Grizzlies, Gales and Giant Salmon. Pat Ardley
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