224A_Bruneau_roesland2-created-2015.mp3

otter.ai

28.01.2024

no

Unknown Speaker 00:08
To do Saturday, February 28, and today I'm talking to Sandra and Bill Bruno at their home in Vancouver, Sandra and spit and Bill spent many summers on at Roseland on Pender Island. My name is Ruth Sandwell.

Unknown Speaker 00:26
Today recording

Unknown Speaker 00:29
I want to begin by asking you how you first found out about about Roseland

Unknown Speaker 00:38
man called Bob Vaughn was working for us helping us to reconstruct the house. The room in which you sit was partially reconstructed by him. He was an amateur Carpenter, and became a professional in the course of working on our house and his mother. Mrs. The writer was a piano teacher lived on Discovery, near 16th Avenue, here in Vancouver. They had discovered the island, I don't know quite quite know how but but probably in the late 1960s, or mid 60s, possibly even and had been going there every summer for many years. So Bob, himself had gone and around for many years. And he told us about it. And drew this picture of a, of a property Roseland on North Padre Island, where the basic relationship between people had become quite familiar with the passage of time, every summer, the same people came at the same time. And they all knew one another. And the kids grew up slowly together, and something quite idyllic. And our kids were quite little at the time, and we thought we could go up and give it a try. So

Unknown Speaker 01:46
what do you're about to get the third would

Unknown Speaker 01:51
have been in the fall of 73? Maybe? I guess.

Unknown Speaker 01:58
So what did you do then?

Unknown Speaker 02:01
In the spring, early spring of 74, we wrote to Dave and Florence, we'd been warned that if we didn't get our druthers in our dibs in on a slot in Roseland early, we would be out of luck, that sometimes one had to speak as much as a year or even two years in advance for one of these precious. bi weekly, try weekly slots at at at the place. And it was clearly a place in enormous demand by a relatively small number of people's if they're only 14, Kevin's going I think at the time. They were all full all the time from June the 15th, right through to Labor Day. And we wrote and we were lucky, I think we got a two week slot. Maybe in the first year 74. My guess is and we wrote, ask for directions on how to get there. I think we phoned them up. In the end, the telephone was a little bit erratic in those days to Pender Island. And we got these verbal instructions from Dave Davidson on the phone. I remember talking to him to this day. And he gave us very detailed precise instructions in miles on how to get to the property. And I had worked like a charm to the to the yard.

Unknown Speaker 03:28
Great, so. So tell me about what it was like when you first got there. You'd obviously been thinking about it for a while.

Unknown Speaker 03:37
Well, if I remember thinking it was just a wee bit tumbled down. When we when we got there, there was a sort of Texas style or Kentucky style gate with with a wagon wheel, half a wagon wheel set into the ground, and the typical bit of logs sawn to three inches thickness with the name of property on it, and all that sort of countryside stuff. And in fact, one of the oddities about this property really is that it's both urban and rural at the same time. There are many things about it, they were urban, and made us feel at home because we're going to and and yet rural, many of us have rural roots, of course, the went to went to the property because we were like so many Canadians started off in the countryside ourselves and ended up in the city. Many, many people who were there had done exactly what Dave and Florence did. They are the same they were urban to and ended up out in the countryside. So we were both we were all had we all had this dual personality and in many ways the property itself was both urban and rural. Okay, so what was your telephone service? electricity running water in every cabin? toilets and every cabin? Rural in the sense that you there was no hot water you had to heat your water on the stove. And bathroom was quite a challenge. There were only three cabins that had showers. So if didn't get lucky. And lad one of the cabins might be there was another one right here. Right there. So that's behind behind Diddy rose Davidson's house, but not quite as far as the rows one, and this side of the other Wharf, and that one they had lived in while this was being constructed while their own house was being constructed. That's where they used to live, until they moved into the longhouse. It had a shower, because of course, they lived there. So the privilege of being there, and there were a couple of others for showers. I can't none, I have to tell you, I can't remember which ones. Very few. And the reason why is of course, water supply, water supply was a big problem. One of the first things Dave told us, when we arrived at this property as he showed us, the cabin that we would be staying in which I think was number six, we were in number six for about eight years. Until we got to have such longevity that we could have our choice. You had to you had to have seniority to get to be able to move around the cabinets ever, and and speak a whole year in advance even that wouldn't do you any good, necessarily. But first thing he told us when we walked into number six was okay, while they're there, the toilets, it's five peas before you flush, or one poop. And which is a good idea, because the water supply we just did was it was a crisis every summer, virtually very few summers that we didn't get a warning about water supply. And in fact, he gave us the warning whether there was any really good reason for it or not. And that way, we were all very concert conservative in our use of that resource. And there was enough in the end for everybody. Were they on municipal water? No. There was a there was a well springfed Well, way up in the in the middle behind this cabin, whatever number. Okay, so there's it was back up in here somewhere. And there's one over here too. Yeah. I think there are two wells that as I recall, there were two wells. Am I dreaming? One in use and the other had a sister and attached to it not always in use was one and emergency one. I think maybe that's the way it went. And with the pump and the whole business, you know, but it was it was part of the pump and part of the gravity fed because it was up the hill. So you had

Unknown Speaker 07:15
gravity? And did How was the water quality?

Unknown Speaker 07:19
That's good. They had it tested all the time they had. It was great. Because the resort Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 07:25
And it tasted okay. It wasn't cell free or anything like that.

Unknown Speaker 07:28
No, it was good. Okay, some of the golf that was another urban aspect to it. You know, we felt we were told right away the water was good. And this was we were kind of concerned about that with two kids in tow.

Unknown Speaker 07:38
You kids when first went their

Unknown Speaker 07:41
oldest was born in 66. And February. And the youngest was born was the centennial project. He was born in December of 67. So what does that make an eight and six? Roughly? Yeah, we got that. Right. Yes. Turning seven later on them. You know, they're, they're 20 months apart or so.

Unknown Speaker 08:05
Okay, so we're there? We're, what? did he build any new cottages in the time that you spent there? Okay, so there were How many did you say

Unknown Speaker 08:17
about 14, I think actually functioning. And still not sure I got this map, right. The the, the desirable ones were in sunshine, this one was too close to the forest, it was wet and dark. Ours was too hot and too open to the sun. So it was not that desirable, although we came to like it anyway. In the end. What we really liked in the end was were the cabins out on the point and they were the most desirable, and you really had to have a fair bit of seniority to get out into those. So what we ended up in nine for a while 11 had two bedrooms, it's quite luxurious. In fact, by the time we got to nine, one of our kids have gotten too old to come up with us anymore. So by that stage, we ourselves were on our way out of the property, I suppose, in fact, but anyway, there was a real pecking order very precise, known pecking pecking order amongst the cabins. And everybody knew it. So did Dave, and forth very well. And they knew what we were all up to all the time, as far as jockeying for position. So

Unknown Speaker 09:23
did you always go for the same two weeks or three weeks each year

Unknown Speaker 09:27
last week and fly in first two weeks of August? And the weather was excellent. We we very rarely missed those the only three weeks that you can be sure on a statistical statistical basis in BC and this part of the sea anyway, that you'll get good weather.

Unknown Speaker 09:44
So what happened to the other people with the people, you know, were they were they're always the same people there then pretty nearly

Unknown Speaker 09:51
the repeat rate would be on the order of 80%. Say, maybe 85. There were people from Calgary names I never forget. You could ask Dave, you need to remember right away, you need to remember all these names, especially the old timers, the long running people like ourselves and the Calgary people who had been coming since the early 60s, I think maybe the late 50s. They certainly had us beat by a longshot, as far as longevity goes. And there was a family called the Homans, who came in the same slot, second week of August and stayed till the third. And they were a tribe, they took four cabins over or something like that. Every, every summer, where were they from? Do you remember? They were from Vancouver. In that case, category ones can't remember. But they were these two generations worth of the category once again, they had used to live in Vancouver, and then they had moved to Alberta. And this was their summer escape from Alberta.

Unknown Speaker 10:51
And how much did you have to do with the other with the other people?

Unknown Speaker 10:56
I always arrived exhausted. In those days, I was either just pre tenure or post, which was enough to leave me prostrate. I think I always took off to work with me now hardly ever did any when I got there. I don't know why you can call me books and papers. They just sat in the box and nothing ever happened. I simply sat and looked out at the ocean for most of those most of that time played with the kids, or SAT and meditated by them by the water. Really? And it answer your question because really badly, least a week or two I didn't have much to do with anybody was I was resting up and getting rid of the nervous toxins of a long and difficult year. And a lot of us were pretty slow to socialize. So the first couple of years didn't do much that then your kids caused you to socialize more and more. And by the third year, we were socializing a lot with some of the adults. So the Colorado cabin, for example, which had ended all kinds of people. We came to be pretty close acquaintances, but some of them still hurt him when he Walsh for example, live up in in West Bend or north I guess North Bend now. We got to know them really well. And all their children who became quite numerous. There were six or seven of them. I think in the end, kids, when we saw them all grow up and and appear to because when he was often pregnant by the time I saw them, we got to know the ins and outs of their family history really quite well. There were other people we didn't want to get to know all that. Well. There was a guy called Russ Fraser who became an MLA and an important power in the social credit movement. In the government's both a Bill Bennett and Bill Vander sound, I thought he was abour. Frank, Well, anyways, and he was married to one of the Fulton family, Jane, who has since gone on to greater glory, she was the Deputy Minister of Health in Alberta, the one who was fired or let go because she exaggerated her CV a couple of summers ago. Remember that? All right, well, they were still married. And their two red haired girls were in this cabin. The one next to the forest, that was pretty cool. So their, their their fireplace went nearly every day, even in high summer, because it's so darn cold in the morning. I would get up and you'd see their fire going. And just as the deer were leaving, because the deer came down every morning, they would, they would appear this family. And there was a lot of stress and strain in that family. We just got to know too much in a way, you know. And pretty soon you don't want to have too much to do with them. Because we would have gotten into the middle of some of this stress and strain and it was like an old prairie neighborhood. In that group, you hardly ever get to know your neighbors. I hardly talked to anybody in this neighborhood. The only ones I know are the ones I know because my kids got to know their kids during school time. And that's it in this neighborhood. While there, we got to know everybody really very well indeed. The way I got to know my neighbors in the prairie village where I grew up. So I think that was because we knew that once we left, we wouldn't see these people till the next year. And we didn't talk about them either. After we left we knew way too much.

Unknown Speaker 14:27
So how would you get to know them? Like what would your kids

Unknown Speaker 14:30
their kids just play together? Yeah. And eventually dressed up enough that you felt like socializing with them and you just simply walk out they'd be able to out on that point. We got to help people apparently also because there was a gorgeous place at the west, north northwest end of the property which is on the point, the end of the point. There was a seat where you could sit and watch the sunset and or just sit anytime The day the flag was out there on its pole. And it was one of those miraculous natural environments, which either would cause you to want to talk to somebody else, or just want you to make a wonderful silent, really your remarkable, remarkable place. It's the place that Emily Carr would have said had natural power. That's the phrase she would use. And I think that's true, actually. Yeah, I still miss it to this day, you know, I think of it and the only the only, it's because it's inconvenient that you really can't fly if I don't go there anymore. But it's too bad. Because it's good for personally out there, that's for sure. Anyway, we used to talk to lots of people and get to know them out there. And of course, we would all be struck by this extraordinary audience. And then you want to say something about it to the person sitting beside you. And pretty soon you got to know them. So and especially if you do this over 10 years, pretty soon you do know, everybody, so we got to know them all reasonably well, some a lot more than others, that's for sure. Well, you really got to be fairly intimate, really, with with some of the people talk religion and, and the politics, not just a partisan lens, but how it is people get along and resolve differences and that sort of thing. The real stuff that is so difficult in an urban setting. But we were all urban to as I keep saying,

Unknown Speaker 16:21
so what do you think that it was a bill? What do you think, can account for that difference?

Unknown Speaker 16:29
Its isolation, the natural beauty the convenience, the you know, you didn't have to spend all your time worrying about how you're going to survive. The Restore is a fascinating story. It was an island with a history and people who are quite extroverted and kind, all of those things. And the most important variable of all, of course, we just haven't come to yet. But maybe this is the time and that's Dave and Florence themselves, you just have to say that the owners of this property with a central crucial linchpin in the whole business, they were reasonably well organized a strong presence, they would make sure that if young people came or even not so young ones who would drink too much and make too much noise and hold loud, noisy parties, that they never came back again. So that the atmosphere had a certain familial. I wouldn't say we strained but a familial and safe quality. So that we felt quite safe taking our kids so we knew they weren't going to be crossing drunks, after nine o'clock at night, you know, not normally anyway. Not that we weren't treated as adults, you know, but there was there was a clear understanding of what kind of what kind of clarity this was going to be. There really was a sense of standards about noise and behavior and

Unknown Speaker 17:46
rules, like deployments. And Dave ever say

Unknown Speaker 17:50
to you one or two at the most. Yeah. Rules about paying up, I guess, you know, they often they had some trouble, I guess, with some people. I never knew anybody like that. But I think they must have had some rule about that. They had to have they were running a business and they had to survive. And it was a really marginal business, too. I think they always charged us rates, which I thought were next to starvation for them. And they always told us that it was because they wanted the families to be able to come back. They wanted people with kids to be able to come back. Now that's hard, isn't it? And apart from that, no, no, no noisy parties after a while ever, really. And if you borrow if you rented boats had to bring it back on time, and things like that. That's about it. Really. No one fair use of the scarce resource of the scarce resources were water and deep breathe airspace.

Unknown Speaker 18:45
So where was the deep freeze gray house?

Unknown Speaker 18:49
That's this one. The greenhouse is this old, two storey thing that was used was used for storage. It was Dave's workshop. This door there's a door here and immediately to your left was a great huge chest freezer, which was for communities. So just out of the library,

Unknown Speaker 19:07
you'd keep all your stuff you frozen things in there. You had little refrigerators.

Unknown Speaker 19:14
Yeah, okay. And it was the kind of place where you had to have a car no question about it and, and, and go stock up at the stores. In the old days there were there were the there were the two handy stores in North Pender Hope Bay and and the and the general store up at what used to be called Port Washington. And then with the passage of time, some of this became a little more adventurous and went down to the customer's point at the other end of the South fender. And then they built the big development the driftwood center. Was that during the time you read Yes, it was built during the time we were there. Just just towards the end it was finished. Most of it anyway. And there was the Marina Ronnie Ronnie harbor Marina, which which none of us felt Really very close to we stayed away from there, by and large we thought that was for people live there had boats and that kind of thing. And and, and the customers point itself, South pander was was an interesting outing for for a day as long way. And so I would either cycle once my kids got old enough to be able to to go that far. Or he would drive but not very often, maybe once or twice during the whole time we were there. What?

Unknown Speaker 20:29
I'd like to ask you just what. But David

Unknown Speaker 20:32
Florence is an important linchpin. I don't know whether we've talked enough about that. I'm going to ask

Unknown Speaker 20:36
you some other questions later specifically about them. But what I'd like to ask you is if you could tell me, if you could reconstruct, in your mind, what would be a typical day or sequence of days

Unknown Speaker 20:58
was different for each person. You know, I mean, some of the some of the parents were more dedicated, I think, to sports and stuff than I. Okay, we're on.

Unknown Speaker 21:11
So you were saying I was asking what it's like for people and you said it was different for different people.

Unknown Speaker 21:17
I read, bought a book a day for myself. So that would be like my main activities, book reading. And I would play badminton with my kids. Late morning, late afternoon, swim for half an hour at the very most, because the water was darn cold. So depending on how hot it was, it was really, really hot. I would join David foreigns went in every day when it was hot. And it really did get hot there quickly, because it's in a bowl really. So half an hour in the water. And my behavior was typical, except that for non meters, the day the three or four hours it takes to read a book would be spent some other way they would maybe go out and explore the workshops and artists studios and so on on the island, or they would hike do hiking in the early part of the of the 10 or 12 years that we were living, here's what it was, we went there. When the kids were bit younger, we would sometimes go to buck lake to swim because that was a nice, that's a good starting place. For me, and there were two three swimming pools actually on the island. None I think about it. And we would drive or walk or hike or whatever was the best way to get to these to these places. Magic Lake estates. What's the name of the lake is that? No, that's the other one that's magic lake or whatever it's called? Yeah, we would go there sometimes. In those days, you could now you can't swim there. I think, as I recall, it's a water supply for many people, and so they don't allow it. And cooking and preparing food and cleaning up was, of course a big deal. No dishwasher. You had to heat the water separately to do the dishwasher. It was able to sort of apparent frontier tight existence. So things took longer, which was marvelous. It slowed everything down. So what we would do in 15, or 20 minutes here, would take an hour and 20 minutes there. But of course nobody care. The whole idea was to slow everything down. And Dave was a paragon an exemplar of slowing things down. He talked more slowly than we did. When he decided that he was going to rebuild a rebuilt the wharf. What you see now is the work that these you see now he reconstructed during the time that we were there. It took him two or three years using driftwood and logs and stuff became in overtime to reconstruct that worth. And he would sit and most days he still smoked. And so sunset would come and he would take upwards of three, four days to decide what he would do with the next plank. Maybe, yeah, and it was pretty meditative slow going. We used to laugh at first, we would just laugh. I still laugh when I think about it. Because it was it was carried to a degree that was unthinkable for most of us. And, but he was an exemplar I to this day, I don't know whether he is naturally that way, or whether he did it to remind the rest of us to slow down. But it was Marvel's when they built their house. We all thought that we would be dead in the ground before it was finished. But we were wrong. It took I think maybe three building seasons max for the whole thing to be done to the point that they could live in it. And maybe another couple of years to finish all the detail work.

Unknown Speaker 24:42
When did they start building as

Unknown Speaker 24:45
you would ask just while you were there? You've been there? Oh, no, no, we saw the whole thing right from the right from the foundations to the end of this beautiful house. Gorgeous place. Goodness sakes, we were really happy for them. There's no envy, I must say that just delight that they got their just rewards, they really did. Because, you know, they made this place possible for the rest of us it's marvelous place for us to go. And they themselves have lived in horrible at various times. And we're next to it, I suppose, by your urban standards. And we thought especially the Florence deserved a reward for having raised kids and, and built out this property with with Dave from whenever they see I think they must have begun working full time themselves as owners and and directors of the property only two or three years before we started going there. They were part time runners of the thing really. Before that in in the 60s, maybe right up to 169 or 70. It might 70. Yeah, yeah, I think that's right. So this is Raul was still on property. Actually, when we were there. Mr. Roy died quite a while back. But Mrs. Roll was still there. She lived in this property, you know, the house that became derelict subsequently. Yeah, she's my that being the terrible thing that it is here. It's that one? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 26:15
What about for your kids? What did your kids do?

Unknown Speaker 26:22
bugged us wanting they got they were bored instantly for the first three or four days. And then their minds opened up the way all ours did. And when, without a thought we passed our childhoods in the prairies. How can I describe a TV you know, they there was, there was no TV, thank goodness. And I used to listen to CBC FM with great difficulty The reception was terrible. And that was good too. So I had to give up my my musical stuff. Even it was really, really very good, quite isolated. And at first, they returned the board. And then they began to read books, played with the other kids rested, because kids have to rest too. They don't realize it but they do. As we realized too, we didn't quite realized how much they needed to do that a little bit more than they had done. They learned to sleep in more. So we slept more. We slowed down in a proper meals together, which is something we rarely did ever. Except at that time. The played lots of badminton and Horseshoe and played in the water far more than we did. You know, we felt quite safe, there was always the role, we always check to make sure they're adults there. So they wouldn't get out too far. There was a there was a platform, you could swim up to the usual thing and these resorts

Unknown Speaker 27:41
did they did

Unknown Speaker 27:42
they explored the woods a lot and looked at flowers and loss. And they saw the remaining remains of the Indian, that first nations people who have been on the point probably for many hundreds of years, while and then actually towards the end, the SFU archeological dig down the isthmus between the two violence was what's going on and we went visited that. And that was published, you know, that report was published in DC studies in now I'm gonna have a hard time remembering what year that was. But that's a good seven or eight years ago. And they describe the conditions of the dig, as well as their findings. Okay,

Unknown Speaker 28:23
that's great. I haven't actually seen

Unknown Speaker 28:30
but did your kids go off, they played cards, they played cards, card games, hearts and so on. I did too. Kids went off the property occasionally, with groups of other kids led by an adult. Author record, I'll tell you something about that.

Unknown Speaker 28:50
What about the library? So there was a librarian? Yeah, what was that like?

Unknown Speaker 28:55
It about 150 volumes have been supplied by Dave castoffs from zone reading. He was a reader serious reader himself illiterate now, no doubt about it. He had a degree in industrial education from UBC, I think maybe actually. And so we had a university education. But I don't think that was relevant at all. He was an educated man long before he went to UBC and a very clever and quick mind. Good good secondary school education, which is a crucial thing. If you have a good secondary school education. I'm not sure you really need much more actually, but it has to be really good. And his was so I guess I had to French do this. It is that it's if you have a good back room, you know, Secondary School Leaving Certificate you don't have to worry too much. And he was like that interesting. Florence read a lot but her eyes had already beginning to bother you know, she she got macular, retinal degenerative disease. And I think it's been arrested pretty much now. But it meant that she was becoming less and less able to read even back then there were problems. So she read, he read to her a fair bit even towards the end so that she could participate with him. They were very interesting married couple to and that was another thing that was good about the property is that your you had a lively and completely successful marriage to look at. I found that really quite interesting.

Unknown Speaker 30:21
What made it successful? I mean, how could you what were the signs of it being successful? Well,

Unknown Speaker 30:26
they would disagree, but they, they had a jokey way of, of confronting it. It wasn't just joking, to get rid of a disagreement. It was joking to get through it. So you would, and he was a lot of his jokes had to do with sex, which I thought was amusing. This is the family place. So this is the old fashioned physical humor of another generation. Yeah. Yeah. And you Civ and humorous of anything, really. He's the typical that he went to the war. And it's the humor of a man born. Well, not too long after my dad was born. And that humor is an effective way of making everybody loose, because of course, we all live that life. We parents do you know.

Unknown Speaker 32:21
We're functioning, okay. All right. So on David Sorenson, why that their marriage was successful. Also, they had raised four kids more or less successfully. I say more or less, because I really don't know, you know how far you could say that. The kids were raised mostly in Vancouver, you know, they moved out to the island. And by the time they moved out to the island, at the end of the 60s, early 70s. While I guess at the end of the 60s, their kids had already been completely raised. Pretty much. I think the youngest must have been pretty close to the end of high school I would have loved by that time. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 32:53
Yeah, I'll fight when I talk to them. I'll find out like when exactly they Yeah. And things and

Unknown Speaker 33:00
they were, amazingly compel seek to retain French. What's the word for that? Understanding, I guess, about the extraordinary differences between their kids, their kids are real ups and downs in their marriages, and I'll stop there. We're gonna talk about that some other time. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 33:21
All right. There are a number of different kinds of how

Unknown Speaker 33:26
much one gets to know, though. I know way too much. Or maybe I don't, it's

Unknown Speaker 33:34
it's a fascinating kind of relationship. I mean, it's not really like anything else. Like when you go somewhere and you go away, or they're

Unknown Speaker 33:41
almost paternal and maternal. I mean, they're old enough to be my parents. They're almost in fact, the age of my parents. Actually, my mom was born in 1924. And I think he was born in 1923. Know, a

Unknown Speaker 33:54
little bit older than that, actually. Yeah, even anyway, I'm not exactly I'm not sure at the moment, but yeah, pretty close to Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 34:02
No, I'm sorry. I can't remember. I remember thinking though, that he wasn't as old as my dad. And he's older than my mum. Yeah. So that puts them somewhere between 15 and 1924. Anyway, certainly,

Unknown Speaker 34:12
yeah. Certainly. Okay, what, what changes did you see over the time that you were there, between, you know, in those 10 years,

Unknown Speaker 34:23
the cabins became more and more difficult to maintain, and we knew something was going to have to be done about the property pretty soon. We wondered how long they would last. They were getting older. So it was the property. And we couldn't see how any of the kids were writing reasons could easily take over the property. I asked Dave, Jr. Dave Jamison, that's not a son, son in law. Live just above the property across the road, whether he was interested in taking it over, and I knew what his answer would be and it was the correct answer. It is no, because his personality is just not appropriate. For this task. does take a very takes a special kind of personality. He's fine for whatever it is that he does he reconstructs houses and he was in construction business, Elijah hurry. But this requires a really fine human or human touch, if you like, and a fairly strong administrative and organizational capacity actually, and good business sense. Dave Davidson has all those things in abundance and unusual combination. I do think none of the kids really had that. The one that might have was the bank manager, I guess. And he was event manager, so he wasn't going to give up his job and come out and run Rossland Yeah, so we wondered what would happen in the end, the pressure was rising all the time because the cabins were pretty hard to maintain their old wooden structures and they were below code

Unknown Speaker 35:53
maybe the one that you spent the most time in number six, yeah. Number

Unknown Speaker 35:57
six, one half of it was on an incline to level of about 15 degrees. So you felt as though you were going uphill or downhill all the time? Right in the cabin? Yeah, and it was slowly sinking so that everyone's gonna well, they would have to come and cut some more off the doors that were closed properly. Main door coming in.

Unknown Speaker 36:16
How big was it? Like what bedrooms?

Unknown Speaker 36:20
toilet and a large room which was everything that was living room kitchen, the whole business?

Unknown Speaker 36:25
So how many square feet would you say 750

Unknown Speaker 36:28
name roughly? I think that's being generous probably. But anyway, tiny bedrooms and what's it made? Of course we have been spending time in place you know, because the idea wasn't the outside almost all the time.

Unknown Speaker 36:43
Did you have a porch?

Unknown Speaker 36:44
Yeah. It became anyway and it did not have a fireplace it had a wooden potbelly stove or metal pot bellied stove in which burnt wood and a an oil heater also floorstanding oil heater so you can use one or the other. And if you're lazy use the oil heater and we all got instructions on how to use the oil heaters in our they all had them I think but one of the desirable features about some of the cabins was that they had fireplaces, those were those were notch up that was one of the characteristics of the ones in the higher they were seniority you could hope to move into one with the fireplace and your question again is what was in you describe what Yeah, describe just describe number six had a large picture window looking out on the sea through the trees, which were sort of an archway you would look out in right out into the Pacific and down the water. It was well enough equipped you had all the cutlery you needed, didn't have to bring any pots or pans but everything else salt, pepper, cooking oil, sundries and so on had to bring yourself in the car on your first when you get when you arrived, and then a perishables you would buy in the store. And we would give orders to other people we knew we're going into town as we call them, which was very tough and supply ourselves that way. But I'm getting away from the cabin. cabins were uninstall, uninstall they did so that only a couple of them were usable in winter. So there wasn't much between us in the elements. They were fairly waterproof on the whole they kept them up well enough. So we can say that and scanned curtains on the windows barony private in a way I guess when you think about it, but there were no locks on the doors

Unknown Speaker 38:52
formulate table ghastly late 1950s, early 1960s style chairs, a couple of ragtag arm chairs which I just loved. That's where I sat in my book reading every day. And hardly enough plugins there was there was electricity, electricity supply to every cabin. I've said that already. But

Unknown Speaker 39:22
but not a lot of it. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 39:24
a couple of plugins you've had to really be inventive. Never enough light. Sandra, my wife is can't stand lights which are up in the ceiling and that's all you brought to bear Bob Well, that's what they had. We would often bring a lamp and donate it rather than take it back because Sandy couldn't stand that that was the one thing that beyond what she could not go she couldn't stand. So we will take a lamp with us and simply install in the cab and give it to pack we donated a fair amount of differentiation to them over the years with the greatest of happiness really. They were here with such a marvelous taste. We were happy to How to donate people boss. People gave things. We ended up getting fridges and all kinds of things in the end, and they would give as a consideration they would lower our rent from they gave a really big thing.

Unknown Speaker 40:09
Oh, yeah. So they each had a stove and electric stove. Was it?

Unknown Speaker 40:14
Some more propane. I think it was mostly propane. Oh, yeah. So he ended up moving. That was another problem. Of course, with advancing age, he had moved these great big propane cylinders from around the cabins. Maintenance was was quite big, you know, he, you would you would think, because it was all tumble down that nobody would care. But we didn't care and he cared too. So mowing the lawns and moving the propane cylinders, and so on got to be a bit of a task.

Unknown Speaker 40:41
I guess it closed in about 1991 Did it or perhaps a bit later than that, anyway, that

Unknown Speaker 40:46
Oh, no later than that? I don't think I would think maybe 9090 99 one. It's my guess.

Unknown Speaker 40:51
Yeah. Yeah, that data's sticks in my mind. There

Unknown Speaker 40:55
were marvelous people in this place, too. You know, I was thinking, you know, something you said just reminded me of Marianne Canterlot. It was a great peace activist, very important person in the in the humane, highly liberal, radical liberation theology arm of Roman Catholicism in Vancouver, I would say, made people with that kind of tinge to them strong Unitarians would turn up there. My own inclinations, lean towards Taoist Buddhist views of life, and reasonably systematically committed to this view of life. And I felt quite comfortable there. And I've been in this view fairly systematically, from an early age, say 1960. And it was supposed to be there for you know, we could you could discuss this kind of thing, and it was easy. And it felt appropriate. They're quite nice. Anyway, so I think a very uncataloged, who had this had this sort of integrated, religious, political, social awareness. But so today, both

Unknown Speaker 42:06
for testing or thinking about the rural urban, especially urbanites don't tend to see that kind of, I don't know. Philosophical.

Unknown Speaker 42:16
Yeah. But remember to rural children in the 60s, a lot of these people were, you know, I'm old enough to be I'm too old, in fact, really been caught up in the hippie movement, just by about one year, maybe two. If I'd been born in 46, I would I could easily have been caught up in investment. But being born in 44, I just escaped, just Yeah. But heavily affected by the Vietnam War, all the movement and all that kind of stuff. A lot of us were, there's a great divide between people who were in were, but either way you were affected. Yeah. And we were all there. And we young parents, and even up to the young ones, made people more socially and religiously and politically acute. For a while there. I would argue maybe that's just my own view, I think I've got a handful of empirical routes for that. All I can do is tell you that there wasn't the kinds of things to talk about, you

Unknown Speaker 43:05
know, certainly does seem here that there was a kind of congeniality and the people who

Unknown Speaker 43:11
want to be able to talk about those things. It's partly because David points themselves did also. And we knew it. So would

Unknown Speaker 43:18
you talk to them just sort of by the by, or did you ever get, oh, he

Unknown Speaker 43:23
liked us. foreign to me more than most. I think, I don't want to sound pretentious. But you know, a person with a really strong intellectual life, which he did have a daughter. It was good for him to have people who had strong intellectual lives come to property. He was happy that we came. And also we coming from rural backgrounds, ourselves understood the power of nature. I mean, I would spend a lot of time just two hours a day minimum. I don't know whether I said I think I did say that sitting on the point or looking at the water. I did a lot of meditation time right by the water. I did say that. Well, so would he, you know, but he recognized this and other people. So there were a few of us. I'm not the only one. Maryann's another one. But there were other people who came to property or university people or professional people one kind or another. Now they weren't discriminating in an active way. It just took care of itself. Because some people would simply not be asked back and with with with no problem at all bit of sleight of hand, and you know, there just wasn't space for certain people.

Unknown Speaker 44:35
Well, what seems to have really worked though

Unknown Speaker 44:39
it's because they were the people they are you know, they were also broad minded enough that it didn't become a boring, highly selective, everybody didn't do anything. Yeah, you know, they also new people coming all the time.

Unknown Speaker 44:52
Let it ask you a little bit about Tim, about Pender Island more generally. Did you Mmm. Did you get a sense from people on the island either the Davidson's or from other people that you met? Well, first of all, did you have very much to do with Island people themselves?

Unknown Speaker 45:09
Quite a bit. I knew them in other ways. My own religious community, there are some people who live there might net that way. You're in town. And they looked up there at the time or all the time, a couple of cases. There was a writer, willing DevRel Oh, yeah. There were political figures who had cabins there, Mike Harcourt being the best known London. As you know, I'm both tenants and I were really very active in the NDP for a long time, and are well known to all the while we were well known to people in in, in office, and I was elected to office myself for a while. So I knew the NDP people well, and Mike carpet had a cap on I think he's still down, it's probably I don't know, I'm Jack with them lately. On North Pender. My musical connections meant that I knew musicians on the out. Very rare, for example, was good artist still lives on the island. So I had many other reasons. Besides that a colleague, Pat varier, who lived on the island there rather UBC people who might do much less well. But Pat, I knew well, because he was just down the hallway from the UBC. So

Unknown Speaker 46:23
what sense did you get out of the island as community Pender?

Unknown Speaker 46:29
There were fewer than 2000, as I recall, permanent inhabitants of the island, and the rest were all people like ourselves pass through every year. And the feeling, I guess I got was that it was a bit like the hubs in society, if you like, I'm sorry to say, I mean, it's sort of a nasty grid a little bit. I mean, there's a real view of a real suspicion of organized social, and political life. These were people who went there to be independent, if they possibly could. The irony was or the or the paradox was that the economy was terrible. On the island, most people had at best marginal existence who lived there. The only way you could really survive there was if you brought money with you. So the people who were old and had good pensions did okay. Everybody else was pretty jolly well, dirt poor. And so the pretense that you could live an independent, happy existence somehow was kings of the castle or queens of your castle, depending on your sex is ridiculous. There's no way you could, yeah, and the number of properties up for sale every year was proof. And it still is that people get this in this ridiculous idea that they can aid that they can afford it. Very, very few people can really afford to have property on the Gulf Islands. However, Chico was still too expensive for most people. If you live there, maybe, but to have summer properties by any rational financial yardstick man's so the number of properties that goes up for sale is enormous every year as people come to this realization. But of course, they don't want to appear to have made a big mistake. That's right. So so you put a front on it, which makes it seem as though everything's hunky dory, and they have a happy, happy existence. And now their paradox is that on the one side, they want a rural isolated, imaginary Victorian Edwardian Country Garden existence. And on the other side, it looks like Ridgeland magic lakes is magic Lake Estates is pretty or suburban feeling. And it's depressingly so some people would say, and I don't find it depressing. I just find it amusing that one would imagine that in an island with that kind of intense development, you could pretend it was rural, because it's not in the game. That's when I said urban rural. This is an island, which is full of paradox and most of the Gulf Islands now it's probably wanting to be both things at the same time, you know?

Unknown Speaker 49:11
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. People get very upset when they don't have the amenities. Right. And that's been a big source of conflict, on the islands between different factions. Did you notice it? Were you aware of any real tensions between the visitors the summer visitors and the people who had recreational property and the permanent residents there was, was that apparent?

Unknown Speaker 49:33
Yeah. There were, there were a couple of things. One was that the Gulf Islands trust as it became more organized, and it really became organized during the time that we were there as a political presence was under pressure from people who had lived there for generations to do one thing, and from recent visitors buy new property owners both to do another thing. And thirdly, from commercial people like Dave, to do yet another thing with limited resources Rapid repetitive development, how the size of some developed parcels could be five acres was supposed to be the minimum of allowed subdivision. And there were, of course, many exceptions to that rule. And the way that those exceptions were made was pretty erratic, the grounds for allowing point five of an acre instead of five acres, for example, were never clear to me. And they weren't very clear to anybody else either. As far as like, and this, this made for some rip roaring, extremely divisive meetings of the Gulf Islands trust and community hall, when the trustees dared to show their faces on the island was there, I never went to those meetings, I just heard about them. I didn't feel I shouldn't, you know, as a non property owner, never went to, but there would be a meeting and they would talk about it for days, you couldn't go to the go, you couldn't go with the general store and not hear a huge debate for two days afterwards. But that was a good example of

Unknown Speaker 50:51
was it mostly negative? Did you get that sense? Were there a lot of people standing up for the trust and saying how great it was? Or did you hear mostly the about half and half?

Unknown Speaker 51:02
And very strong fields, I couldn't really understand what the divisions were about. Half the time, I thought it was good understanding this kind of political argument. But they were arguing at a level which had, which was on one side picking detail. And on the other side, appealing to emotional arguments, who's whose roots are beyond me? Because that was quite

Unknown Speaker 51:22
deep in the community. Yeah. And in the history of the community.

Unknown Speaker 51:25
Yeah. And there were other differences. I remember the big argument over whether or not there should be a fire station on South Pender, or whether there should be a clinic, which in fact, was built in the end right across from the school, you know, and whether the school should be rebuilt?

Unknown Speaker 51:40
What were the objections? Do you remember, taxes,

Unknown Speaker 51:43
for some people, the idea that taxes would rise? For others, which is a traditional problem, because these people are really marginal, so many of them didn't want to pay more taxes, their property holdings were high visa vie their incomes?

Unknown Speaker 51:56
Was there any other objection made?

Unknown Speaker 51:59
Fear that it would bring more people in, it would just cause the development to go completely? Get out of hand? Too many people living there full time and part time. So you had the division between those who said, Well, last in That's April closing the door, and the others who said, Well, look, you know, it's in our interest for the island to remain open to development. That's the way we will, our economy will flourish, right? And we'll be able to stay. There were differences of opinion over how many roads to build differences of opinion over who should be a civil servant and who should not. salaries were precious things, you know, so that the very few civil servants on the island, for example, getting a job in the liquor store, when it came in? was a big thing. It was complicated. I'll give you an idea of the division. Because there are too many drunks on the island. Do they have one of the most active AAA ranches in British Columbia? Pender Island? I don't know why. But anyway, there you are. And I'm only repeating hearsay. This is what people say. I've no empirical evidence whatsoever that it is the most activate a branch. This is what people will say. Yeah. And it may be on the other hand, it may not. I don't know, but they're the first of all, should they have built a liquor store given that they're all these monkeys on the island? Well, that was a very sharp division of opinion. I remember well, the face of that. And the second thing was, who should get the jobs once the thing did open up? Because those jobs were well paid bcgeu jobs on scale. And they felt as though some people might know for a fact that the Davidson's themselves got involved in a dispute over whether one of their relatives would get a job. And it was tough sledding. Because the attacker often did not get the job. And they thought their connections were pretty good. So you can see the the the the fights could be over connections about stuff like property and jobs.

Unknown Speaker 53:59
Yeah, I guess everything is quite personal, as well as political as correct. At that in that small place. I

Unknown Speaker 54:05
think so. Well, that's my view. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 54:11
That's what you so were you aware of any other kinds of conflicts between people, I'm just asking as part of the book

Unknown Speaker 54:17
about the hippies, so called. And these are people with long hair who lived in Volkswagen bands and forest. There were a couple of festivals towards the end of our time, at which lots of drugs were consumed, as far as we know, and the police were pretty active and so on. And the disapproval of the community was palpable. And some of the people who lived on the island who participated in those festivals were ostracized for some considerable time. years would go by before they could dissipate reliably in the life of the island if the game and I thought the island showed a nasty red Nikki exclusionist Syed, in respect of that event, all those events, I should say, it was really repeated over two three summers. Though, there are still people who have a slightly vague approach to the way they make their livings and, and, and are barely present when you speak to them. Their minds are somewhere else have only knows where and and I guess this bothers some people, I think it's kind of sweet myself but they the the the older pragmatic presence of mind Islander it's hard to deal with. They don't like these people all that much. So that was another source of stress and tension.

Unknown Speaker 55:43
Anything else? I mean, any other? Were you aware of any kind of?

Unknown Speaker 55:47
Yeah, the older you were, the longer you've been on the island, the better was the Davidson's were just barely accepted his Islanders, at the end of the time that we were there. I think they're accepted pretty much now. But you have to be there a long, long time really live people before you're considered one of them. So the older the better, the longer the better. And there are tensions between newcomers and that sort of thing. So Mr. Devil, for example, was not well regarded by some people, because he spoke up and said, you know, this is my opinion, and I should have my rights and always have some influence over decisions. And people will say, Are you kidding? You've only been here for nine years. You're out of town. The guy who was the principal of St. George's school for about 25 years, whose name now escapes me used to deep dark died Anglican, in the 28 countries up in north India, you know, what was his name, he and his wife are both alive in our day. They both died, I think Douglas H. Henderson hit them come back to the SEC. They had a beautiful property on a point of their own, north of the of the of the ferry terminal. And they had been there for what must have been since sort of the late Neanderthal period or something. They were they were okay. And some of the pioneer families are a couple of black families, you know, came on the underground railway in the 1860s 1870s were well known that that was name also states in the history of diamond has been dealt with in Gulf Islands Patchwork, and as long as you can find out for yourself, because for those, those families were obscure, but very influential, because they've been there for so long. So there are big differences between and they were felt you could feel I could feel unevenness passing through, I find the bother so men, it didn't lead to even any form of disguised Civil War or anything. But yeah, but there are differences. Did you feel at least I could, but I'm in the business, you know, Roman historian and, and and I was a politician and still in. What

Unknown Speaker 57:59
about class? Is it's usually defined?

Unknown Speaker 58:03
Oh, yeah. It's asked a good question here. The, the values that were imposed on us in Roseland, by some definition are middle class values. So behavior and social interaction. So last night civility insurance. Yeah. The taste for economic security, and the unspoken agreement that everybody had the best what you wanted and what you wanted for your kids. The idea that you would, if you said you would do something, then you will do it, and you can start a job, you will finish it. All the usual middle class practices values were there. So the island is a deeply middle class place. There were a few upwardly mobile working class people, which simply goes to show you that the middle class was triumphant because all they wanted was to be like us. Yeah. And the middle class itself was divided between professionals and non professionals without question. It meant something if you're a doctor or a university teacher, or a lawyer, and everybody knew it, everybody knew there was a real sensibility about these things, which I found regrettable in a way, actually. Because they just helped to heighten those difference. I give you the idea that the island was rife with difference. But you asked the question about difference. So I'm answering it. But on the other hand, it was it was it was adopted tranquil place. It was you had to look hard, it's only because I'm in the business as they say that the giant speak of it. So

Unknown Speaker 59:34
there was a lot of like coherence. Oh, yes.

Unknown Speaker 59:36
I mean, the basic thing that held everybody together, some people would say the cynics would say was property values. Everybody wanted you wanted to be there who wouldn't want to be there? And if you weren't there, you wanted to be there. So we went around to look at property but properties just like everybody else. We were saved from making a big mistake, just by the skin of our teeth two or three different times. It's such a beautiful place you lose your mind. But that is enough. That's enough to get coherence to the whole island. It's based on property. Not a question in my mind, property and tranquility, the idea of life, which is silly, because of course, we take our minds with us the fact the idea that you're going to be critical simply because you go and Pender island just, it's crazy. But

Unknown Speaker 1:00:26
there's the kind of

Unknown Speaker 1:00:29
so just the romance of it, you you, you know, it's, it's romance and, and property. Boom, that gives a tremendous coherence to the island.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:40
I wanted to ask you, because I think we're getting near the end of the tape here. Okay. What, uh, maybe you've actually already answered this, but I'll just maybe say it again. What did you personally like, the very best about it, about the island, about your experience on the island in Roseland in particular.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:00
It was the nature I, you know, to have the possibility to spend two or three hours with even without my family, you know, sitting out on the point alone was remarkable. I don't get that. That is a scarce commodity in my life. So I bought them every summer. And the price was a few 100 bucks, and taking my family with me, so they could do either you or me. I'm telling you about coming to bear on burnished proof. I could give you a whole bunch of other stuff about how nice it was for the family, which it was, yeah. And how pleasant it was to be with Dave and Florence, which always was Yeah. But I went there for a selfish reason. Really? Yeah. That's to get peace of mind and recover. Recover from exhaustion, psychological exhaustion every year. And it worked. Like a charm. I still miss it. I you know, I we've, we went to the Caribbean. This this Christmas. Just St Maarten and then came back from Florida, where my daughter lives are a batch of our grandchildren. And something and we do it. We did that. Because I organized it. It was me that wanted to do that. And the reason, although Saturn was happy to go to, but I did it because I knew I could duplicate again. What like I, I must say that it's a conscious decision. Yeah, yeah. My son has been a bit. My daughter has very little of it. But my son has inherited it heard, acquired, like a fairly pragmatic, Cindi romanticized view of Pender Island. And I think he kind of hopes to find a similar kind of place when, when his gets when he only has one so far, but I imagine it will be more one day. And I think he imagines himself doing this kind of thing to he was really quite affected by going there. Was taking older with younger younger. I remember 1982 During the Great firing of the air traffic controllers, it was the last time I spent three solid imagine three solid weeks. Three hold I can't imagine having that kind of the space of time in the middle of the summer. The life I need now I could I don't know how I could do that. But anyway, in those days, that's how it happened. And during that summer 1982 Ronald Reagan fired all the air traffic controllers. Remember that? Oh, yes. And my son was with me. And Sam could come for some reason for a good part of it. There's something about her job.