Grizzlies, Gales and Giant Salmon. Pat Ardley

      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