Grizzlies, Gales and Giant Salmon. Pat Ardley

in Finn Bay after the sport-fishing season was over. Everyone finished their shopping and we were all leaving about the same time. While we had been standing around talking, the sky had darkened and by the time we walked out the door, snowflakes had begun to fall. Ken asked if we would like a tow as far as Finn Bay and we gladly accepted. They were in a ­thirty-foot cruiser with a nice warm wheelhouse and cabin. George sat up front talking to the resort owner, and I sat below at the table having tea with Ken—the first of many cups of tea shared with him over the years. When we were almost at Finn Bay, George leaned through the small door and yelled to me over the engine noise, “Do you want to cook for eighteen people at John’s fishing resort this summer while I manage it?” I shrugged and shouted back up to him, “Sure!”

      PART TWO

      Rivers Lodge

      Working at a Fishing Resort

      Two months later we left the lighthouse. We had been there for almost a year and a half. We had been perfectly happy there, but when a chance encounter with the resort owner turned into a job offer, we both were excited to try something new.

      It was 1974 and we listened to ABBA and the Beach Boys as we packed our few belongings into boxes and loaded them into the tractor wagon for the ride down to the wharf. John Salo and his tugboat, the Robert G II, were anchored in the bay, and George and Ray used the hoist and a net to lower our things down to him. The most important piece of furniture that we had to take was our bed that George had so patiently and lovingly carved. There were also the two very heavy coffee tables, wooden planters and various jars of jellies, jams, pickles and canned clams and salmon. Also important was our record player, with quite a few records, that had been a godsend for me on crushingly quiet winter evenings.

      We pulled the netting off our makeshift chicken coop and let the banty chickens run free. They were very adaptable and would be hiding their eggs in the woods again shortly. We left the chicken house for future junior keepers. I had scrubbed our temporary home from top to bottom and now walked through the rooms feeling just a little sad to be leaving. We had had such a wonderful time here and I didn’t quite know what we were heading into. But I was sure it would be more exciting exploits. I stood looking out the big picture window in the living room and memorized the vista: the always interesting and changing ocean as it rolled and roiled up the channel. The mountains rising three thousand feet on Calvert Island to the highest point on Mount Buxton, the lush shades of green of its tree-covered flanks and the contrasting starkness of the treeless craggy rocks at the very top. I had no premonition that one very sad day I would land in a helicopter on the very peak of that mountain to fulfill an important wish for George.

      I finally turned to go, and bumped into Lorna, who was also unhappy to see us leave. She loved to have someone to play tricks on and would miss listening in on our story time. We walked over to the senior keeper’s house to say goodbye to Ruth, who was just sending the 11 AM weather report. She came into the kitchen and wrapped a bundle of cake for us to enjoy on the trip to Finn Bay. In the Robert G II, the trip would be a little over an hour. We had hugs all around on the porch and headed down to the wharf. John was waiting on his boat, which was gently swaying on the swell. They had everything already tucked safely on the boat, so we headed down to the shore where John could pick us up in his skiff. We climbed aboard the tugboat and with a forlorn wave headed out of the bay and on to our next excellent adventure.

      The resort in Finn Bay was called North West Safaris and was built on log floats like the Dawsons Landing store, only on a much smaller scale, and was safely tied to shore in a corner of the bay just off Darby Channel in Rivers Inlet. The entrance to Finn Bay was about 150 feet wide, and the bay itself was a half-mile long by about five hundred feet wide in places and was surrounded by low tree-covered hills. The resort was there for the winter because the spot they tie to in the summer was too rough on the floats in the winter winds. John dropped us and our belongings off on the floats and headed out of the bay, leaving us in the stillness of the beautiful late-spring day. The lodge owner had a little cabin that we would stay in for the summer, so we carried our things in and piled them in the corner. The cabin was one room with a clothes rod along one wall, and a saltwater marine toilet and sink in a cubby hole in the corner. You pumped sea water in to flush the toilet but the sink wasn’t hooked up to fresh water yet. Very simple accommodations compared to our comfortable house back at Addenbroke—and it definitely didn’t have anything comparable to that incredible picture window. But I was excited and anxious to get started.

      We had arranged to leave for a holiday in Vancouver before the fishing season started, and our flight was arriving shortly to pick us up. All commercial flights into the inlet landed on the water, so they either had long metal floats underneath the body like on a Cessna or Beaver, or they landed on their belly like the Goose. Also, most of the float planes had wheels underneath so they could land on the tarmac at the Port Hardy Airport. These are called amphibious planes. If they didn’t have wheels, they had to land on the water in the harbour, which was ten miles from the main airport and made it nearly impossible to make your connecting flight! We had very little time to look around the camp and get our bearings before we hopped on the Alert Bay Air Services Goose and flew to Port Hardy and then on to Vancouver.

      We arrived back in the middle of June from a lovely month-long vacation and jumped right into getting the fishing resort ready for the summer season. The lodge had already been towed to its summer location in Kilbella Bay at the head of the inlet. The floats were tied to shore with stiff legs, which were usually at least sixty feet long and straight and attached to a series of logs that held everything away from the rocks like the Dawsons Landing store floats, almost but not quite out of the afternoon westerly. There was a mountain rising up right behind our cabin, and our view out the front was of the Kilbella/Chuckwalla River delta with the snow-capped Coast Mountains all around. In the distance we could see the Monarch Icefield and Silverthrone Mountain. We were the only crew hired. George was hired to be the manager/handyman. I would be the cook and housekeeper, and John and Norma Buck served as the hosts. There was a lot to do to clean up after the long months in storage and to sort out all the boats and fishing equipment. The boats were all piled on a float and each one had to be pulled into the water and then have the small motor attached. After each boat and motor was assembled, George took it for a test run, bouncing across the waves and sometimes zipping up the river, hair flying and grinning from ear to ear when he returned to the dock! Meanwhile, I spent a lot of time on my knees scrubbing the kitchen and its equipment and then making beds and cleaning bathrooms. Hmm! I thought and squinted out at him through narrow slits.

      Every sunny day there was an afternoon westerly wind that brought waves crashing into the floats. Our little cabin heaved and bobbed and banged, first into the float that it was tied to, and then into the logs that were holding us in place. There was just enough time for the floats to all drift back out toward the churning sea, before the next wave crashed them backwards again. The worst of it was that all this bumping always made the needle skip across my much-loved Jim Croce and Carly Simon records if I tried to listen to music. If there was a stormy night, sleeping was not an option and there were quite a few stormy days and nights throughout the summer.

      One lovely and, thankfully, calm night I got up to use the washroom. When I flushed the toilet, the water flashed bright enough for me to “read my lover’s letters.” I flushed again and again and finally woke George with the noise. He told me that it was phosphorescence—a natural light emitted by micro-organisms in the ocean water. He said that you can sometimes see from far above that there is a trail of phosphorescence for twenty miles behind a large ship travelling at night. So now every time I flush the toilet I’m bringing light-emitting organisms into my bedroom? I felt like I had entered the Twilight Zone.

      I was cooking and cleaning for eighteen guests plus George, myself and the owners, John and Norma. It was an endless job from 6 AM until 10 PM. Cutting, chopping, baking, roasting, washing dishes, serving, making beds, cleaning bathrooms, laundry, more cutting, chopping, serving, washing dishes, day after day after day after day. There was about an hour in the middle of each afternoon that I had to myself when I could catch my breath and, most of the time, as long as there wasn’t a westerly blowing, I would just drop on my bed and sleep. I felt like a zombie when I first headed into the kitchen in the morning. I never got enough sleep and relied heavily on the first pot