Salt Spring Island Archives

268_Koppel_Lakeridge-Bullock-Lake-60s-70s.mp3

otter.ai

19.04.2023

no

Unknown Speaker 0:00
Well, thanks for coming out. I want to particularly thank Paul way for urging me on to do this took about a year. I said, No, I'm not gonna do that. But I'm glad he did. I just wanted to ask a show of hands, how many people lived at Lakeridge? There's one, there's two. What's your character? Okay, when were you there? Okay, just before me. And the Chilliwack people were there. Also, maybe 71 When you were there, even earlier, okay. I wasn't there. Okay. So now. Okay. So this is the cabin that I moved into, in September 74. And I remember, remember it well, because I wasn't there in the 60s. But really, on Saltspring, the 60s were still there in the 70s. This was cabin number one. And I moved in on my birthday in September when I had just turned 31. So all of these pictures will be much younger needs 39 years ago, believe it or not. And it's amazing to me anyway. But we're still here. And this was great. I lived there for a total of about five years and several stimpacks who came back. And so that's probably among the longest of anybody who was there. I don't know if anybody has any anyone who's there longer than five years in total. But that was spread out between 74 and 84. So at the very end, was 1984 when the cabins had to go and the land had been flipped several times. But they were great years anyway.

Unknown Speaker 2:00
Okay, so this gives you an idea if anyone doesn't know where boilerplate really good, you can't really see it from the road. But if you get to it from Robinson road, and there was this trail with the dotted line that was kind of a shortcut out to the road, or you go up the hill to the dark lines where it says parking and today's buildings in the sort of the some new new old resort up there on the ridge, more like Portsmouth parking and they purchased a resort. But we were down by the lake itself when I get there. So there were five log cabins off to the right along the lake, and inside frame cabins. And across the lake. It was the farm hobby farm, Ernie and Brenda Lowe. And they had first had a camp and then they they built these cabinets. And I should mention that there was a fellow an old guys still living there on their property named Nick Purcell yet that some of you may have known and he had helped them build the cabins. He was an old logger with either Lithuanian or Latvian or Sonny had a kind of accent. But I think he had done a lot of the work with Ernie Lowe, the logging work and cutting. And I mentioned Britain water pump. There was a water system and they were docks on the night. And I'll get to it but we had a sauna and a goat shed. And then there was a trail and they went through to the other little lake in the backs of dung Gavin's pond, which you get to off of different driveway off Robinson road. The the location, I don't know if it's clear from the first map, but it was very convenient because it was really walking distance the Ganges it was only about 30 minutes, if you took the trail and went through the woods, and then you're out on Robinson road. And of course, we used to hitchhike to you could be in Ganges really quickly. And so you didn't actually have to have a car. And that was one of the advantages. I mean, it was inexpensive. We only paid 70 to $80 rent. And so it was affordable housing and the cabins were pretty decent as you'll see it was more the pictures. They were I don't think we were roughing it really I mean, these were not insulated. They had been summer cottages and summer cabins so they weren't insulated and you know you have to keep wood fire going in the winter and stuff. But basically it was they were furnished they had hot and cold running water. They had kitchens with or semi furnished kitchens with fridges and electric stoves and sinks and also and showers and things. So basically, they were quite comfortable. Some people today would think of it as roughing it, but I thought it was pretty good to the times. And now this is what it looks like back then the big sign Lake Resort. And that little cabin was actually a sort of office for the time when it was a resort. But I think what happened is that the the Ernie and Brenda, I don't think they really enjoyed the work involved with changing linens and things like that. And so after doing that for a few years, I think they just decided it was simpler to rent it out year round to full time tenants, and just collect the rent and not have to deal with us. Not that we were such terrible people to deal with. But you know, we were a different generation. And we were hippies. So it was not that we were all stoned out of our minds all the time, although there was a little of that. And we went skinny dipping and layout on the docks naked a lot of the time. And so Ernie didn't like coming over to fix the water pump. Always. It could be embarrassing. Actually one of our friends, Steve Phillips, who was there for a few years, his parents came and visited a few times. And his father once went out on the lake in one of the boats we had. And then by the time he came back to the dock, there was some girls there sunning themselves nude. And he was so embarrassed, he didn't know what to do. He didn't know whether he should just come ashore. And I don't remember whether he went to a different dock or something like that. Anyway, but that was a situation. Somewhere, somebody has given me the impression that they thought it was a con you. But I really should say it wasn't the commune at all, in the sense that we shared a lot. And we were mainly of the same generation, I was actually just about the oldest one, I was in my 30s. And most of them were in their 20s Mostly other people. And there were even a few teenage kids briefly at different times. But mainly girls. But we the great thing about it was that it wasn't a commune, there were no politics. We didn't, we didn't have some common purpose. So we didn't have to have meetings. We we just paid our rent to the landlord. And that was it. But they weren't 10 cabin. So it was this whole network of sort of jungle telegraph, you didn't even need to have a telephone to be plugged in. Somebody was always in Ganges during the day have to come back and tell you that something's happening that night or there's going to be a beaver point. Bogey is something you know something important like that really important. Or they come back and tell you about jobs, because a lot of us took our jobs I did with carpentry, mainly rough carpentry to bang nails for five bucks an hour. And those kinds of jobs are often very short turn jobs, and you'd hear about it through the grapevine. Now, some people went to Dan woods, and that was sort of a hiring Hall in a way but a lot of it was just people putting out the work. So it was not not really a commune. But we did share a lot of things as you'll see. Okay, this is looking down the trail along the way from basically in front of my cabin, which was number one, and that's maybe number three or four. Next one down there. And this is on a misty morning. By the way these photos are taken by a lot of them were Marvin Rice, who unfortunately is in Spain, or Italy right now and couldn't be here which is a shame. She embroidered the bluebird on my shoulder here and fill magic mushrooms on the back of my jacket. And she and Steve are present. I'll mention again, we have pictured they were an item so they eventually they moved away and moved into his parents house and all that but this is on a misty Morrow morning in the fall and this was taken by my German friend Eric caston, who came several times to visit for Fall I was looking at. He liked it a lot. Here's a funny ice. We had somehow a few cold winters back in those years. The lake froze over, we went ice skating, we could walk on the ice. And you can see the cross in the background. That's the Lotus farm. So that's the opposite side of the lake. This was probably taken from maybe Kevin 10 or so far in sort of far northwest corner, I guess it would be

Unknown Speaker 10:41
this is in the summer. And we have several boats later on. You see, he built a boat there. But this was a nice little little daysailer that he thought and I think we fixed up a bit and call me crazy. And so you know, we were able to sail around the lake. I also had a clipper kayak one of those wonderful German collapsible kayaks, I sometimes kayak around the lake. And it was another little boat there's another shot of the same both places. It was a great place to live. And it was, you know, all the cabins were right on the lake and there were five docks. So we you know, in the, in the summer, it warmed up really nicely. So it was great swimming, sometimes we swim two, three times a day. If we're doing something sweaty, some kind of work. Just go back in. And here's the winter. So this was Kevin nine. This was marlenas. Kevin Martin writes, who Oh, I should say, you know, although I mentioned doing odd jobs, quite a few people had steady work. Marlene was a registered nurse, and lady. And she used to hike into town. Eventually she got her car, but for a few years, she didn't have a car. And she just walked into town to work. And Susan Martin, later married different name now, but she worked at the KNR as a checkout lady, which was one of the better jobs in town, the KNR was the supermarket. At that time, it's where much clothing and this coffee shop is that building. And the other the other store that people shopped at was a trading company, which is where TJ beans is, I guess. So there were quite a few people had regular jobs. One of the people there Phillip Newton was a full time student at UVic for a few years and he he commuted we hardly saw him in the winter, except at night, he'd come back tired because there's a long day traveling

Unknown Speaker 13:10
okay, this, this is Kevin 10. Now, I'll get to it. But I ended up back there in 1983 84, at the very end, just before the whole thing got logged. And so, and Patrick Catherine, this was your cabin. Yeah, this is one of the larger ones, some of them are larger than others. This one was big enough to have a loft bed. And there would have been actually maybe two little bedrooms in the back. And then the loft bed above one of them. So it was quite roomy, and but not insulated. So they were a little hard to heat because it was just two inch thick and good. Today wouldn't be allowed under the building code. None of this will be allowed. And I was saying as for our shared activities we had a lot of wasn't a comment, but we had a lot of things that we did together such as potluck dinners, and we always made a joke especially in the winter that if you came to a potluck at Lake Ridge you not only brought something unique and maybe some homemade wine, but you brought a few sticks of firewood because nobody ever had enough firewood especially in the winter. It was they didn't let us just go out lozman Let us just go out chop down trees

Unknown Speaker 14:45
okay, this is looking out the window of cabin tent when I lived there I had sort of a little desk and workbench. By that time I was be Having a freelance writer, so I was sending articles into magazines in Canada and sometimes the US. I think that's my pepper manual. And looking out and again, this was another Frozen scene. And this is an interior. Now, by the time I moved in, back into I had gone. I had moved away in 87 or 88. I started 77 or 78. And I lived for a year on Russell island as a caretaker. And then I moved to Provo island I rented from the suburbs out there for four years. We've been away from Lake Ridge. And then I came back to Salt Spring and I visit cookies, Doctor cookies, place a cabin there. And by then, the property the Lowe's had sold out and moved away. And they moved to the sharps right away, which was amazing. And the the land had been flipped several times. In three years it was flipped. Or four years ago or three years, we slipped three times, I believe. And so there was a guy named Jeff Edelman was an owner and then Pringles, I think rod Pringle, and then eventually Mary Cyprus, that sort of developer wasn't very well liked. He was sort of last summer before Labor disasters happened. But in the last year, or year and a half, they the owners to stop maintaining it. They didn't fix the water pump, they stopped collecting rent. And then somebody dropped a tree on the power line and hydrogen ever rebuild it. So the power was off to the five frame cabins. I think the log cabin still had power for a while. And as they say there was no running water. Nobody was maintaining anything. So it became a squatters column. At the very end was just whoever had a cabin. And they just, you know, moved in if they heard of a cabin was empty. That's what happened with me. I heard this fun cabin was the person was in Vancouver, they were never there. So I just moved in. And that was the way it was done. And I did there for another year and a half that way. And so this was the cabin when I was going to have kerosene lamps. Because they say there was no hydro. There was still a telephone. I think the telephone somehow still worked. It was amazing thing to cable down on the ground. And so there's an old rotary dial telephone. But we weren't paying rent. It was kind of nice of them not to bother us. Because really, it was still a great place to live. Because my cat's looking out on the lake, it was a beautiful place. great feeling. And it was also a safe place. People think oh, hippies, trouble. There was never in trouble or almost never anything. I mean, I don't remember there ever being a fight. Or I don't think there was never a real police incident. Nothing and most people didn't lock their doors. I didn't ever lock my doors. And I don't remember things being stolen. And people trusted each other. And there was some people had kids there and we watched out for the kids. And it was a very nice place to live. Hippies have a bad reputation. And so this is the gang. So in the in the visit our closest friends, my closest friends. Everybody would have their own stories, but these are mine. So in the in the hammock as Judy Knight and Marlene rice, and I'm sitting there this is Susan Martin, who ended up being well, she left a little earlier than the rest of us. But she was important in many ways. And she was the one who who got the goat for us, which we will soon be introduced. And oh, this is this is this was an annual thing, moving the docks and putting them back in place because usually they break loose in the winter with the ice and everything. And there were all these floating docks and we just sort of reassemble them. And that's duty 90 out on one document Steve Phillips in a little slap boat. We just had to kind of bring them in and tie them back up to the shore. Put them in the right place. And this is Steve doing firewood collecting and this is typical the truck was not his truck. It was Susan's truck, and we liked each other vehicles. And we shared these kinds of jobs. And this was An important event we, there was this little chicken coop that a guy named Steve Andre, I believe had built, or at least he had kept the chickens. And we decided to expand it and build a sauna. And so what what you see being built on is the framing for the sauna. We just had whatever in London, we fit fine. And the other part, which was the chicken coop became the goat ship, because we then had a goat. And so just people here, off to the left is John Pickering, who's still on the island and was being the carpenter guy standing there as Philip Newton, he was the full time student on down there crouching and this is Susan Martin to the right. And when it was finished, this was the combined sauna and go check it out that often Alaska is the goat shed. And that's what we milk the goat and the author, the writers and so on. And it was some key sheet metal wood stove, and the word would go out somebody's gonna make a sauna tonight. So you know, start gathering firewood and everybody bring a few sticks of firewood and, and we could have a sauna and then you could run down the trail and jump into the lake. So that's what we do.

Unknown Speaker 21:30
And this is a few of the guys who this is again really winter going off to cut firewood carrying the chainsaw on some gasoline. And guy off the left is Keith de Courcey, Barry Walker and Bob HAMILTON To the right. And this is Steve Phillips in his cabin. One of the things he is a fine woodworker. He taught me everything I knew when we got into building a boat, but he was building this loom. And he just was just a project to sell. And he did. He built it and he sold it was just one of his ways of making money. His main thing was landscape gardening. And Budhia occasionally dug graves for good goodness. When they needed one duck by hand, I don't know sometimes they could do them with backhoes make a certain situations, they needed to do them by hand. And he go off in his black, sinister looking outfit to dig a grave. And now here's the golden so this is Molly the goat of toggenburg. A very docile goat really and quite productive is one of her young female kids. And so Susan Martin had first gotten Molly and then we baked, there was so much milk. I mean, this, this goat produce, you know, two quarts or more every day, in the in her main season when she was really doing well. And so there was so much milk that we had three or four or even five of us sharing the chores, the milking and the feeding, and divvying up the milk. And so we had a buddy system, and somebody would be on for the morning, and somebody would be on to the late afternoon, early evening. And then the next day, they'd be a different person in the morning and different. But then people were away sometimes in the winter, Mexico or somewhere. And so you know, the responsibilities shifted a bit. But basically, it worked out quite nicely. And everybody had lots of milk. And Molly would know when she's feeling her other, she'd know it was time to be milked. And also she was getting hungry, it was time to eat. And she'd go wandering back and forth. Whose turn you know. And then she'd go under cheek she liked being under the houses where people were having some activity. She didn't go under empty houses. She was she liked hearing people or music and so she'd always find and most of these places were up just enough that she could crawl in underneath. So she was always under one of Kevin's or another and here I am feeding her getting getting ready to feed her. And here's Stephen and Susan, playing around with her. And these were some ducks that Susan had. And some people had chickens. And there was a rooster allowed rooster, you know for a few years so they wasn't really back to the land in the sense that nobody had huge gardens. There was only One couple Elaine musk and Michael alone who are still here. They had a significant garden. Marlene and I and Steve had a garden across the road at this Mrs. Thomas on Robinson road, but let us have so we, we did keep a garden, but it wasn't truly trying to be subsistence. Okay, so this is every every time that every year you have to have a goat fresh and and then she gives birth to usually twins. And if, if they were boys, nobody wanted them, you couldn't give them away. And so we'd had them slaughtered and butchered by somebody, a farmer who knew what they were doing. And we have a GoPro. So this is one of these outdoor potlucks and everybody was invited. So here I am sort of smashed, I think, looking at my eyes. A lot of wine people made a lot of lousy blackberry wine, really crappy plum wine. We often had really terrible one. And this is one of the cookbooks is taken by my friend Eric, the German guy. So he was obviously there. Now. Steve and I heard about this whole post for sale over built mill Bay. And we had been wanting to build a boat and get get sailing. He had a little sailboat, but we wanted to know real sailboat, a cruising boat. So we bought this derelict boat for very little money, I think under $1,000 Anyway, and maybe we paid too much. There was so much work to be done. So here it is, here it is, we brought it in. I was great, Ernie and Brenda didn't mind. They let us do this build a boat shed everything. They didn't care. And so it was trailer being on the ferry from Melbourne. And you can see sort of how terrible and then we built the shelter around it. To keep it dry. It took us a year and a half to rebuild this book. That was quite a big project to have us, Steven I working he was first doing all the fine work. And he was showing me a lot of stuff like how to do dovetail joints for patches and things like that. And by the time we finished his book, I this boat, I could do all these things. Now also, we collect fine tools and stuff. And you can see how extensive it has to be done. So that's the stem piece that holds the valve together the curved piece, and I actually carry that on my back into kanjis. And back because they had a bandsaw at the school at the high school. And I was allowed to use it. So we had to cut this curved thing. And so I actually carried the thing into town on my shoulder, and then cut it up, cut it to shape and brought it back as we were doing. And as you can see, we were replacing every single frame, the whole boat and interspersing additional ones more than the original we were improving it strengthening it up and was looks horrible here. You know it was a big job. But we didn't have to start from scratch we just replaced piece by piece we replaced and we kept the shape. We never lost the shape of the hole. So it wasn't as difficult to starting with a brand new boat. And here it's finished. And we're about to launch it. So the guy on the left doing the jacking up was Steve Nelson. He was in sort of boats and outboard motors guy at that time, the main one and Steve is crouching down looking. So he had trailing it over and now a year and a half later. He was amazed how it had been transformed from a derelict to a really lovely boat. They were about to pull it out and take it to launch it. And here it is coming up the road from Lake Ridge. Everybody walking behind it was a big event and then sort of see what the trees were like to a young straight for forest of the trees for building log cabins. And here I'm writing it under the the entrance to take this out onto the road and then off the Ganges and here it is being launched. Right at the same in behind the breakwater. The brand. Very exciting moment. And here we're having some champagne so that Steve had left Marlene and I'm up on the boat and we didn't smash the bottle we just couldn't do it couldn't waste the bottles. We just popped the cork and drank it for And here's the bulk when it was finally, Rick. So it was a traditional gas rig cutter. That was a beautiful boat. And I had that boat for 15 years cruising up and down the whole coast. And Steve went on to being much more serious about boats. And he got another bigger old boat and rebuilt it. Together with Marlene kind of earning all the money and paying for it. He did this at his parents house on Isabella point. And that boat was called Galatea. And that turned out to be a gorgeous boat. And then they set off on this long trip, supposedly around the whole Pacific, although eventually they broke up the meeting to get around the whole Pacific. But I joined them in Panama, and we went to the Galapagos Islands together, which was an amazing adventure. And then that's when they were just breaking up. And so Steve, then sort of their plans all changed. And Steve sailed that boat back single handed, he wanted to get back into university really fun we're going to do next. So he said the simplest thing was to get the boat back quickly, and inexpensively. He sailed it directly from the Galapagos to Victoria in 72 days. He saw two shifts in the entire time. And he had the short range radio and nothing else. And they reported and phoned his parents and said, we've seen your son, he's okay, here's where he is. Now, the next final phase here, I'm back at Les cribs, this is down 8384

Unknown Speaker 31:34
I had finally decided I can't rent forever. I bought a piece of land below. Richard flax road off of length road. And I wasn't sure what I was going to put on it, I could hardly afford anything really, I could hardly afford to buy the land. And so I first saw the trailer or something. But then it turned out that they were going to have to log the whole area of Lake Ridge, and the cabins were in the way. And this was Mary Cypress. And he was first trying to get a little money out of his investment by actually logging some of the good trees and selling them. So at that point, I realized, Oh, well these cabins gotta go. So I was the first one to make him an offer. I said, Mary, I'd like to buy one of these cabins. And they offered him $600. He said, Sure. And yeah, and so I was the first sight I got the cabin that I thought was the log cabin that I thought was in the best condition, which was number five. And this was one where Chilliwack had had its rehearsals years ago. years later, somebody came to my house and said, This is the fridge cabinet. Number five, if it gives, my son was conceived here. This is Genesis. Anyway, so here I'm dismantling the cabin. So I had numbered the logs. And my friend Michael Malone is helping me here. And we're basically rolling logs off of the structure. And just figure well, he you know, it should go back together. And the logs are all season. They're not done they fit. So why wouldn't it go back together again, which it did. And here I am putting it back together. So you can see in the distance or up on a ridge nice view. And I was able to pull most of the logs up by myself. They need to help to get the base logs up onto footings but after that, I could pull the logs up with a come along. And these boards because the inclined plane and it really wasn't that hard to do. It was a little bit slow because they have to keep moving and ropes and adjusting things. But basically after I got the foundation's done everything the footings it only took couple of weeks to bring up the logs and had to drill each one down through that log to the one below and driving a wooden peg to hold it together. Strengthen it but he went together well. And this is Kevin almost finished. And then I changed it. So I just the original cabinet with remember was very low slope. But I wanted to peek it first of all I thought it looked nicer but also I needed. I wanted to have a sleeping loft because it's such a small cabinet was only 16 by 25 feet. So I felt I didn't have room for a bedroom really and so I built the sleeping loft above the kitchen area. And then I changed everything I put in skylights and I insulated the roof that had never had any insulation. And so basically I improved it quite a lot and and then here's a snowy day from a different angle. So at that point, I still didn't have any running water. So I was collecting water in barrels, which I did for about five years. And bringing water in my truck in the summer, pumping it up into a holding tank under the eaves because I couldn't afford to have a well and hydro for quite a while. And this is the cabin was just about finished. And so it's a beautiful cat. And now, my wife Annie and I still live there we built on that. When we got together, we built an addition that matches it nicely. It's actually a frame, but it has log siding. So it looks the same. And I believe that there are three other log cabins that have been salvaged. One of them went to the property of the late boss signed by civil law and a guy named Andy bought that one and Bob had said that he did live on Bob's property so he put he put it back together fast and dirty just on Cedar blocks or something like that. Mine I put on proper foundations, proper footings. But so that one I think, is still being lived in, I believe, and Maggie Ramsay got one. And I just heard about another one. Mark, total. What's the guy's name? Roger warnes, and it says Celia, Duffy's. So there's at least four of these cabinets. Still on the the frame cabins, I don't think we're worth they were worth something for lumber. But I don't think anybody ever rebuilt them the way they had originally been. But these four log cabins are still there. So that's the lasting legacy of Lakers. That's about it. I mean, the lake is still there, but it's a mess. The property there with always have finished development. Probably never be really finished. But anyway, I thank you for coming. And just remember, when you're invited to a potluck, always bring a few sticks of fire

Unknown Speaker 37:43
thanks for Frank Newman for working on the pictures for me and putting them in they're going to be in the archive, right. So anybody who wanted to look at these pictures, they're going to be in the Saltspring archives.

Unknown Speaker 38:02
Any questions? You have the boat. Oh, really? Is it just stuck in a shed somewhere? All the boats end up in.

Unknown Speaker 38:20
We still have it. I think it was a clinker, original a lot of lifeboat behind I gathered from Steve that the sea scouts hit on the elements that had owned it before.

Unknown Speaker 38:35
That's the little boat that were sailing on the lake. And when Steve and Marlene moved to his parents house on Isabella point, they took the goat with them. Susan, who had originally on the goat was no longer on the island. So they took the goat and kind of the one young goat one female young girl they call her mama. And so they kept the goat for another few years. And female goats you could give away. So somebody would want them as milkers if they were good milkers and this toggenburg is great. I don't know. Other breeds that's the only one I've ever but I enjoyed milking. I mean to me it was a fun job in the winter, you know and actually warm the other. And I liked the milk we used to have sterilize stainless steel bowls. And we we boil water and sterilize the bowl and then we put it in the freezing compartment of our fridge. So it was ice cold. And the same thing with with class bottles. We have them already and you come so you'd love to go into this freezing bowl, which immediately chilled down the milk. And then you bring it back to your cabin and you pour it through a filter or they had these filters and thoughtful and, and they into your frozen bottle. And so the temperature of the milk was instantly choked. And it didn't taste go to you know, people would say, oh, go milk terrible. Well, this was pretty damn good. And you know, so I really enjoyed it and was one of the more pleasant things about living in Lakeridge

Unknown Speaker 40:27
Did you happen to get Saltspring?

Unknown Speaker 40:29
Okay, well, okay, I was looking for a new place to live. And I had been in New York, but I've been in other places. I've been in Europe and stuff. But basically, I was not happy living in New York City at that point. And my, I said, Well, I'm just going to give up my apartment and move out West. My brother was living in California, and I had a friend living right outside of Berkeley that was and had a friend living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He said, you'd like to hear and I've been here as a kid once. So I thought, well, I'll end up there probably one of those places. But first, I was going to spend the summer camping out on the West Coast again, I had been out here in the previous year on Vancouver Island and fino and Flores Island, and I liked it and a friend. Childhood friend had had his kayak for me. And I had to just come out here and get it. He was up in Prince Rupert. But you could put it on the ferry, a collapsible kayak. Wonderful thing. And so I spent most of the summer hanging around basically on Vancouver Island. And then people were telling me about how nice it is in the Gulf Island. And I first went to Denman and Hornby, and I camped out and other people said, well, you know, if you're single Salt Springs better because those islands are so clannish. Everybody knows everybody but salterns a little bigger, has a pub, you know, go to there's a town, a little town or village but it's better. So that's what I did. I came to salt screen and camped out at Rocco Park. days back was the it had just been made a park. And Dave That was the Ranger and he was a great guy and and then I went to a beaver point, ice cream social sort of daytime cookie with kids in fourth grade and even being an outsider people were nice to me and here as you craft ice cream bass with the kids and it just seemed so nice. And then I started thinking Oh, I like it here and then I got some work. So I was looking for a cabin. People said oh, you know, cabins 50 to $100 a month you know you can get a cabin if you just keep looking. So I started doing that and I was looking at the screen tab and something in the back of Fulford village there. And there was Brian Rowley was rebuilding a little house there fighting the village and I said, Do you know where these cabins are? Walking past this twice? He said, No. But he said, Can you bang nails? I said, Well, yeah, you know, so it's something I had it's out. And, but then I finally lucked into picking up a hitchhiker was another one of the people from Lakeridge. She was her name was March and she was a nurse at leading until a registered nurse and she said oh, you know, Kevin, next to me is sort of been abandoned. You know, you should talk to the Lowe's. I said well, I had called them and they said that you know they put me on a waiting list. He said Call him again. You know, and so I did tell it tell him that the cabinets been abandoned. The guy just walked away and so I did better Brando says oh meet me up there. We'll go and look at it together. And sure enough could have been it was a mess it I think being an American was okay with them because they were American. By the way did you know the kids mom was the daughter of thing while there's Christie Oh, okay. Oh there were more than one I just remember him

Unknown Speaker 44:26
okay Charles

Unknown Speaker 44:28
Koch decades get back into Yeah really. thing I remember most was trying to eat goes down. When we go down low it's 40 bucks you could buy an airtight still paid I was like dude can rocks in it. So the bottom wouldn't burn out. The first time had a fire densifiers on the thing was started walking around the floor.

Unknown Speaker 44:51
They were dangerous. They were dangerous but they heat the house quickly. I had to be careful. Wouldn't want to have kids around them. They'd burn themselves, Charles, you know I was born

Unknown Speaker 45:14
Yeah, well, we now have Kevin five.

Unknown Speaker 45:18
That's right. That's a really good documentary.

Unknown Speaker 45:24
And Charles, you had your hand? Oh, okay. Well, I wrote one story while I was out on pre ball Island, because the house I was renting from the diversion was on a mission, right behind the beach. So it was a very strange place to have a garden, because it's all full of shell. So I wrote a story for harrismith magazine. And they couldn't resist. It was such an oddball gardening story that they didn't know mean from anywhere, but I just sent it into them. And they liked it. And so I had my one respectable, published credential in a good magazine, you know, and that's sort of the way freelancers get started. They, they then me while I was, a couple years later, I started thinking, Oh, I gotta do something different from just tree planting, or, you know, house carpentry, or whatever. And I started reading books on how do you freelance and how do you write for magazines and this kind of thing. And then I got myself a good electronic typewriter that could give a reasonably decent looking professional looking letters and manuscripts. And this is still in the days when you have to retype your manuscripts before the computers. I just started sending in ideas to magazines, like Western living, and Canadian Geographic. I, my first big score was Western living. And I, I wrote a story about the black pioneers of Saltspring. Island. And, you know, I knew about the black community, and it had never really been done. Later, there was a book, but not just about Saltspring, but about blacks and BC, but the editor there, liked it a lot. And even was put up for an award that year. I was shortlisted for an award, and pays like $1,000. You know, it's all right. I mean, it's not really enough to live on if you if you're freelance, I mean it for me, it was because I lived so modestly, most people could not have got by on $1,000, a feature article, because it took so much time to research these things. But soon, I was sending in ideas to Canadian Geographic, and they became my probably single best market, and also Financial Post magazine. I mean, I even wrote a story about building my cattle getting getting housing cheaply for Financial Post magazines. And in fact, some of these photos came, that photo was in the magazine, and a picture of me building. So and, you know, eventually I was writing for Reader's Digest of Canada. But that's, that's when I started. So basically, it was like, Oh, God, the crunch came one time, tree planting was really gruesome. And I never did it for a whole season. But I do it for a few weeks go out on the stint. And there was one time when it was like, am I going to go out on this next tree planting stent? Or am I going to work on that article? And I just said, I gotta have faith. I'll stay home and work on that article. And that was sort of a turning point. And then eventually, I got into books.

Unknown Speaker 49:05
Any other questions or comments?

Unknown Speaker 49:09
Which, which one the sailboat? Oh, okay. So after about 15 years, there's a wooden boat. And I kept it out of the mooring all the time. In behind walfish Spit. I mean, first I kept it in, I would have in the bay and people item, but then when I moved back to Salzburg, and I kept it in near the sailing club. And so it was always out in the weather. So every year it got harder and harder to bring it up to feeling respectable. You know, fixing up the paint the varnish it had so much paint and varnish and bright decks and everything. And then I met Annie and we, we realized that we we went on a few sailing ships you Other but we realized that we just couldn't have both a house and garden and an orchard and build onto the house. And we weren't on the ocean anymore. And every time there was a storm, I'd have to go down and make sure it was okay. It became more of a burden. And a lot of people find that with boats that the happiest day is when they get rid of. And so basically, we gave it away. I mean, Steve was still technically an auditor, but he wasn't really interested because he had this bigger boat. And so it was up to me really, I just, we found somebody, we found a couple of brothers who knew their stuff, and we're going to really rebuild it again. So we gave it to them, and they rebuilt it, and it's still around somewhere because it's then been passed on other people have bought and sold it and, you know, people have lived on it in Fulford and you know, I haven't seen it now in years, but it was around at least until recently still being sailed. Hopefully it's still out there. Okay, thank you.

Unknown Speaker 51:11
Thanks for coming. Thank you for coming. And we'll see you next month and they're seeing coffee and then oh,