Some old photos and personal history

Something a bit different today.

I always keep myself busy. Pandemic or no pandemic. I've not been working since the schools closed in the early spring. When they opened again in September, I chose not to return; I'm in a couple of high-risk categories.

And after a couple of falls on slippery seaweed, I've been slowing down. Walking can be painful and I tire early. The years are catching up to me.

But I've still kept busy. Up to now, I've been systematically emptying and cleaning every cupboard, every container, every storage bin, every file or photo album or bookshelf, downsizing as I go. That's done now, except for routine upkeep. So I've turned to the digital stash; everything I've been putting off sorting and curating. Document files are done. Now the photos; a complete hard drive full of photos.

A year ago, my brother sent me a few files of photos he had scanned from Dad's old slides, photos taken in the 1950s. I looked them over and stored them for later; they were messy and faded. No wonder: Dad's photo box had gone through one house fire, several earthquakes and a tornado, besides dozens of moves. The  slides were scratched and dusty, discoloured with age. They needed careful recovery work.

I've started on that now. And I think these may be of interest.

I've mentioned before now that I grew up in the woods. Here's where I spent my childhood and my early teens.

Esperanza General Hospital. Mom was nurse, Dad bookkeeper. Pop; about 25.

A couple of years later. Then they built a one-room school and a house up on the hill. We lived in the house for a while.

Loading the raft for summer camp. About this time we moved across the channel to the settlement at the upper left. The main body is an abandoned fish cannery; there were two habitable houses. Ours was the one on the far left. Population, with a temporary floating logging camp, 14.

The view from my bedroom window. Although it was raining more often than not.

Photo from my old box camera. All transportation was by water or air. This was the Lizzie, our school boat.

The weekly mail.

Random shot on the wharf. One of the nurses with discharged patient, and the plane that will take them home.

I think this settlement is what's left of Ceepeecee after the cannery burnt down.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mi hermano me mandó unas transparencias que había tomado mi papá por los años 1950 a '60. Estaban muy mal, llenas de polvo y rasguños, con los colores todos cambiados. Con razón; esa fotos habían sido transportados de un lado a otro por 50 años, habíaan sufrido un incendio de casa, un tornado, y varios terremotos. Necesitaban mucho labor antes de poderlas ver claro.

Eso he estado haciendo, ahora que estoy más o menos encerrada. Pensé que estas podrían ser de interés.

He mencionado antes que crecí entre los bosques. Aquí es el lugar, en la costa oriente de la isla de Vancouver. El primer pueblo, un hospital con casas para los trabajadores tenía una población de 25 personas. Luego, nos mudamos al otro lado del agua, y nuestro "pueblo" contaba con 14 personas. La cuarta foto es la vista desde mi recámara.

Toda nuestro transporte era por agua o aire. La foto en blanco y negro de un barco viene de mi antigua cámara. Es el barco que nos llevaba a la escuela atrás del hospital. (Una escuela con una sola maestra y un solo salón de clases.)

El avión es el que nos traía el correo una vez a la semana.

Y la foto en el muelle muestra el avión que va a llevar unos pacientes del hospital a su casa.

Rainy evening

I had been intending to go down to the docks to look for the diving ducks that fish these waters, but was delayed running errands, and here it was, past 5. And the sun sets at 4:30 these days; it was getting dark, and pouring rain to boot.

But the camera was waiting in the car, and my jacket was already wet; why waste an outing? I got the camera into its rain gear, and went down to the boats.

At the bottom of the ramp, a dead harbour seal was floating, half out of the water.

A sad picture, but the spotted hide is interesting.

The head seems to be intact, but skin was sloughing off the back feet already. The creamy line across the centre back seems to be a cut. He may have been in an accident with one of the boats.

Maybe someone ignored this sign. Photo taken with flash, which reflected off the falling rain to make that paler circle of blue. The house is one of the harbour buildings, out on a pier.

Warm light reflecting off ridges on the ramp, and, directly under the light, off raindrops slanting down.

Just lights, warm and cool, on the water.

There was one bird; a great blue heron, looking miserable in the rain. I lightened the photo up quite a bit; he was barely visible.

I went back to the car, got the camera out of its rain gear, changed the settings to cope with the fading light, suited it up again, and went out, to discover the heron just flying away, a dark, wide-winged shadow flitting behind the masts of the boats.

And here are the boats, with all the little lights and someone's bright yellow rain gear.

The darkness and rain blurs out distances, so that the masts and equipment blend in with the traffic lights beyond, the fish and chip shop across the street, and even the houses in the next block above.  In spite of the dark and the wet, it felt cosy, somehow; as if the people in all those little pockets of warmth and light were connected by a common thread; the hour maybe, the time to finish off today's work, and get a hot meal on the table.

And I went home, dried off the camera, hung my jacket to drip over the tub, and cooked up a batch of chicken and mushroom soup.

Where the road ends

Tyee Spit is less than 5 minutes from my house, by car. A road leads about 2/3 of the way to the end, and stops. There is a parking lot behind us here, but a few cars always park at the very end, where big rocks block the way. I walk to the tip of the spit, at the mouth of the Campbell River, and stand there listening to the splashing of waves on stones, and the whine, roar, and hum of traffic.

Where the road ends, the air and the sea continue. Little floatplanes drone over the hills beyond the channel, roar overhead, splash down, and rumble in to the dock. Another revs up, its song going from bass to alto; then the plane lifts off the water, and the motor settles down to a hum, fading off in the distance. A skiff with a couple of fishermen putt-putts along; someone drops a crab trap before they speed away, the outboard motor howling.

Down channel, I see a fish boat beating away against the current under the cliffs of Quadra Island, a barge with its tug and load of brightly painted boxes. And the ferry is just turning into the landing in Quathiaski Cove. If I wait, I might see a cruise ship sliding by, a city in a white floating box.

For much of the forbidding coast of northern Vancouver Island, these are the main methods of transport; small floatplanes, and boats tiny, small, and huge.

Touching down. Tyee Spit.

One minute later, the next plane lands.

On the far side of the Island, the west coast, the highway stops where the Gold River meets the sea, at the inner end of an Nootka Sound, still 40 km. from the open sea. Here, the Uchuck III, which regularly visits small coastal communities with no road access, ties up; and Air Nootka float planes pick up mail and travellers to be delivered up and down the coast.

Air Nootka plane. This photo taken in July.

The dock next door. Photo taken in March. Same view; still green even in winter, but with more snow on the mountain peaks.

Beside the offices (we stopped in to discuss a possible trip on the Uchuck next summer), a sign advertises the mail run:

2 hour flight, with several stops. $190.

I am seriously tempted. I was on this flight many, many (55+) years ago, on my way south. The landing procedure, spiralling down into the Gold River dock, one wing pointing at the clouds, the other pointing directly down into the water, and spinning, spinning, frightened me so badly that I don't remember any more about that trip.

I should go, if only to prove to myself that I'm no longer scared.

On the other side of the Gold River docks, Western Forest Products machinery herds logs. On land big, toothy machines pick them up and stack them; in the water, tiny, also toothy, nimble tugs sort them into booms for transport.

These little tugs fascinate me. So tiny, so solid, all welded steel; they look like they should sink. But they chug about, slamming into logs, tipping and whirling and thudding, water sluicing over the decks. Nothing fazes them.

I had to look this up twice. 3 seconds - seconds! - after the previous photo. Wham!

And 16 seconds later the log has been rousted out and is on its way to the boom.

The average boom boat measures approximately 16 feet long, 8 feet in the beam, and 4 feet deep. The typical gross tonnage is only a mere 3 tons. (Custom Boat Building -scroll down)

Gold River on the west, Tyee Spit on the east coast.

Deep blues

Trying my hand at a panorama shot:

Docks at Campbell River, on a sunny day last week. Half a dozen photos stitched together.

Another sunny day, more or less the same boats, different perspective.

Marina-less marina

Parked boats on Boundary Bay, at high tide.

And at low tide, they're lying on the sand.

10 photos merged to make a panorama. There was not much else to see, on a windy day with the water almost up to the walls.

I count about two dozen small boats there, between Point Roberts and Centennial Park. Click on the photo for a larger version.

Boat at mid-tide

Boundary Bay, as the tide comes in . . .

Looking southeast, towards the US border marker at the edge of the intertidal zone, from somewhere near the middle. The tideflats go out almost a mile here.

A Skywatch post

Wind instruments, after a fashion

More photos from the hard drive ...

These were in the "Boats" folder. At first, I couldn't figure out how a photo of gulls was filed there. Then I saw it.

Gulls and half a gull. White Rock.

I was waiting for Laurie on the highway bordering the beach in Campbell River three years ago, when I saw this boat, far in the distance. I could barely see it against the light, even squinting through my closed fist, but the camera did better.

It looks like a Chinese junk, with the traditional battened sail, and in traditional red, too. But what is it doing here?

Junks were efficient and sturdy ships that sailed long distances as early as the 2nd century AD. They incorporated numerous technical advances in sail plan and hull designs that were later adopted in Western shipbuilding.
The historian H. Warington Smyth considered the junk one of the most efficient ship designs, stating that "As an engine for carrying man and his commerce upon the high and stormy seas as well as on the vast inland waterways, it is doubtful if any class of vessel… is more suited or better adapted to its purpose than the Chinese or Indian junk, and it is certain that for flatness of sail and handiness, the Chinese rig is unsurpassed."

I had always thought of a junk as a small, one- or at the most two-sailed boat from past centuries, but browsing Google images, and reading a few sites, I realized that the sail is useful even on quite large ships, and has become a favourite of recreational boaters today. And if you are at all interested in boating or boating history, you will find the Wikipedia page fascinating.

Shopping in ankle-deep water

My hermit crabs love seaweed. The bushier, the taller, the more tangled, the better. They eat it, climb it to rest clinging precariously to a waving tip, socialize on it, survey their territory from high points in it (they're always so interested in everything!) and hide under it.

When the rain started, I had been planning an expedition to replenish their supply, but I didn't want to venture out in the weather. By yesterday, they were down to a couple of blades of rotting eelgrass. I had given them a piece of lettuce, which my aquarium books said they would like. The crabs nibbled at it some, but the hermits ignored it and climbed the eelgrass, taking turns for lack of space.

This morning, I finally dug out my rain jacket and warm pants and dressed for rain. And the sun came out! I hurried down to Boundary Bay while my good fortune lasted.

A perfect summer day. I discarded my jacket on a log. Looking south to Point Roberts.

The sea was empty; even the birds stayed on board parked boats. Two gulls here.

And a half dozen on this yellow cataraman.

It was a good afternoon for seaweeds. Perhaps the recent weather has ripped up more of the tide flats than usual. In the first few minutes, I'd collected all the sea lettuce I could handle, and several handfuls of excellent, fresh eelgrass, one plant with roots and all.

I was looking for a tiny piece of kelp; the crabs love it, but it rots quickly, so it becomes a treat for a day and then gets tossed. I found some, and brought home a chunk with bryozoans for added protein. And along the way, I found several varieties of branched red weed, green rockweed, three kinds of hairy red seaweed, a ribbon sea lettuce, Turkish towel, and a rubbery sheet of red algae. From a boat a man and a boy were trailering, I harvested a handful of fine green algae; good to freeze for the next rainy day. And there were umpteen oak leaves, maple leaves, and one geranium stalk, blown out to sea by the wind, brought back in on the tide. (I didn't bring any of these last items home; good for the garden, but coals to Newcastle and all that.)

Small leaf of big-leaf maple, tied neatly with brown eelgrass.

Faded Turkish towel, red algae, eelgrass live and dead,  and brilliant green sea lettuce.

A blade of well-aged kelp. Interesting patterns; I see in there an old flyer or postcard, much yellowed with age, with part of a face visible on the front.

Another view. The "postcard" has disappeared.

The fog settling down again, all the colours blue-shifted.

Back in the car, as I turned the first corner towards Tsawwassen, the rain started again.

Oh, and the critters approved of my "purchases".

Wobblies

Reflections at Discovery Harbour Marina, Campbell River

Just for fun.

White wings, white sail

White Rock, July 2010.

Because sometimes, like on a rainy night between two drizzly days in the middle of the dark winter, I need to be reminded.

Against the light

Rule #1 in the photographer's manual: Never shoot directly into the light.

Sometimes you just have to ignore the rules.

White Rock Beach,  last Friday.

Primary colours

At Boundary Bay:

Blue

Blue

And red

More red

Yellow (Cedar waxwing)

Yellow. And pink, on the way back to the car.

Relief!

On a hot, hot night after a day under the merciless sun,  it helps to remember blue-green mountains and cool water:

Mount Nusatsum and Mount Defiance, from Noosgulch, Bella Coola valley.

Talheo cannery, Queen Charlotte Sound.

Homeward bound.

Clayton Falls

A Skywatch post