouver, performing silly challenges at each stop to score rally points. George and I popped balloons between us, played catch with fresh eggs and exchanged seats without getting out of the car, which was quite a feat in my little canary yellow Toyota. At one point I looked over at George and he looked back at me and I saw clear blue, kind, honest eyes that had a sparkle of humour in them. I knew I had found a keeper.

  Part One

  Lighthouse Keeping

  Settling in at Addenbroke Lighthouse

  “Are you going to the lighthouse with George?” George’s mother anxiously demanded of me.

  His mother was a formidable slip of a woman to whom I would have to prove myself many times before I would be considered part of the family. Her imperious voice brought a sudden hush to those who had gathered to celebrate his mom and dad’s thirtieth wedding anniversary. The crowd parted like the Red Sea, and I was left to stand looking straight across at George’s mom on the other side of the kitchen. We were gathered at the Vancouver home of George’s sister, Marilyn, and her husband, Phil. It was my first time meeting his parents. The silence became palpable as everyone inhaled and waited for my answer.

  “Yes,”
I said. “I am going too.” Little did I know that I should have been the one who was concerned about heading into the wilderness with George.

  George had been fascinated with lighthouses since an early age when his family travelled to Vancouver from Vancouver Island, passing a lighthouse just outside of the Nanaimo ferry terminal. Then years later he hiked the West Coast Trail on the wild, west side of Vancouver Island with his little brother, Jeff, from the Big Brothers organization. He renewed his fascination while speaking with the lightkeepers at the Pachena Point Lighthouse. Not long after, he saw a lighthouse-keeping job listed in the newspaper and decided to apply. It was a few months after our car-rally date that the government called to tell him they had a posting for him. At twenty-seven, George was quite happy at his architectural draftsman job but was looking for adventure. We both thought it would be fun. This turned out to be quite an understatement.

  We were scheduled to leave in early April of 1973 for the Addenbroke Island Lighthouse, some three hundred miles north of Vancouver, to become junior lighthouse keepers. I arranged for a friend to use my car while we were away, and George made arrangements to sublet his apartment. There were a number of going-away parties for us, and we said goodbye to our friends with lots of music, dancing and delightful toasts. We actually said goodbye several times, as with most things governmental our travel schedule moved more slowly than planned. By the third going-away party, George was treated to an enormous, beautifully decorated cake in the face. At that point our friends may have been thinking that we would never leave.

  We booked into a motel in downtown Vancouver and were there for two weeks before we finally watched our belongings being lifted onto the freshly painted Coast Guard ship that would deliver them and us to the lighthouse. We climbed on board at 10 AM but in typical fashion we didn’t actually leave until about 1:30 PM. The ship zigzagged around the harbour as the crew set their new compass so we wouldn’t get lost if we ran into fog on the way. We finally departed from Vancouver and headed out past Lighthouse Park then turned northwest out of Burrard Inlet.

  Immediately the ship began to roll, and it didn’t stop rolling for the next four days. I sat nervously holding onto a container that was strapped to the deck as I kept my eyes on the distant horizon. We left Vancouver behind and with it, all of my conscious experience with civilization, friends and family, stores full of wondrous things, and cars—all things that I would never again take for granted.

  We travelled up the Strait of Georgia and passed miles and miles of shore that rose up into stunningly beautiful snow-capped mountains, miles and miles of tree-covered islands and very little else. No more cities, no towns, no crowds of people—no people! Really, no people! Except for the eight men running the ship, we were already in wilderness.

  I knew nothing about coastal wilderness. My elementary school years were spent on the wide-open spaces of the Prairies, and my high school years were spent shopping with friends, eating in fancy restaurants and partying. George would be better equipped since he inherited his dad’s love of tinkering with wood and motors and his aptitude for fixing anything and everything.

  The West Coast of BC is so rugged with jagged rocky slopes and heavily timbered mountains, occasionally broken only by water tumbling down, that there are very few places with enough open and accessible land to settle a town or village. We cruised quickly up the Inside Passage, manoeuvring through islands, then sailed up Johnstone Strait and past the Broughton Archipelago. Past the Storm Islands and Grief Bay. Then the ship angled right and came out into the open water of Queen Charlotte Sound just beyond Cape Caution. The names of the islands and bays are an indication of what the weather is often like in this region. It’s all true. Terrible storms, hurricanes and gales rage around the area for much of the winter and sometimes even suddenly out of the blue on an otherwise lovely fall day. I can attest to it all from the experiences that I gained from my new life of adventure.

  We headed into Fitz Hugh Sound as we passed the entrance to Rivers Inlet, and eighteen miles north of it we approached our new home, Addenbroke Island—but kept sailing right past it. My heart sank. Apparently, dropping us off was not the skipper’s first priority. Many dark hours later and, no doubt about it, many more tree-covered islands later, we docked at Prince Rupert in the wee hours of the morning and stayed the rest of the night—hallelujah!—in a hotel near the docks.

  The next morning the ship was loaded with supplies, and later in the afternoon we finally boarded again and headed back down the coast toward Addenbroke Island. The ship stopped at other lighthouses as we travelled south and delivered freight, groceries and a bag of mail for the eager people living there. This was a time-consuming venture requiring all hands on deck, the ship’s crane, straps and nets, and lots of yelling. George and I spent two more nights on the boat in a tiny little cabin with tiny little bunk beds and an even tinier washroom. We ate meals with the crew. The food looked delicious but I was feeling queasy with the constant rolling of the ship and was not able to enjoy any of it. Mealtimes were especially trying when you had to hold on to your plate of food or it slid across the table to the fellow sitting opposite you. Really, I just wanted to shut my eyes and roll up in a ball in my bunk. After the second night and day of travelling south, we were finally getting closer to Addenbroke again but also running out of daylight. By the time we could see the light from the tower, it was too dark to safely get off the boat and onto dry land with all our belongings. Because there was no dock and the little bay was not well protected, the ship anchored in Safety Cove across Fitz Hugh Sound, within sight of the lighthouse, but oh so far away. Safety Cove is perhaps best known as a place where Captain George Vancouver beached his ships for a time when he was exploring the West Coast in the 1790s. We spent another claustrophobic night on the ship.

  Early the next morning our ship chugged over to Addenbroke. Once there, we climbed down a precarious ladder on the side of the ship and into a bobbing rowboat and then rowed to the shore right below the wharf. The ship’s men used the crane to off-load our furniture and boxes of goods, plus supplies for the senior lightkeepers. They were also delivering the newfangled automation equipment for the light and horn. The Canadian government’s plan was to automate all the lighthouses over the next few years. The senior keepers were not pleased to see this equipment arrive because they thought of the island as their home and didn’t want to be made redundant once the island was fully automated. (They need not have worried—I am writing this forty years after the fact and the island still has lightkeepers!)

  There were two houses on the island, one for the senior keeper Ray Salo; his wife, Ruth; and their preteen daughter, Lorna, and the other for the junior keepers. That would be us! The junior keeper’s house had two bedrooms, a very large kitchen and a great living room with a window that covered almost one whole wall facing west toward Fitz Hugh Sound and across to Calvert Island several miles away. We could see snow-capped Mount Buxton perfectly framed by the huge window and a waterfall cascading down into the ocean. People could travel all the way up the wildly beautiful coast in a boat, anchor in the bay, walk up the boardwalk to our house and still, they couldn’t help gasping at the spectacular view from our living room.

  From the kitchen window we could see south to Egg Island about twenty-five miles away, and on a clear day we could even see the mountains at the north end of Vancouver Island a little over fifty miles away. Beside the big front window was a door that led out to a huge square deck. The deck had been built on the base of the site’s original lighthouse, which had been pulled into the sea by ships’ winches in 1968 to make room for the new lighthouse and tower on top.

  The house was fantastic! We loved it, but there was one little problem. The fridge was missing. We had nowhere to store our fresh produce. Somehow that important detail was not included in the memo from the Coast Guard about the contents of the house. We got to work and made ice in the downstairs freezer and made do with a cold box until a fridge was finally d
elivered many months later. And, there was more than one problem. There was also no washing machine, just two sinks and no dryer either! Something about the 7.5 kilowatt Lister Petter generator (our only source of power) not being able to handle too many electrical appliances, especially those producing heat. There was a note in the memo that said, “a drying rack of light rope would be very useful indoors.” How nice that the previous occupants had left a clothesline outside that we could … I could use. There was also a note for us to apply for and bring with us a cncp Telecommunications credit card so we would be able to send telegrams. Otherwise we would not be able to send quick messages to family while we were stationed there. We would receive mail about once a month when our groceries were delivered. On top of it all, there were no curtain rods or curtains so we lived without for the next year and a half—but given the wilderness setting, who needed curtains?

  In the basement there was an oil furnace, which we would be grateful for when we saw how much work it was to keep the wood-burning furnace going in the senior keeper’s house throughout the winter. There was also a workbench attached along one wall, and we immediately started planning which woodworking tools we would buy once we had money. The basement also had plenty of space for storing extra food supplies. We were told to have no less than two months’ worth of groceries on hand at all times.

  Half of the basement was a water cistern that held fresh rainwater that washed off the roof. There was a pressure pump to push the water upstairs. There was no other water source on the island so we quickly learned to conserve the precious liquid. No leaving taps running while brushing teeth, or washing dishes under running water. Ruth told us the scary story about some lighthouse people who ran out of fresh water many years before and had to have water delivered from a dirty, rusty tank off the Coast Guard tender boat. We were having none of it. To this day I can’t leave a tap running for more than a few seconds.