On island, p.11
On Island, page 11
The PM, a savvy political veteran who liked the coastal MP and supported more women in politics, turned to his Fisheries Minister for the answer. The Fisheries Minister, looking like a gaffed fish, said he would look into it. An aide smoothly shouldered the MP away from the political powerhouses and the crowd of interested spectators.
But she was satisfied.
In due course, another letter from the Fisheries Minister landed in the MP’s in-basket in her obscure office, located on the extreme edges of the Parliamentary Precinct. He wrote that he “appreciated the importance of the damaged dock to the islanders” and he was pleased to announce that repairs had been included in the next fiscal year’s expenditure plan.
In due course, a regional bureaucrat contacted the MP and advised her he had been instructed to consult with the islanders to learn their views on the plans for a new dock. The MP called a public meeting in the Community Hall to discuss the dock.
The Fisheries delegation arrived by ferry armed with plans, charts, and blueprints that were tacked up on the walls of the Hall. The community gathered around long tables, set with pencils and notepads. In the kitchen members of the Women’s Club brewed urns of coffee and plated cookies. The community cat took up his position at the door to scrutinize the visitors for possible treats.
It would be a long afternoon.
The Chair of the Community Club presided. “Welcome to the Island Ad-Hoc Committee on Dock Replacement,” she said, and then introduced the MP and the Superintendent of Small Boat Harbours and suggested the islanders sitting around the tables introduce themselves.
They included the usual suspects: the president of the local service club, the tourist lodge operator, the local marina operator, the island gravel truck operator, the RCMP Corporal who came by boat from the Salish Sea detachment on the neighbour island, the island ferry terminal manager, who sold tickets and advised on delayed departures and arrivals, the head of the emergency rescue volunteers, the school trustee, the Wharf Store owner, the wharfinger, the Church Warden, and other interested islanders.
The Superintendent of Small Boat Harbours was a long, lean man with an easygoing manner that sustained him through his encounters with the public during public consultations. He introduced his colleagues, most of whom were in an “acting” capacity. They wouldn’t be in their present posts long enough to live with the results of their decisions, thought the MP, perched on her stool on the sidelines where she could see and hear, but not intrude on the public discussion.
The Superintendent distributed printed copies of Option One, which featured a large wood-planked wharf, similar to the one destroyed by the fire, with an aluminum ramp that dropped down to a few narrow floats that would allow passing boats to access the fuel pumps and the float plane to tie up at the end. There was little room for small boat moorage for locals or visitors.
The Ad-Hoc Committee members squinted at the drawings. “Not enough room for visiting boaters to tie up,” said the wharfinger. The lodge operator, whose landlocked inn had no ocean access, agreed. “Not a problem,” said the local marina operator. His floats were too far down the harbour to service lodge visitors, but he needed all the business he could attract.
“The ramp is too steep for the schoolchildren who need to access the school boat during the school year,” said the school trustee, thinking of the winter tides that could vary in height as much as fifteen feet.
“Why do we need a wharf at all?” said the gravel truck operator. “Why don’t we build a concrete bulkhead along the shore and fill it with gravel instead?”
No one commented on this. The Fisheries officers nervously shuffled their papers. A bulkhead? What would Treasury Board say? The design of government docks must meet TB specifications. So must railway freight cars and government signage.
The ferry terminal person peered at her copy of the drawing. “I don’t know,” she said. “This plan has a new ferry terminal building opening onto the government wharf. Those are different jurisdictions. Might not be allowed.”
There was no comment on this either. Everyone present knew that federal Fisheries claimed the fire originated in the electrical workings of the provincially owned ferry slip. Insurance was an issue.
The Superintendent handed round Option Two, which presented a small wharf ramped down to a maze of finger floats to accommodate small powerboats and sailboats, leaving larger gin palaces to moor out in the harbour.
“Too many floats,” said the local marina operator, who feared the competition provided by the government dock. “Wind and wave action during the winter storms would tear them out.”
Several committee members nodded. A recent southeaster funneling through the cove had jackknifed the ramp to the Wharf Store’s private dock, drowning the island’s internet connection that was attached to the ramp and was deposited underwater on the seabed. This limited contact with the Mainland.
“The increased small boat traffic might interfere with the ferries,” said the ferry terminal manager, peering at the plan through her rose-coloured glasses. “It is still attached to the new ferry terminal.”
“It would probably be okay if streamed along the shoreline,” said the wharfinger, anticipating many more moorage fees paid by both locals and visitors. The more boats, the more fees to collect and the greater his income, thought the Church Warden, although he kept silent. Island incomes were marginal at best.
“Not enough room for the police boat to tie up,” said the Corporal. “Same for the Coast Guard Search and Rescue vessel,” said the Emergency Services Coordinator, who also served as a Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary volunteer.
“I suggest we look at my proposal for a gravel-filled bulkhead instead of a new wharf,” said the gravel truck operator. “If we built it deep enough and wide enough, the police and Fisheries boats could tie up.”
The MP mentally reviewed the various environmental assessments that would cascade from any attempt to disturb the seabed with a gravel-filled bulkhead, but again she kept her mouth shut. This idea wasn’t going anywhere.
“Well, what ideas do you all have?” challenged the Superintendent, collecting his copies of Option One and Option Two from the tables.
Well! While the Fisheries officials pinned copies of Option One and Option Two and various survey maps on the plywood walls of the Community Hall, the committee members got to work with pencils and paper, drawing their own versions of their preferred options. They created big docks and small docks, with varying configurations of attached floats, depending on their experience and economic interests.
The pub owner, who in fact did not own a boat, drew a series of floats framing a rectangular body of water, almost doubling the number of moorage spaces. The Church Warden, who did own a boat, noted acidly there was not enough space to turn a sailboat or powerboat around in the enclosed sea space, or to enter or exit the interior moorage berths.
The ferry terminal manager drew a dock with a large water lane separating the ferry slip and the proposed government dock. The gravel truck operator drew a large cement bulkhead filled with gravel.
When they were finished, they turned their proposals over to the Superintendent. Everyone stood and stretched and poured themselves cups of coffee and helped themselves to cookies, feeding crumbs to the cat. Then they folded the tables and stacked the chairs and closed up the Hall. The Church Warden left the key in its well-known hiding place under a piece of firewood.
The MP did a little constituency business on the Hall porch on her way down to the ferry terminal, accompanied by the Fisheries officials, who chatted among themselves, relieved to have concluded another public consultation.
Time passed. The government fiscal year ended. Early in the new one, contracts were let and work on the new dock began. What emerged was a compromise. It had a dock large enough to tie up the police boat and to permit cars to drive down, discharge passengers, turn around, and leave. It had an aluminum ramp that led down to several floats, but not too many.
It did not have a cement bulkhead filled with gravel, but the dock itself was surfaced with cement. The provincially owned ferry company built a new terminal in cartoon colours on its own water lot. The terminal had doors on the dock side but they opened onto thin air. They did not actually connect to the dock itself, preserving provincial autonomy guaranteed under the Constitution Act.
The cormorants on watch on the pilings lining the ferry slip flapped their wide wings and decreed the new dock was perfect.
So did most islanders.
The MP for the Salish Sea wrote a letter thanking the Superintendent of Small Harbours, adding that she had received a few more dock repair requests from other island communities in her riding that had monitored the dock construction with great interest and greater envy.
Reading her letter in his drab grey office, the Superintendent chuckled and checked his latest estimates. There was zero money for west coast dock repairs, he wrote the MP. All available funds had been allocated to the Atlantic Provinces to finance offshore oil and gas drilling activities. He suggested it would take an earthquake-triggered tsunami to free up funds for the west coast.
The MP added his reply to her files. She would look for other opportunities to score political points for her isolated constituents.
There was always another day, another gala.
LIGHTS OUT
ON THE FIRST DAY OF fall, the hydro power went off on most of the island. “Damn,” said the Professor’s wife to the white cat with the chocolate ears that was grooming herself on her favourite perch, the coffee table in the living room.
The wife rarely swore, but she was not prepared when the lights went out just as she sat down with a glass of sherry and the local newspaper in the recliner chair and pressed the remote to turn on the television for the supper hour news. The TV set abruptly went dark. The silence rang in her ears. The white cat yawned, jumped down from the coffee table, and settled in her lap.
It was the fleeting moment when the autumn sun had set behind the tall trees across the channel and dusk was rapidly fading into dark, lit by sporadic flashes from the lighted marine buoy in the harbour (one flash—four seconds dark—one flash) that warned of danger underwater. Turning in her chair, she peered out the living room window. Lights shone on the neighbour island, including the blinking red light on a transmitter tower.
So this was a local problem. She brushed the cat from her lap, stood up, and went to the hall cupboard to rummage for storm lights. It was just her luck that her husband was on the Big Island volunteering at a local fish hatchery and planned on staying the night.
The couple was becoming accustomed to the power outages that plagued the island during the late fall and winter nights, darkening homes and thawing food-filled freezers, forcing the General Store staff to pull on sweaters and woollen caps to serve their customers, and the ferries to use emergency power sources when docking. There were no streetlights beyond the dock.
But it was still September, redolent with ripe blackberries and sun-warmed plums waiting to be picked and the sweet smell of newly cut hayfields. She felt ambushed by the threat of winter.
The wife reached to the top shelf of the cupboard and pulled down the emergency light from Canadian Tire. It had fluorescent tubes that lit up a room and an AM and FM radio channel and shrieked like a siren at the push of a button. It didn’t turn on. She couldn’t find the recharger. “Damn,” she said again.
She located a blue flashlight with no batteries. She searched unsuccessfully for candles.
She found all sorts of things—wind chimes, light bulbs, a handsaw, a can of WD-40 to oil rusty hinges, but nothing that would illuminate the darkening house. Finally she unearthed a battered old camp lantern with a pale, flickering bulb that she took with her glass of sherry into the bedroom. The cat followed.
Might as well go to bed. No telling when the Hydro crews would arrive by boat and fix the problem. Both wife and cat were asleep, cuddled up under the quilts, when the fire alarm squeaked, the TV squawked, and the lights came back on sometime during the night.
She learned what happened the next day when she joined other members of the island choir on their regular visit to the housebound wife of the local sheep farmer, crowding the small house to sing mournful hymns and lively Scottish ballads and drink tea and gossip.
“That new builder was clearing some ground in the valley when his backhoe caught the power lines and pulled down the whole kit and caboodle, the lines and the hydro pole,” announced the alto soprano who lived nearby. “What a mess. Instead of staying in the cab, as he is supposed to do with those live lines snaking and sparking all over the road, he jumped out and grabbed a plank and tried to clear the lines from his truck.”
The invalid, her face rosy from her afternoon nap, tried to stay awake at the news. “So stupid,” she said, her blue eyes blinking. “Could have been electrocuted.” She nodded off again in her chair.
The singers swapped stories about the difficulties the premature power outage had caused them. “I couldn’t drive my car over the downed power lines and I was forced to stay the night with a friend,” recounted the alto soprano. Her friend was a bachelor. The other singers suspected she planned to do that anyway.
The bed and breakfast owner, also stranded down in the valley at a friend’s place, crossed the creek in the dark and climbed the hill in her sandals to meet her guests arriving by car on the evening ferry. They were fine when they drove back to the B&B. Her place had a generator for a backup power supply.
The Professor and his wife also had a generator, a fifteen-year-old 5000 kW Tecumseh model with a pull start that was so difficult to operate that, in fact, it had never been used. The island mechanic had taken it to his shop behind the General Store, cleaned it up, and replaced the plugs. He allowed it worked pretty well.
But he suggested the couple replace it with a smaller 6500 kW Champion (a Honda “knock-off,” he explained) with an electric starter that could be trickle-charged from the domestic (20 volt A) supply. “There is not much of a secondary market for fifteen-year-old pull-cord generators,” he added. “Any off-island purchaser would have to come to the island to remove it.”
He would be willing to take the Tecumseh off their hands in return for the work he’d put into it, he told them, wiping his hands with an oil-stained rag. Of course the Champion would need to be purchased in town and transported to the island and installed, a job that would require two men, time, and ferry costs.
The bargain was made. Each party to the deal shook hands, satisfied with the result.
These discussions, which took place over the summer months, had not yet been resolved, so the issue was academic on the first day of fall when the power went out. But at least they had a decent wood supply piled up in the yard for their wood stove and fireplace, ensuring the couple both heat and food during the darkest winter weather, when they suffered bouts of bronchitis triggered by the sooty wood smoke, making hauling firewood a chore.
The wood, however, did not come cheap. The local service club provided chunks of wood, collected from “blowdown” timber harvested from the Hydro right-of-ways, and delivered by truck to seniors and widows and the infirm, including those islanders, like the newcomers, who did not have a chainsaw to supply their own firewood.
A donation to the service club was expected in return, although this was not explicitly negotiated, depending on the circumstances. Given the couple’s comfortable, pension-supported affluence compared to their neighbours’ financial situation, the anticipated donation was expected to reflect the market value of the firewood.
The wood, generally cedar, aspen, and some fir, required chopping and stacking. For this task the couple turned to the Pirates, a group of young people who had arrived in their sailboats and dropped anchor in the harbour earlier that spring.
It was not clear how many Pirates there were. One couple had a dog. Another had a baby. They lived on their boats or occasionally rented a small cabin onshore. They walked or biked everywhere since they did not have cars.
There was speculation that at least one Pirate couple had been street people in the past. When they boarded the ferry, backpacks strapped to their backs, there was agreement among the wharf pub regulars that they were going dumpster diving in town. The more skeptical drinkers pointed out that the treasures available for the taking at the Free Store at the Recycling Centre made such trips redundant.
Who knew? And more importantly, who cared? It was the general consensus that the Pirates, who charged double the minimum wage—cheap by island standards—were hard workers and willing volunteers who helped out serving and washing dishes at community dinners in return for a free meal and showers in the Community Hall.
The very afternoon the power went out the young woman known as the Pirate Queen showed up to finish chopping and stacking the wood behind the couple’s cottage. She strode down the driveway, carrying her axe and wearing work boots, her long legs bare beneath a short black miniskirt.
Tattoos tortured her arms and extended to her ears. To ensure that her long dark hair did not blind her as she chopped, it was caught up in a bun.
