Salt Spring Island Archives

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Audio

Goodrich Sisters

Memories of Vesuvius

Interviewed by
Mary Williamson
28 April 1977

Audiotape transcription Oct. 25, 2013
Transcription corrections Nov. 4, 2013

8HeineckyPatterson.mp3

manual - Fred Martin

Oct. 25, 2013, corrected Nov. 4, 2013

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Mary:The date is April the 28th, 1977. My name is Mary Williamson and the subject of this tape is Vesuvius. Being the closest point of Salt Spring to Vancouver Island, Vesuvius was one of the earliest settlements and it still has quite a different character. It’s a cluster of small, summery houses which rise above the warm waters of the public beach. There are four short streets, each containing perhaps half a dozen houses. One of these, Goodrich Street, was my first home on Salt Spring. It’s very fitting and a great pleasure for me to be sitting in the spacious living room of the Heinekey Farm with the Goodrich sisters. Ruth Goodrich has been Ruth Heinekey for many years now and her sister, Iris Pattison, has recently returned here after a 30 year absence.

Now I just want to establish the different voices of these two and then I'm going to bow out and let Ruth and Iris just talk about their reminiscences of Vesuvius going back as far as they can and, coming from their father’s memory too, and then bringing us up to date with perhaps some of the characters who are still living here. Iris, you have been away how long?

Iris:Approximately 30 years. We came back two years ago and have built next-door to Ruth in the Bay.

Mary:Actually on the same property.

Iris:Yes, on the original Goodrich property. When it was divided, we saved a lot from it and kept it all these years.

Mary:And Ruth I have known for the 7 years that I have lived here. She was a marvelous neighbor to us when we first arrived and I have a very warm and special place in my heart for her. So I want to thank you, Ruth, for allowing us to do this in your living room and now just to introduce yourself so that we can hear your voice too.

Ruth:Well, as a Heinekey, I have been here for 37 years and all of my life I have lived here except for one year that was war service with George. We travelled around the country and decided that it was better for me to stay put and raise kids here while he was away. Then on returning, we went farming but other than that my whole life has been spent here. Presumably the next stop will be Pioneer Village but this is where I plan to stay until then (laughing).

Mary:Now you have mentioned something that I'm quite sure you won't bring up again, so I'm going to now. You talked about raising kids, but in fact, you have raised a good many more than your own kids and I seem to remember hearing that you have helped to bring up 53 different people in your family and I want to get that on the record (laughing).

Ruth:Well, there have been 53 young people live with us, 5 of which we call our foster kids but of the 53, it’s just been the most fantastic experience and one I'd repeat any time if it come to repeating I would have no qualms about doing it again. It’s been a fun experience that not everybody’s been privileged to and it’s had its un-fun moments too (laughing).

Mary:Alright, now I'm going to turn the tape over to the two of you, so please carry on.

Iris:Thank you. I thought, Ruth, perhaps we could start with the Bittancourt that came to Vesuvius, probably the first people that came to Vesuvius and as dad used to know Mr. Bittancourt and talked with him, he passed on a lot of his early experiences to dad that he has repeated to you. Perhaps you could start from there.

Ruth:Well it seems that they were a Portuguese family that arrived on Salt Spring and particularly Vesuvius in their sloops and there’s many stories about them being shipwrecked and landed here but I don't think that was the truth. I think they saw an opportunity and embarked on it. The original Mr. Bittancourt had five sons and he built what was always known as the Lodge, wasn’t it? Originally, it was a store cum saloon, post office, what have you ...

Mary:Where was The Lodge?

Ruth:Right at Vesuvius Wharf it was latterly known as Hotel Vesuvius. It had many and varied owners. It was idle for years, in fact we called it the haunted house, didn't we?

Iris:Oh, yes, we were certain ...

Ruth:It was brave kid that could run through the front room and we weren't very brave (laughs). We were less brave, if my dad found out we were doing it so ... These famous Bittancourt had coal mines and copper mines over excavations for the same, a coal mine over in Dock Bay. On the map, you'll find that as Duck Bay, but originally that was known as Dock Bay because it was so sheltered that’s where the sloops used to anchor.

Iris:We used to call it just The Creek.

Ruth:Well, it was St. Mary’s Outlet.

Iris:St. Mary’s Outlet is what it was.

Ruth:Which was reasonably good fishing.

Iris:They used to, even Lorrie Mouat used to get his coal from the beach years ago just by waiting till the low tide and [crosstalk 00:06:06].

Ruth:The sea just ran right out into the [crosstalk 00:06:05]. The sea went out and this was in the '40s, he was still [crosstalk 00:06:09].

Ruth:It was not a good quality, but if it was usable and there are copper [cribs 00:06:14] all along this coast and definitely along, right opposite on Vancouver Island and in our great wisdom, we thought that it was wells because they were all cribbed down. But we found out later that they had been excavating for copper and that there is an abundance there but it’s just too expensive to do anything with it. I think Beaver Point has its copper deposits as well but it’s just not high grade enough to be economical to do anything about it. Of course, those old birds, they probably could make a nickel where nobody else could anyway, probably kept it too (laughs).

His idea of keeping his five sons busy and out of his saloon. I mean, he didn't mind making money off other people but certainly not off his sons. It was to keep them busy and one of his major projects was fence building, woodcutting, breakwater making, all these things that had no beginning, no end. In the back of our property from whom my dad bought, from Bittancourt is about five miles of snake fences that go nowhere, have no fields, no nothing. When asked about this, he said; Well, how the hell else you going to keep five boys busy. [Inaudible 00:07:36], there’s cords of wood out there. Someone said; What did you cut it for? Was it for boats, or ships, or what? He said; No! It kept them out of the pub, this is it. How he had the authority to make five sons do this day after day is something that the rest of us would sure like to have known. That’s an authority none of us had.

Iris:Well he brought quite a few things to the Bay in the way of agriculture, too, didn't he?

Ruth:Well, he’s responsible for the orchards that are in the Bay, plus our juniper trees which every authority will tell you that there’s two kinds and in BC, some in the interior, some on the coast and there’s only the two kinds but these are quite different and the only place on Salt Spring that you find them naturally is in this area, and if you find them somewhere else, they've been transplanted from here. I think these apple orchards, they have varieties that just are not heard of anywhere else in BC. It’s a pity that no one sort of propagated them more.

Iris:Well he brought the junipers from Portugal [crosstalk 00:08:48]. They came winter end, yes. So this was a completely new type of tree that was introduced here by him.

Ruth:It’s quite different to the normal juniper and they seem to get just so big and then they deplete themselves and die off.

Iris:Well in the very early days, didn't they have a wharf at Vesuvius that regular boats stopped at...

Ruth:Yeah, the CPR boats stopped in totally around the island, I think it was nine wharfs and there’s no roads, they stopped at the watercourses and Vesuvius was a regular port of call.

Iris:I think one of the early boats that I remember was the old Otter though there were earlier, I think the Iroquois and all those aerial boats called in. The Otter was due was, say, on Thursday but if it got here by Friday night so, well, so what and if it got back to Vancouver by Monday that was even a bigger miracle. But it did get there and that was the early transportation. In our life, I think perhaps there was the other like jitneys to Crofton and to Westholme and down by the train into Victoria but we certainly never traveled that way. It was always boat. And I don't think there was too much commerce that went from Vesuvius because the product part of the Island’s economy went from Fernwood. But, here I think it was just a matter of survival.

Mary:Now, what about the quarry, Ruth? That’s another major project or has been in the Bay area.

Ruth:Well, it seems to me that, and this was Harry Caldwell had told me this, that that started in uh, 1886 I think. Which is about the beginning of the Lodge time. And that is how the Mouat, and the Maxwells, and the Caldwells came to Island. According to Harry, the Caldwells brought them all. Maybe the other people will say it was the other way around, but the Maxwells were the skippers on the barges and the boats [crosstalk 00:11:07].

Iris:These were the barges that took the quarry.

Ruth:The masons that cut the rock and this is a particular type of sandstone that does not deteriorate when it’s exposed to the air and they could barge it from, it’s about a quarter of a mile down the coast from where we are now. And they could take that to places by barge that there was no other transportation and it got as far south as San Francisco. People have seen a plaque on the library that was built there stating just this, and that is 1886, plus the causeway in front of the Parliament Buildings in Victoria and Ogden Point breakwater and part of Wharf Street. This will be argued because it’s all granite now, but that is the original and there obviously is money in [inaudible 00:11:58] or better. They've changed that face but the original rock is rock from down here and it’s a particularly fascinating type of mining; no powder, no nothing, just rows of holes that they filled with chisels and then banged them in and the rock broke square. This was the whole value of that particular type. And even now there’s the remains of the slag jetties that went out into the water where the barges came in. There’s drums that winched it up and down wherever it had to be winched because there was no other form of power.

And the most fascinating is the remains of the cabins that the workmen lived in. There’s like a fireplace at one end of an obvious cabin and a Dutch oven; the log part, since, rotted away. The treasures that was around there that we very foolishly left thinking ...

Iris:Thousands of whiskey bottles.

Ruth:I don't think they drank water, they couldn't have drank water. I'm not too sure what they ate (laughs) but certainly their fluids were all out of a bottle. But there were like 10 gallon washtub types of things that were all hand, I guess, manufactured because they were riveted and the dates were stamped in, not written on. We left there simply because we enjoyed looking at them and my dad figured; Well, anyone else would do the same. But no one else valued them and they just used them for targets.

Iris:Those lights, for instance, the lanterns...

Ruth:Yes, there were these old fashioned isinglass storm lanterns and they were a little collapsed but quite distinguished and we hung them in the trees thinking they were such fascinating objects only to find they were blasted full of holes. And old shoes with hand cut brads that kept the leather on them. All these fascinating things that people would have valued beyond anything and we felt leaving them there was the best thing you could do, well it wasn't. All the bottles got broken. There was literally hundreds of bricks that no one seems to know why they were there but they think perhaps it was where the forge room was for sharpening all these bits. And I guess there’s about ten of these fireplaces still in evidence. So, of course, people find the rocks fascinating and swipe them for patios and what have you ...

Mary:What type of person worked on the quarry, Ruth?

Ruth:Well, if you talk to someone that’s been on the Island ten minutes, he'll tell you they were Italian masons but they weren't. They were presumably Scottish masons like Mouats, Caldwells, Maxwells; they're obviously not Italians. The earliest ones, that is. Well latterly, we're told that after 1900 there was a re-growth of use for that quarry and a contractor was in there and he had a crew of East Indians in there. This caused lots of consternation because they had to get fresh milk and Des Crofton [?] tells us that he and his dad used to bring the fresh milk out every Saturday for these settlements. But it could only have been very short lived; I don't think they were there for any particular time.

Iris:Now another industry that was in the Bay area, Ruth, was the tie mill that was in the, I suppose it’s the creek bottom from St. Mary’s Lake.

Ruth:I think it’s called Duck Creek, that’s not what we called it, but I think that’s what it’s known as now. Anyway, these were the portable Singer sawmills that cut railroad ties. It seems that at that particular time it would be ...

Iris:This would be the mid-'20s because I was quite small and I remember [crosstalk 00:16:17].

Ruth:Everybody worked in the tie mill, even our crippled dad worked in a tie mill. He drove a horse (laughs). On Saturdays, we could go over and take his lunch to him but he shouldn't have been working there but he was. Bill Evans was one of their original teamsters and they had a ... Oh, gosh, well I have to remember the name of that truck that Mr. Luney drove that was [inaudible 00:16:43] because he couldn't get his truck up the hill one way, he'd turn it around and back it up.

Iris:Mr. Luney was quite a character, he actually later in years lived up in Cranberry and he was absolutely and completely stone deaf and his wife used to get so cross at him that she would write him notes. And when he was reading that at her he would just crunch them all up and throw them out. He wouldn't even bother reading her notes so she can never get her anger across to him because he was frustrated at every turn.

Ruth:But his ability to drive a car was absolutely phenomenal and they always said if he couldn't get it up one way, he got it up another. When he ran out of gas he swore at it and it went. (laughs) It had no choice (laughing). Some of that is a little debatable, I guess.

Iris:After the tie mill, I imagine Chaplain’s chicken ranch that they had was probably one of the biggest industries in the Bay.

Ruth:Oh yes. That was, well, it would be the area from the main road right through to Goodrich Road. He had literally thousands of birds, [unclear 00:18:02] stock that would ship literally all over the world. I think one of his biggest markets was South America, and Hong Kong, and places like that. It was egg production, as such, but basically it was for breeding stock.

Iris:You remember the Chinese help he had there, Ruth? (laughs)

Ruth:That we just loved dearly because he loved our cats, he fed our cats and then he ate our cats (laughing).

Iris:We didn't find this out till after several very plump cats disappeared from his doorstep. He used to keep them tied with a little collar and rope to his doorstep. Then that cat would be gone and he would want another kitten from whenever we had. We thought he was marvelous, he looked after our animals so well.

Ruth:Anyway, he was kind of a dear old chap, too. They had several different partners in that and then I guess it was Depression that sort of put the skids on that and various ... Mostly one partner went to Victoria, one stayed here, and one went back to England didn’t they. The business, as such, depleted and ...

Iris:Who was the chap that Inglis' bought from them. They were the place that came right up to our boundary.

Ruth:Well that was, I think, Langley was the name. Isn't that Langley Road? Yes, that’s right. They were there, I never remember them, they were long gone in my memory. All those houses, I believe were all up that road that’s now the corner one and the one they moved out of the Bay; that was all built by Bittancourt. It’s pre-fab, he bought the lumber in Victoria and cut them all on the barge on the way up so that when he got here, all he had to do was assemble them. If they think pre-fabing is new (laughs), they didn't know Mr. Bittancourt (laughing).

Iris:When Mr. and Mrs. Inglis decided to make an autocourt out of their chicken ranch, do you remember the, when they made what they called the Community Kitchen out of the Brooder house? [Crosstalk 00:20:15] Everybody always to it as the Brooder house and poor Mrs. Inglis used to get into an absolute state because here were these guests who would be coming and we'd say; Oh, well, they're going over to the Brooder house instead of the Community Kitchen.

Ruth:It was that same family was the most fantastic neighbors you could ever get. It’s really a touch of history, she sat with my mother when we were born and then she sat with me when my kids were born. You know, the kind of neighbors that probably only pioneering days will ever know because the need was so great. They needed each other so much and I don't know. They were quite a family, they had four boys and there were three of us, and the ages corresponded.

Iris:Fertile minds.

Ruth:Those kids. They were so bad, that you could only be proud of them. And I mean this wasn't naughty bad, it was just disobedient bad, but they had all bikes from our famous Aunt Honor and the booms used to be tied in Vesuvius. The little devils would get out and ride on the booms, on these bikes. Well there was broken arms, broken legs, half drowned kids being hauled out of the water all the time. It was, we didn't have bikes but I can't imagine ever having the nerve to try something like that. It’s seems to me if somebody asked to dive the kids' bike off the wharf they'd fly down the wharf and go over, but they all survived [inaudible 00:21:47]. Like sending a kid to play in traffic; go play on the wharf sort of thing (laughs). They survived, but the thing that they had that we didn't have was Aunt Honor that had a good job.

Iris:She always brought them mounds of goodies at Easter.

Ruth:Their Christmas parcels were fantastic, so we all adopted Aunt Honor. Iris and I’s best claim to Aunt Honor was that she'd send her clothing to Mrs. Inglis which was no more than what it always was, hand downs. When Mrs. Inglis got a new parcel, we could hardly wait to see what was in it that she was going to give to us which was usually navy blue bloomers that none of us wanted but mother thought were so practical. Aunt Honor wasn't a favorite when this happened but when sends a blouse that we liked; Well, she’s a great person.

Mary:What about the Indians, Ruth, that used to fish for Bluebacks usually in the winter months here? They were marvelous people too.

Ruth:They came from Kuper Island, which is always a bit of jest here because our fisherman always go up around to Kuper and Kent Island to fish but in the early days, the Kuper Island Indians always came down around Vesuvius to fish. There could have been more than one reason for that. We never did know their name, this family. They had twelve kids, we do know that and the father would come in and sit on my dad’s bed and converse with him. But he'd send the old lady and all the kids out fishing. They had a dreadful boat and they towed all these dugouts down and they'd all go fishing (laughs). He'd come in and have tea with my dad, then he'd go down on the rock and give the most god awful screech and they'd all come in from fishing. Well, mum would make them cocoa. He didn't like cocoa, but he got tea with dad. But the kids and the old lady would come in and have this cocoa...

Iris:Cocoa and buns.

Ruth:We called her 'Ad-enough actually and that was the whole thing.

Iris:Tell them how she got the name of 'Ad-enough.

Ruth:Yes. She'd come in and have this cocoa and mother would say; Will you have some more? 'Ad-enough. And you say right down the line to twelve kids; Will you have some more? 'Ad-enough, you see (laughs). We never called her anything else but 'Ad-enough. 'Ad-enough came one day and there was no kids with her and she ate all she could and she'd have enough. Mum says; Where’s all your kids? Them’s all got mumps (laughs). I guess if she told her this beforehand, she wouldn't have got the cocoa (laughs).

Iris:We used to have apples. Dad was a great one for, in the Bay of course, there was just hundreds of apple trees and we used to have a root cellar that bulged. An awful lot of the Indians came and traded apples for fish. We got all of our fish that way. They'd probably bring three or four Bluebacks and dad would give them half a sack of apples.

Ruth:The bigger the apple, the better. The old cooking apples that looked like a balloon, well they were just prized but their big prize were pears which they called “Bears”.

Iris:Any bears?

Ruth:And they'd say; You have bear? We have fish. And this was bartering between 'Ad-enough bears and apples (laughing).

Iris:Ruth, you should tell them about Mrs. Inglis’s little boy that was burnt that time.

Ruth:This goes back to things that people are trying so hard to recapture and are missing the boat a 100%. This little chap had a very bad burn on his shoulder and it was oh so infected and inflamed and he was a very tiny little boy and he was suffering badly with this. 'Ad-enough arrived one day and she took one look at it and said; I'll be back. She went up above the Lodge and along the beach and she'd come back with a handful of real gucky looking stuff, mostly seaweed. She patted it in her hands a few times and slapped it on this kid’s burn and put a patch over it and said now you leave it for three days and don't touch it. Then, of course, Mrs. Inglis was a nurse so she nearly died at this gunk going on her kid’s shoulder but three days later the inflammation is all gone and it’s healing beautifully. They never thought to ask her what she put on, now, you'd give your eyeteeth to know what it was.

Iris:In those days, before antibiotics and that, Ruth and I can both remember all the treatments. Mother always put on red poultices, which we find out later was the start of penicillin. If we had blood poisoning in a finger, we soaked it for probably days in hot water just in a ... And I mean hot. It was changed every ten or fifteen minutes. For impetigo which we got off the barnacles on the beach it was sulfur and lard; and that cured better and as good as any antibiotics that they have today.

Ruth:It worked, anyway.

Iris:Of course, living here too, we had the most fantastic storms. And our house, being a very old farmhouse, it’s a wonder it lived through it.

Ruth:More, a badly built old farmhouse (laughing).

Iris:You remember the time, Ruth, we looked out and this was a dreadful storm and here was this house sailing past the rocks. It was one of the Japanese places up in the canal and the high tide was there and it had just literally blown it out. It went sailing past and I suppose eventually it disintegrated and the Japanese were furiously taking out nets and things that they had stored in it.

Ruth:An awful lot of Japanese was being fed very little [inaudible 00:27:58] (laughing). That same storm was probably one of the funniest things that ever happened on this farm. We had a chicken house on this side of the ridge and the wind picked all the chickens up and blew them over the hill into the other valley. These things were sailing over like footballs, not flying, not doing anything and they're not the brightest looking critter in the world and to see them sailing without flying (laughing). It took about three days to find them all.

Iris:Dad came to Salt Spring about 1918, I think, didn't he, Ruth?

Ruth:Yeah.

Iris:He was a First World War veteran and really very badly wounded and he brought mother, who was straight from England, from London, and dropped her in the middle of Vesuvius. It was isolated here, and really isolated.

Ruth:No one lived here, then. There were houses, but nobody lived here. No phone, no light, no water, no nothing. Mother was a little person, like 90 pounds soaking wet sort of thing and I think she'd never seen a cow till she hit Salt Spring. I think the isolation and the quietness could have just about done her in, really, except that they got to love the place so much they wouldn't have parted with for anything. But I think the first two or three years must have been absolutely beyond endurance by some standards.

Iris:I know the electricity and that never came to Salt Spring until 1937, I think. We had no refrigeration, no electric light, and we ate by the season, didn't we Ruth?

Ruth:Yeah.

Iris:In the summer, which wouldn't be approved, we ate nothing but venison all summer. In the fall, we ate nothing but venison. In the winter we ate cod and salmon because they were plentiful.

Ruth:To think of it, we ate nothing but venison (laughs) most of the time.

Iris:Dad used to shoot. Mainly, you see, the only light that we had really that was manmade was dad’s pit lamp and flashlight which had five cells, it was about that long. He would go out at night and aim the flashlight over his head down his gun barrel and hit a pair of eyes and that deer was dead just that quickly. This is how ... We ate everything, we didn't waste one morsel of that meat. We ate it, and ate it, and ate it, didn't we Ruth?

Ruth:Dad was lethal with guns and he never wasted ammunition, that was expensive. Anything they shot at died, that’s all there was to it. They used to pit lamp the coon on the beach because you could get about, well, 75 cents for a skin if you were lucky. This particular night, we had rowed in around to Vesuvius to go hunting this coon and he puts the light up the tree and there’s the eyes and he shot but nothing fell out of it. This is absolutely unheard of, anyway, he told us to move the boat and we did and it was two stars shining through the branches and he'd done his best to shoot the middle (laughing). Hunting was over then, that was so absolutely embarrassing to have this happen. We came home, that was the end of the hunt. (laughs)

It really was a matter of survival on the ... We were raised on our dad’s military pension. We were so lucky because of this military pension but nobody knew it was $7 a month. (laughs) When the season would be like around now, it would be getting just about time when the chickens didn't need grain and he'd, Dad didn't want to buy anymore; so he used to send us kids over to the beach to dig clams to supplement the chickens food. You'd throw these clams into the chicken yard, and they'd eat them, and you could eat eggs or you could eat clams but damned if you could tell the difference between them sometimes (laughing). But it was the original recycle, I guess.

Iris:Outdoor plumbing was another joy.

Ruth:Well, everybody’s been trapped in the outdoor plumbing but if you made a quick dash before you went to bed with your ...

Iris:The bug. You better tell them what a bug is.

Ruth:You take a jam tin and you cut ...

Iris:But turn it sideways.

Ruth:Turn it sideways and poke a candle up through the bottom, and put a bail over the top and keep it out of the wind or else it goes out but it takes ...

Iris:It takes a good wind to blow it out.

Ruth:Anyway, you would fly for the guhooey and then have your bug go out, so there you were trapped until somebody rescued you (laughs).

Iris:Ruth and I used to make this trek every night, about 8:00 and it'd be pitch dark, and windy, and stormy and we'd get inside the little outhouse, which was a two seater I think. Then we'd start thinking that maybe there was a cougar outside and we used to stay in there for, I don't know how long, but by the time we got back mother would be so mad at us because we'd be getting to bed but no way we would get out of that door because we were sure there was a cougar. And then when we did, we'd run (laughs) ... Break the four-minute mile coming back to the house.

Ruth:This pit lamping bit, I don't imagine anybody in those early days ate any other meat but what they ... I'm quite sure they didn't.

Iris:No, everybody lived on venison, practically.

Ruth:There are some great tales about the various game wardens that weren't plentiful and made a darn good point of not coming to island, it was safer that way and the police didn't bother too much. You got pretty crafty, it was never the crime shooting the deer, it was getting caught shooting the deer and believe me, you didn't get caught; that’s all there was to it. Not if you wanted to eat meat.

Iris:People in those days really just hunted to eat. They didn't, there was no game shooting, there was no fantastic deer hunting during hunting season because they hunted deer ...

Ruth:It made little difference.

Iris:It made no difference whether it was hunting season or not, people just shot the deer that they needed for food.

Ruth:Later, when the neighbors started to come. We'd be, we wouldn't be teenagers but we'd be a little, getting on to it that we had a magistrate come to live in the Bay. Dad still had to shoot deer but he was a little reluctant to be obvious about it, so he used to send Iris and I over to talk to this guy til’ we heard the shot. As soon as we heard the shot, we had to come home and help bring this beast in (laughs). Anyway, the idea was we would keep everybody so occupied they wouldn't hear the shot. If he did, he never let on.

Iris:Of course, in the summer when we had summer visitors, they would say; Oh my, what’s this meat? So then we'd say; Oh well, it’s veal. Either that or it’s goat.

Ruth:We didn't have goats by the way.

[Crosstalk 00:35:28]

Iris:Either veal or goats (laughs). They thought it was marvelous, they never realized what they were eating.

Ruth:Nobody asked too many questions, anyway. Other industry, or whatever, your agriculture enterprise that was in the Bay was that violet farm.

Iris:Oh, that was beautiful.

Ruth:That was where Dr. Cox’s place is and all that. It’s five acres of solid violets. Then I guess they didn't make enough money off that, so they also had large chicken buildings there. Which one compensated for the other, the violets smelt beautiful, I can't say that those chickens did (laughing). That was a return, a settler, what do they call it?

Iris:They were soldier settlements in those ....

Ruth:They farmed that for quite few years and then they went back to England. Everybody seemed ...

Iris:During the Depression, they went back.

Ruth:They went back. The [inaudible 00:36:25], I'd guess we'd be, what, five and six, something like that. Those were the days when the whales went through here. Now this has to be mentioned, Mary, because it would take three days for the herds of whale to go through these narrows. I mean night and day, that channel was solid with them.

Iris:It was black, literally black with whale.

Ruth:They'll tell you now that killer whales are not aggressive and all like that, it’s only because there’s so few of them. Because believe me, the fights that went on out there was absolutely epic. No fisherman would stay; the Japanese, or the Indian fisherman, anybody-they got to shore fast when the schools went through. The natural, no, it’s the other way around; the natural enemy of the sea lion is the whale and they would come up on the beach and they would roar their heart out but they wouldn't stay in the water. You could get within ten or fifteen feet of these enormous bull sea lions and he'd roar at you and sort of make lunges, but he would do anything but go back in that water. They would sit on the rocks for as long as the whale went through, which sometimes would be three days. You got to know the old lumps.

Iris:The different ones (laughing), yes, they had different, some of them had different ... Their skins were different.

Ruth:They were some that were much more aggressive than the others. The schools, particularly the black fish, there were others, weren't they? There were other whales that went through but it was mostly killers than went through. In the spring they seemed to go north and then in the fall, they'd be becoming back and they'd have the young with them. That was really something, you'd see this enormous fin and then the little fins ...

Iris:Beside them, yes. Of course, we used to as children, well we started walking three miles to schools, to central. At least we always said it was three, I think it’s since shrunk to two and half or two.

Ruth:The roads are a lot straighter now (laughs).

Iris:Maybe this is it. Our actual entertainment as children was mainly in row boats on the beach and Ken, the oldest brother, his main Saturday occupation was catching octopus off the rocks and some of them were literally huge.

Ruth:Yeah. We've caught nine feet legs on them. (laughs)

Iris:So that would make it up to about a 20 foot octopus ...

Ruth:At the pain of saying the word wrong, the tentacles were nine feet long. It’s better to call them legs, I think. That beach, I'm sure, was just literally a playground.

Iris:Yes, it was.

Ruth:We spent ...

Mary:When you started farming then, Ruth, that was about 1946, was it?

Ruth:Yeah, about that. That was about three cows, a truck, and $125 dollars I think; no barn, no nothing. Before we finished, it was 30 cows and a couple of trucks ...

Iris:Two milking machines.

Ruth:Three (laughs).

Iris:Three milking machines.

Ruth:Of course, the thing is to farm on Salt Spring, you need as much equipment to farm 70 acres as you would to farm hundreds of acres. You needed the convenience of it which defeats any project.

Mary:I think some of your experiences on that milk run are absolutely marvelous.

Ruth:For the want of a better word, devastating, I think (laughing).

Iris:Ruth and George used to start delivering at 4:00 in the morning and of course nobody was up then or if they were up, there would quite often be some fantastic arguments and different ... The wrong cars were parked in front of the wrong houses quite often.

Ruth:This is the loveliest part of it because the population was considerably smaller and everybody was known by their car, you know. You'd see the wrong cars at the wrong gate (laughs) at 4:00 in the morning and you'd go into the village and say; I know where you were last night (laughs). They either hated you or else they were very nice to you, whichever they figured would do the best good.

Mary:You should tell them about your trips with the truck in the snow, the early trips you had. It would just break the heart of a normal person, I think.

Ruth:I don't know, it’s so funny now, but at the time you'd sit in the middle of the road and I simply will not go another inch. I think our epic trip was out Trip road, 5:00 one morning, and the snow plows had been out and they'd plowed the road out and made right angle turns into all the driveways. Turning the van around was just next door to impossible without a lot of two inch jiggling and George was never the most patient man at that hour in the morning. It was; Get out and tell me where I am. So you'd smack the side of the truck, whichever side he was suppose to turn to. It took 30 turns to get him turned around at Trelfords of all places.

I guess he got so engrossed in this turning that when he did get back onto the road, he took off and left me on the road, you see. And I'm thinking, well as deaf as he is if I yell, I'll wake up Trelfords but I'll never get George’s ears and I'm sitting there. He’s gaily going on off the center and wondering why the old bag isn't answering him with all these questions and I'm not even in the trunk. He has to come all the way back, he had to go all the way to central to turn around, comes back and the same damn thing happens all over again. This turning ... I said; Enough, you go and leave me in the middle of the road again but anyway, he didn't (laughs). It seemed to me that it was, the last thing you needed on the milk run was sensitive feelings because particularly it was always snow weather. For a few winters, we had some dandies. He'd start laboring up a hill as; Get in the back. Meaning the extra weight was needed and you'd get up the hill or the particular bad spot. But he never remembered to stop and let you get back in the car and you'd be sailing through Ganges sitting in the back of the truck like a prized spaniel or something.

It was about this time, we'd even started taking a thermos with us to sort of break the monotony. 6 o’clock in the morning, when cars are going to the ferry, and here’s the Heinekeys having coffee on the side of the road. They go by, they're wondering what’s with them people.

Iris:You're drinking so early in the morning. (laughing)

Ruth:It seemed to me, we were always on the road long before the road crew was. I don't know why we didn't wait, except that if it was cold weather and you waited too long, the milk froze and rose above the top of the bottles. I don't know about you, but not many people are going to buy milk that’s exposed two inches to the air. So we got it out there or we didn't. They'd say; Well, why do you bother? For the simple reason, if you don't get it out, you don't get paid for it and that was rather an important part of our economy was to get that money at the end of the month which not always came in and many times it was “Well we overdid it at Christmas, so you'll have to wait” or “We're planning to go away for a holiday so you won't mind waiting”. If you did mind, you wouldn't dare say so; not to them. We had lots to say about it but preferably when they weren't there. Our best things were said when nobody was there. It was good but I don't suppose anybody in their right mind would repeat it, particularly in the early morning.

Mary:I wanted to hear a little more about the Model T that your father had.

Ruth:Oh, that thing. We spent one winter in the Cranberry following these particular tie mills. I guess it’s when we were all coming home that ... I don't know, everything was such an occasion. Mother would get in the front and one by one we would get into the back and everybody would be settled. Then father would crank it up and we were on our way back and we went over that bank that’s just past the old, depending which way you're going, if you're coming down from the Cranberry, it’s just past what’s now the Gosset’s farm up there, Foxglove Farm. I think it was about a 60, 70 foot bank which we went right to the bottom and then rolled over, nobody was hurt. Two big Swedes packed the car back up to the road and we drove it home. It always had a bad turn to the right, you never knew where it was going because it angled that way and it scared the gee-whiz out of people that were coming towards you, particularly if you made a left hand turn looking like you were going right (laughs).

Iris:Of course, it happened several times that you would be driving down the road and look ahead of you and here you would be your front wheel tearing along the road ahead of you. The car didn't, it stayed up even on, it didn't flop like a car would nowadays. It just was ...

Ruth:We knew better, probably (laughing).

Iris:A little [inaudible 00:45:54].

Ruth:There’s a thing that you're forgetting, that mother was in that car.

Iris:Yes, mother didn't drive but she was very vocal.

Ruth:I don't think any car could have survived mother’s instructions.

Mary:Now, Ruth, do you know of any particular funny incidents that happened? I'm thinking of Mrs. Inglis’s store.

Ruth:These are local people, a reasonably newcomer to the Bay and as tight as a tick; he just didn't spend a nickel if he could borrow, that is. But he went to the store and bought a cake of soap for 3 cents and then when he got home, he found that he had a little piece of soap. So he brought it back and said he had only washed on it once, so would you mind taking it back. I don't know whether she did or not, she probably did.

Iris:Of course, she did.

Mary:Perhaps more driving stories too. Other people driving you, Ruth?

Ruth:These are new modern ones in a modern little Austin, when I needed a ride to Ganges very badly and Margaret Kyle, one of our, a very sweet old lady and our very valued neighbor too decided to drive me and ... You start at 90 miles standing start and you fly into the ditch over the white line, into the ditch, all the way to Ganges and when you hit the biggest hill, she says; I never drive very fast, you know, I have no brakes. About this time, you're either in a state of total collapse or you're hysterical.

Mary:Ruth, tell us about the team that were brought back from Crofton that night they'd been out [crosstalk 00:47:47].

Ruth:This goes back even before my dad’s time. I guess it had to be, it couldn't be basketball because that’s a reasonably new game isn't it? It had to be a soccer team that had been to Duncan to play soccer. They used to get a launch to come from Maple Bay over to Vesuvius, pick up the team, and take them back, and then they'd play their game. By the time they got back here it was getting into the wee small hours of the morning. Anyway, a highly excited team arrive and the launch lets them off at the rocks, and they all clamor ashore and find they'd been left on the farthest island of the point and they walked the island till morning wondering where the hell the road had gone to.

Mary:Then there was a rather serious note, which I think we should record here. Which was when you found that family.

Ruth:A man, and his wife, and two youngsters had been clam digging and Booth Canal and they tried to go home in the face of a storm and didn't make it, and washed in on the beach here. Actually, the storm, it was about now, it was in May that this happened. Why it was so cold but it was a bitterly cold wind that unexpectedly came up and three of them washed in and the father didn't turn up for a month or so.

Iris:What time of the morning? You were looking out of the window and ...

Ruth:My habit is to look at the beach first thing in the morning and there’s a bucket on the beach so I went down to retrieve it and practically fell over these mother and two children that were washed ashore.

Iris:For one thing, in this particular channel which is Stuart Channel, it’s one of the most treacherous areas in as much as the storms can get up ... Years ago we didn't have weather forecasting and they could literally get up, in ten minutes it would be calm, and within ten minutes it would be a real, raging storm. If you happened to be, I think Ruth remembers this one, we were ... I was 7 and Ruth was 8 and we were caught out in a storm. We started out in September and the weather was beautiful, mother was with us and this speaks very highly of Ruth’s ability with a boat.

Ruth:And desperation probably.

Iris:Perhaps.

Ruth:Dad and Ken, our brother, had gone hunting over at the Cranberry Outlet and we were to go and pick them up, I can't remember what the time was to be, must have been mid afternoon and we were within ten minutes of getting to that beach and four hours later we still hadn't made it ashore.

Iris:We finally went with the wind and came up on Laird’s beach, which was the Rainbow Beach camp, it was an autocourt. But Ruth rowed that time, I don't know how she did it, she was thirty ... It certainly was a life and death struggle for her.

Ruth:I don't imagine you had much choice, you were there. It makes heroes out of a lot of people who didn't plan to be heroes. We were to go over there by ourselves and at the last minute, mom decided to come with us, and I don't know if that was good or bad.

Iris:Well, I think it was in a way because she could at least have an adult’s outlook on things but she had just recently recovered from a very serious operation and she could have been no help as far as [crosstalk 00:51:23].

Ruth:Physically she was no help.

Iris:Physically, no.

Ruth:She probably stroked us in. One other thing, when these herds of whales would go through, the population of whales and sea lions was absolutely stupendous. You couldn't, it’s unbelievable the hundreds and hundreds of these animals that were here. The big sea lion rookeries were up at Cape Mudge. They still are, but they're very minimal now. The Mounties in those days had nothing to do with civil policing at all, they were strictly federal and fisheries is federal. They would go up with the mounty boat and turn the machine guns on the rookeries to keep the population down. Just thousands of them and they had to be controlled. Cape Mudge isn't that far away and these beasts would float down and they've got about a half inch thick leather hide on them. So by the time they got down here, they were well and truly high but the leather would them together. Well, when they landed on the beach and they ruptured, it’s absolutely unbelievable and it would usually be in the summer.

Getting rid of these two ton beasts was always an epic. Sometimes, they'd take them out and try to sink them – well that’s an impossibility. Dad had a fantastic way of marshalling everything. You know, like; You kids get rid of that sea lion. We'd tow it out and hope it would get in the current that would take it somewhere else. But if it didn’t it just came back on the beach. These neighbor boys and ourselves, we'd tow these damn things out. One time we ran into a tug and tow going through, which had a big boom on it and we hooked this sea lion onto the end of the tow. It would take a little explaining in Vancouver why it had a dead sea lion on the end of it. The other thing was, you couldn't rid of them, there was no such thing as dynamiting them which didn't work anyway. We would tow more than one to Crofton and tye it to the wharf over there. The worst the Crofton people could do was let go of it. It would go in on their beach then. It wasn't a matter of eliminating the evidence or anything like that, it was just spreading it around a bit and if we didn't have the problem then Crofton did. They could do as they choose about it.

The other story of this same sort of thing was when the Laird’s originally came to the island, which had to be even, that would be in the early 1900s. They had a whale go up Booth Canal and smother itself in the mud up there. The Laird’s, this is when Toby, I think was 17 and his brother was a year or two older or younger; their solution was to dynamite the thing and get it into small pieces and that it would wash out with the tide. Being their age and everything else, they overestimated and they didn't blow the thing to pieces to go out with the tide; they merely blew it up into the trees. All summer they had this thing – you’d be walking through the woods and plat, there would go a batch of whale [inaudible 00:54:51]. They used to say; Pack a shovel, if you find a piece bury it. Well, how do you bury about a 40 ton whale? (laughs)

Iris:Ruth, I think you should tell that story about Sputnik, your cat. When you left it at the animal shelter and George thought perhaps, just perhaps, it might have come up the canal ...

Ruth:It escaped?

Iris:It had got loose.

Ruth:The only one that ever got out of [inaudible 00:55:20] was ... We went on our first holiday after we sold a herd and I thought we were going to Europe because I'd been given a present of matched luggage but we went to Barkerville and camped. We had to put the dog and the cat into the kennel and when we got home, we were gone two weeks and the day after we left, this crazy cat of ours escaped and we hadn't found it, at least two weeks later. But George got the real epic idea that the cat would find its way home, they always do but he'd go and help look for it. So he takes his gun ...

Iris:So it was hunting season, for one thing.

Ruth:Yeah, hunting season. And he walks straight through here which is two miles to the canal ...

Iris:Thinking he might see a bird you know, that he could shoot.

Ruth:You don't waste your time if you're in hunting country, you hunt, even if you're looking for the cat. He’s roaming through the bush; Here kitty, kitty, kitty and he meets Ben [Greeya? inaudible 00:56:16] who says; You must be awful mad at that cat to run through the bush with a gun. George is totally embarrassed, he didn't want to be caught calling kitty in the bush when he supposedly is hunting deers. The cat didn't come home, we found it in the graveyard about two weeks after we got home. So he had been on his own for a long time.

Iris:Alive, that is.

Ruth:Yeah. He was just wondering what took us long, I guess.

Mary:Well, I don't know how all this will come out on tape, but I've rarely spent such an enchanting and entertaining morning and I just want to thank you both very much indeed.

8_Goodrich-Sisters_Heinekey-Ruth_Patterson-Iris.mp3

otter.ai

20.01.2023

no

Unknown Speaker 0:00
The date is April the 28th 1977. My name is Mary Williamson. And the subject of this tape is Vesuvius being the closest point of Salt Spring to Vancouver Island. Vesuvius was one of the earliest settlements and it still has quite a different character. It's a cluster of small summery houses, which rise about the warm waters of the public beach. There are four short streets, each containing perhaps half a dozen houses. One of these Goodrich streets was my first home on salt spring. So it's fitting and a great pleasure for me to be sitting in the spacious living room of the hi Nikki farm with the Goodrich sisters. Ruth Goodrich has been with Hannah Kay for many years now. And her sister Iris Patterson, has recently returned here after 30 year absence. Now, I just want to establish the different voices of these two. And then I'm going to bow out and let Ruth grande Iris just talk about their reminiscences of Vesuvius going back as far as they can, and calling from their father's memory to then bringing us up to date with perhaps some of the characters who are still living here. Iris, you have been away how long?

Unknown Speaker 1:37
Approximately 30 years. We came back two years ago. And next door to loose in the bay. Actually on the same property. Yes, on the original Goodrich property when it was divided, we saved a lot from kept it all these years.

Unknown Speaker 1:56
And routes I have known for the seven years that I've lived here. She was a marvelous neighbor to us when we first arrived. And I have a very warm and special place in my heart for her. So I want to thank you for allowing us to do this in your living room. And now just introduce yourself so that we can hear your voice too.

Unknown Speaker 2:23
Well as a Jaime Gan been here for 37 years and born. All my life I've lived here except for one year that was war service with George we traveled around the country and decided that it was better for me to stay put and raise kids here while he was away than other and then on returning we went farming but other than that my whole life has been spent here. And presumably the next stop will be Pioneer Village.

Unknown Speaker 2:56
Now you have mentioned something that I'm quite sure you won't bring up again. So I'm going to now you talked about raising kids that in fact, you have raised a good many more than your own kids. And I seem to remember hearing that you have helped to bring out 53 Different people in your family. And I want to get that on the record.

Unknown Speaker 3:20
Well, there have been 63 Young people live with us five of which we call our foster kids. But of the 53 it's just been the most fantastic experience and one I'd repeat anytime it comes to repeating I would have no qualms about doing it again. It's been a fun experience that not everybody's been present. And it said it's unfair normal.

Unknown Speaker 3:52
Alright, now I'm going to turn the table over to the two of us. i Please carry on.

Unknown Speaker 3:57
Thank you. I thought Ruth perhaps we could start with the bitten cord that came to the movies, probably the first people that came to the facilities. And as dad used to know Mr. Betancourt and talk with him. He passed on a lot of his

Unknown Speaker 4:15
early experiences to dads that he has repeated to you perhaps you could start from there. Well, it seems that they were a Portuguese family that arrived on Saltspring protective Vesuvius in their slopes and there's many stories about them being shipwrecked and landed here but I don't think that was the truth. I think they saw an opportunity and embarked on as the the original. Mr. Betancourt had five sons and he built the wall it was always known as the lodge wasn't. Originally it was a store come flu, post office, what have you

Unknown Speaker 4:59
and Where was the launch right

Unknown Speaker 5:01
at Vesuvius dwarfs, what was latterly known as hotels or sylvius. It had many and very donors, it was idle for years. In fact, we call it a haunted house. It was a brief kid that could run through the front room. And we weren't. We're less brave as my dad found out, we were doing these famous bit and courts had coal mines and copper mines, or excavations for the same coal mine over in dark Bay. On the map, you'll find that his duck Bay, but originally that was known as Dark bay because it was so sheltered. That's where the slopes used to enter, where she used to call it just this the creek as well, it was St. Mary's Mary's outlet as well, which was reasonably good

Unknown Speaker 5:54
days to even Laurie Mort used to get his call from the beach years ago, just by waiting till the low time, as he seems went out. And this was in the 40s, he was still

Unknown Speaker 6:08
not a good quality, but it was usable. And there are copper cribs, all along this coast, and definitely long right opposite on Vancouver Island. And in our great wisdom, we thought that was wells because they're all crammed down. But we found out later that they had been excavating for copper, and there is an abundance there, but it's just too expensive to do anything with it. And I think beaver point has copper deposits as well. It's just not high grade enough to be economical to do anything about it. Because those old birds, they probably could make a nickel where nobody else could anyway, it's probably kept it to his idea of keeping his five sons busy and out of his saloon. I mean, he didn't mind making money off other people, but certainly not off his sons that was to keep them busy. And one of his major projects was fence building wood, cutting brake water, making all these things that had no beginning no end, in the back of our property from who my dad bought from. is about five miles of snake fences that go nowhere have no fields no nothing. And when asked about this, he said, Well, how the hell else you're going to keep five boys busy. And this is literally what there's cords of wood out there. And some civil What did you cut it for? Was it for boats or ships? Or what he said no, it kept them out of the pub. This is how he had the authority to make five sons do this day after dates is something that the rest of us would sure like to an authority we none of us have it. So he

Unknown Speaker 7:57
brought quite a few things to the bay in the way is agriculture.

Unknown Speaker 8:03
Well, he's responsible for the orchards that are in the base, plus our juniper trees, which every authority will tell you that there's two kinds in in BCS some of the interior, some on the coast. And there's only the two kinds, but these are quite different than the only place some Saltspring that you find them naturally is in this area. And if you find them somewhere else, they've been transplanted from here. He I think these apple orchards, they have varieties that just are not heard of anywhere else in BC. It's the pity that no one sort of propagated the more

Unknown Speaker 8:44
so he brought the junipers from Portugal. Oh, yes. They came with Ram. Yes, yeah. So this was a completely new type of tree that was introduced here by Hamilton's but

Unknown Speaker 8:55
it's quite different to the normal. Juniper made seem to get just so big and then they deplete themselves and die off. In the very early days didn't say have a wharf at facilities that regular boat stopped out. Yeah, these CPR boats stopped in totally Rounders island like it was nine wars and there's no roads they stopped at the watercourses and assumed this was a regular port of call. I think one of the early boats that I remember was the old otter though there were early I think the year a call and all those aerial boats call and the otter was do say on Thursday, but if it got here by Friday nights on well, so hot, if it got back to Vancouver by Monday, that was even a bigger miracle but it did get there and that was the early gratification as I in our life. I think perhaps there was other like get used to craft and then to westholme and down by the Train into Victoria. But we certainly never traveled that way. It was always boat. And I don't think there was too much commerce that went from this to this because that the product part of the island's economy went from Finland. Here, I think it was just a matter of survival.

Unknown Speaker 10:24
Now what about the quarry route? That's another major project or has been in the in the Bay Area?

Unknown Speaker 10:33
Well, it seems to me that that this was Harry cobbled up told me this that that started in the 1818 86, I think, which is about the beginning of the lodge time and that is how the modes and the Maxwell's and the Colville came to the island. According to Harry, the max call was bought them off. Maybe the other people will say it was the other way round, but the Max was where the skipper is on the barges in the moats and

Unknown Speaker 11:06
the barge with barges that took the quarry,

Unknown Speaker 11:07
or the Masons that cut the rock. And this is a particular type of sandstone that does not deteriorate when it's exposed to the air. And they could barge it from it's about a quarter of a mile down the coast from where we are now. And they could take that to places by barge that there was no other transportation and it got as far south as San Francisco. People have seen a plaque on the library that was built. They're stating justice and that is 1886 plus the causeway in front of the parliament buildings in Victoria and Ogden point breakwater and part of wharf Street, where all this will be argued because it's all a granite now, but that is the original and obviously his money and accessories are better. They've changed that face. But the original rock is brought from down here and it's a particularly fascinating point. Take the mining, no powder, no nothing just rows of holes that they filled with chisels and then bang them in the net in the rock book square. This was the whole value of that particular type. And even now there's the remains of the slag jetties that went out into the water where the barges came in. There's drums that went straight up and down wherever it had to be winch because there was no other form of power. And the most fascinating is the remains of the cabins that the workmen lived in. There's like a fireplace at one end of a novice cabin and a duck champion logged part since rotted away the treasures that was around there that we very foolishly left

Unknown Speaker 12:58
the same pieces of whiskey bottles,

Unknown Speaker 13:00
I don't need to drink water, I couldn't agree water not to serve what they eat. The certainty their fluids were all out of a bottle. But there were like 10 gallon washtub types of things that were all hand, I guess, manufactured because they were riveted and the dates were stamped in, not written on. And we left them there simply because we enjoyed looking at them. And my dad's figured, well, anyone else would do the same, but no one else value to them. And they just use them for targets.

Unknown Speaker 13:40
Those lights, for instance, the lanterns. They were these old

Unknown Speaker 13:43
fashioned eyes and glass storm lanterns. And they were little collapsed but quite distinguished and we hung them in the trees thinking they were such fascinating objects only to find they were blasted full of holes and old shoes with hand cut brands that kept the leather on them. All these fascinating things that people would have valued beyond anything and we felt leaving them there was the best thing you could do. Well, it wasn't all the bottles got broken. There was literally hundreds of bricks that no one seems to know why they were there. But they think perhaps it was where's the Forge room was for sharpening all these bits. And I guess it's about 10 of these fireplaces still in evidence. So of course people find the rock fascinating and swipe them for patios and why have

Unknown Speaker 14:39
you watched my person worked on the quarry rose? Well,

Unknown Speaker 14:46
if you talk to someone that's been on the island, 10 minutes he'll tell you they were Italian masons, but they weren't. They were presumably Scottish masons, like cobbles, Maxwell's there wasn't Allianz. And the earliest sponsor is well latterly were told, after 1900 There was a real growth of use of that quarry and I'm a contractor was in there and he had a crew of East Indians in there. And this caused lots of consternation, because they had to get fresh milk and desk crossed and tells us that he and his dad used to bring the fresh milk out every Saturday for these settlements, but it could only have been very short lived. I don't think they were there for any particular time.

Unknown Speaker 15:39
Now another industry that was in the Bay Area, Ruth was the time mill that was in the in the the creek bottom from St. Mary's lake.

Unknown Speaker 15:52
I think it's called Duck Creek. And that's not what we know. And I think that's what it's known as now. Anyway, these were the portable singer sawmills that cut railroad ties. It seems that at that particular time, it would be

Unknown Speaker 16:08
this would be the mid 20s. Yeah, I was quite small. And and I remember when

Unknown Speaker 16:12
everybody worked in the tie Mills, even our crippled dad worked and he drove a horse. And Saturdays, we could go over and take his lunch to him. But he shouldn't have been working there. But he was and Bill Evans was one of the original Teamsters and they had a remember the name of that truck that was blown. He drove that was the efficacy. He couldn't get his truck up the hill. One way he turned it around and back it up.

Unknown Speaker 16:45
Mr. Looney was quite a character. He actually laid her in years lived up in the cranberry and he was absolutely and completely stoned out. And his wife used to get so caught at him that she would write him notes. And when he was really mad at her, he would just crunch them all up and throw them out. He wouldn't even bother reading her notes for she can never get her her anger across to him because he was frustrated at every turn.

Unknown Speaker 17:12
But his ability to drive a car was absolutely phenomenal. And they always say his if he couldn't get it up one way he got it up another when he wrote a gas he swore at it. Choice Some of that's a little

Unknown Speaker 17:32
debatable. I gave those in after the time meal. I mentioned chaplains chicken ranch that they had was probably one of the biggest industries in the Bay

Unknown Speaker 17:44
Area. That was well it would be the area from the main road right to the good Ridge Road. And he had literally 1000s of birds ROP stock that would ship literally all over the world. I think one of his biggest markets was South America, and Hong Kong and places like that. And it was egg production as such, but basically it was fitted for breeding stock. And

Unknown Speaker 18:13
do you remember, see the Chinese help they have a theory

Unknown Speaker 18:19
that we just loved dearly because he loved our cats. He fit our cats and then yeah.

Unknown Speaker 18:27
We didn't find this out till after several very pumped cats disappeared from his store to keep them tied with a little collar and rope to his doorstep. And then that cat would be gone and he would want another kitten up and whenever we had we thought he was marvelous. He looked after our animals so well.

Unknown Speaker 18:46
Anyway, he was kind of a year old chap. They had several different partners in that and then I guess it was depression that sort of put the skids on various the mostly one partner went to Victoria one stayed here and one went back to England didn't they and the business as such depleted and who

Unknown Speaker 19:09
was the chap that aimless is brought from bought from me was tasted came right up to our boundary. Well that

Unknown Speaker 19:17
was I think Langley was the name isn't that Langley roads? Yes, that's right. Well, they were there. I never remember them. They were long gone when we and my memory but all those houses I believe are all of that rolled, like that's now the corner one and two one they moved out of the bay that was all built by Betancourt and he is prefab he brought the lumber in Victoria and cuts them all on the barge on the way up so that when he got here, all he had to do was assemble them and I mean if they think priests having is new, they didn't know Mr. Betancourt

Unknown Speaker 19:56
for when Mr. And Mrs. Inglis decided to make him AutoChart out of their chicken ranch. Do you remember the when they need what they called the Community Kitchen out of the brooder house. And we nobody would call it and everybody always referred to it as a brooder house on premises English used to get into it absolute state because here with these guests would be coming and we'd say, Oh, well, they're going over to the brooder house instead of the community kitchen.

Unknown Speaker 20:25
That same family was the most fantastic neighbors you could ever get. It's really a touch of history. She sat with my mother when we were born. And then she sat with me when my kids were born. And you know, the kind of neighbors that probably only pioneering days will ever know, because the need was so great. I mean, they needed each other so much. And I don't know they they were quite a family. They had four boys. And there were three of us. And the ages corresponded, fertile minds, kids. They were so bad that you could only be proud of them. And I mean, this wasn't naughty bad. It was just just disobedient that but they all had bites from our famous Andaman. And the boons used to be tied in Vesuvius mineral devils would get out and ride on the boons on these bikes will. There was broken arms, broken legs, half brown kids being hauled out of the water all the time because we didn't have bikes but I can't imagine they're having the nerves to try something like that. It seems to me somebody was asked to die for the kids bikes off the waterfall, they'd fly down on the wharf and go over but they all survived does it? Like sending a kid to play in traffic will play on the war sort of? They survived. But the thing that they had that we didn't have was an aunt honor that had a good job.

Unknown Speaker 21:54
She always brought mounds of goodies

Unknown Speaker 21:57
at Easter and their Christmas parcels were fantastic. So we all adopted and honor and the boat Iris nice best claim to and honor was that she'd send her clothing to Mrs. English which was no more than what it always was. Hand downs and when Mrs. English got a new parcel, we could hardly wait to see what was in it that she was going to give to us which was usually navy blue bloomers that none of us wanted but mother thought were so practical and add on it wasn't a favorite when this happened when two cents a blouse that we liked. Great person

Unknown Speaker 22:37
about the the Indians rules that used to fish for blue bags. Usually in the winter months here. They were marvelous people

Unknown Speaker 22:47
that they came from Cooper Island, which is always a bit of a jest here, because our fishermen always go up around Cooper and tent Island to fish. But nearly days, the cube round onions always came down aroma Su is deficient. There could have been more than one reason for that. We never didn't know their name this family they had to 12 kids, we do know that and the father would come in and sit on my dad's bed and converse with him. But he'd send the old lady and all the kids out fishing in there. They had a dreadful boat, nice, Toad all these dugouts down and said Oh, go fish. And he'd come in and have tea was my dad. And then he'd go down the rabbit and give a hoot god awful screech and they'd all come in from fishing. Well mum would make them cocoa Well, he didn't like cocoa but he got tea with dad but the kids and the old lady would come in and have this cocoa and values and the we call her out enough actually. And that was the whole thing shall

Unknown Speaker 23:52
how tell them how she got the name of Agnes Yes, she

Unknown Speaker 23:57
come in and have this cook and let's see what do you have some more? Add enough. Break down the line to 12 kids you have smart add enough. We never called her anything else but add nothing. came one day and there was no kids with her and she ate all she could eat and she'd had enough and mum says Where's all your kids? Names? Oh, got mum. She told her this beforehand. She wouldn't go to Google.

Unknown Speaker 24:27
We used to we used to have apples dad was a great one for in the bay. Of course there was just hundreds of apple trees and we used to have a root cellar that bolds and an awful lot of the Indians came and traded apples for fish. We got all of our fish that way we they'd probably bring three or four blue backs and data give them half a sack of apples.

Unknown Speaker 24:50
Well the bigger the apple the better the old cooking apples look like a balloon. Well they were just prize but they're big prize repairs. Teams they call bear they Here's any beers you have bear we have fish in between had enough bears and apples

Unknown Speaker 25:11
tell them about Mrs. English, little boy that was burns that time.

Unknown Speaker 25:17
Well, this goes back to things that are people are trying so hard to recapture and they're missing the boat 100%. But this little chap had a very bad burn on his shoulder and it was all so infected and sleet inflamed. And he was really a very tiny little boy. And he was suffering badly with this ad enough arrived one day and she took one look at it and said, I'll be back and she went up above the logs along the beach, and she come back with a handful of real gucky looking stuff, mostly seaweed. And she patted it in her hands a few times and slapped it on this kid's burn and put a patch over it. No, you leave it for three days and don't touch it. And of course, Mrs. Inglis was a nurse since he nearly died at this gunk going on her kids shoulder But three days later the inflammation is all gone and it's healing beautifully and and they never thought to ask her what she put on. You know. Now you give your eyeteeth to know

Unknown Speaker 26:23
that in those days before antibiotics and that Ruth and I can both remember all the treatments. Mother always put on Red Bull dusters, which we find out later it was started penicillin. If we had blood poisoning in a finger, we soaked it for probably days in hot water just enough and I mean hot. It was changed every 10 or 15 minutes. And for impetigo, which we got off the barnacles on the beach, it was sulfur and lard. And that cured it better and as good as any antibiotics that they have today.

Unknown Speaker 27:04
Worked anyway.

Unknown Speaker 27:07
And of course living here too. We had some fantastic storms in our house theme, a very old farmhouse. It's a wonderful lives

Unknown Speaker 27:17
through a badly built home.

Unknown Speaker 27:21
You remember the time Ruth, we lucked out. And this was a dreadful storm. And here was the house failing tasks, the rocks that had come. It was one of the Japanese plays was up in the canal. And that high tide was there. And it had just literally blown it out. And it went sailing past and I suppose eventually it disintegrated and the Japanese were furiously taking out net from things that they had stored.

Unknown Speaker 27:46
But not a lot of Japanese was being said very little.

Unknown Speaker 27:55
And, you know, when

Unknown Speaker 27:57
the same storm was probably one of the funniest things that ever happened on this farm when we had a chicken house on this side of the ridge, and the wind picked our chickens up and blew them over the hill into the other Valley. And these things were sailing over like footballs not flying not doing anything, and they're not the brightest looking critter in the world and to see them sailing without flying to about two days to find him. Yes.

Unknown Speaker 28:25
Came to Salt Spring, about 1980 I think didn't he really. He was first world war veteran and really very badly wounded. And he brought mother who was scraped from England from London and dropped her in the middle of the fuzziness and it was isolated here and really isolated.

Unknown Speaker 28:48
Well, no one lived here that no There were houses but nobody lived here. And no phone no light no water no nothing and mother was a little person like 90 pounds soaking wet sort of thing. And I think she'd never seen a calvess She hit Salt Spring and I think the the isolation and the quietness could have just about gunner in really except that they they got to love the police so much. They wouldn't have parted with it for anything. But I think the first two or three years must have been absolutely. Beyond endurance. By some standards, it's

Unknown Speaker 29:29
I know. The electric electricity and that never came to Salt Springs until 1937 I think. And we had no refrigeration, no electric lights. And we ate by the season didn't we use in the summer, which wouldn't be approved. We ate nothing but venison all summer and in the fall we ate nothing but venison. In the winter. We ate cod and salmon because they were plentiful.

Unknown Speaker 29:57
We ate nothing the venison bolsters. And I

Unknown Speaker 30:02
used to shoot mainly see the only light that we had really that was a man made was dad's pit lamping flashlight which had five cells, it's about that long. And he had grown at night, namely, flashlight over his head down his gun barrel and hit a pair of eyes and that deer was was dead just that quickly. And this is how and we ate everything. We didn't waste one morsel of that meat. We ate it native native

Unknown Speaker 30:32
dad's before with guns and they never wasted ammunition that was expensive. So anything they shot at die, that's all it was to. They used to take naps Hakuna on the beach, because you can get about 75 cents for a skin if you're lucky in this particular night, we had rolled him around the facilities to go hunting his tune. He puts the light up the tree and there's the eyes and he shot that nothing fell out of it. This is absolutely unheard off. Anyway, he told us to move the boat we did and hit two stars pointing shining through the the branches done his best to shoot. Hugging was over then that was so absolutely embarrassing of this app, we came into the hunt really was a matter of survival on that. We were raised on dad's military pension. And we were so lucky because of this military pension but nobody knew it was $7 a month. And when the season would be like around now it would be getting just about time when the chickens didn't need green and his dad wouldn't want to buy any more. So you send us kids over to the beach. Dig clams to supplement the chickens food. You saw these clams into the chicken yard and then eat them and you could eat eggs or you could eat clams and dams. You could tell the difference between

Unknown Speaker 32:15
but it was the original recycling.

Unknown Speaker 32:22
outdoor party was another joy.

Unknown Speaker 32:26
Well, everybody's been trapped in the outdoor plumbing. But if you've made a quick dash before you went to bed with your

Unknown Speaker 32:33
with the bug the bug, you better tell him what a bug is.

Unknown Speaker 32:37
You take a jam, Tim and you turn it sideways, sideways and poke a candle up through the bottom and put a bail over the top and keep it out of the wind or else it goes out. But

Unknown Speaker 32:49
it takes

Unknown Speaker 32:50
it takes a good wind to blow anyway you'd fly for the the guy who eats and then have your bug go out. So there you were trapped until well.

Unknown Speaker 32:59
Bruce and I used to make this trek every night about eight o'clock. And it'd be pitch dark and windy and stormy. And we'd get inside that little outhouse which was a double a two seater, I think and then we'd start thinking that maybe there was a cougar outside and we used to stay in there for well I don't know how long but the time we got back mother would be so mad at us because he'd be late getting to bed but we would no way we would get out of that door because we were sure there was a cougar and then when we did we'd run break the four minute mile thing back to the house.

Unknown Speaker 33:38
This mapping bits. I don't imagine anybody in those early days ate any other meat. But what

Unknown Speaker 33:45
I'm quite sure they didn't know everybody lives on venison.

Unknown Speaker 33:49
Great tales about the various game wardens that weren't plentiful and made a darn good point of not coming to the island. It was safer that way. And the police didn't bother too much it was oh you got pretty crafty. I mean, it was never the crime shooting the deer it was getting caught shooting the deer and believe me you didn't get caught. That's all it was. Do you want to meet people in

Unknown Speaker 34:12
those days really just hunted to eat they didn't there was no game shooting. I mean, it was no fantastic. Deer hunting during hunting season because they had immediate little difference. It made no difference with the sending season or not people just shot the deer that they needed for food.

Unknown Speaker 34:31
Later, when neighbor started to come, and we'd be we wouldn't be teenagers but we'd be a little getting onto it. We had a magistrate come to live in the Bay and dad still dear but he was little reluctant to be obvious about it to send direct mail or to talk to this guy. Till we heard the shot. Since we heard the shot we had to come home help bring this beast in. Anyway, the idea was We would keep everybody so occupied they wouldn't hear the shot if he did he never let on.

Unknown Speaker 35:05
And of course in the summer when we had summer visitors and they would say oh my So then we'd say oh well this deal or either that or it was good and

Unknown Speaker 35:15
they didn't have built by the way

Unknown Speaker 35:21
thought it was far less they never never realized too many

Unknown Speaker 35:26
other industry or whatever you agriculture enterprise that was in the bay was that violence farm go that was that was beautiful, where Dr. Cox is pleased is an all that and they it's five acres of solid violence there. But then, I guess they didn't make enough money off that. So they also had large chicken buildings there. Which one compensated for the other the violet smelt beautiful, I can't say that this chickens. But that was a return a settlers, what do they call it. And they farmed that for quite a few years. And then they went back to him and everybody

Unknown Speaker 36:07
during the Depression were

Unknown Speaker 36:10
pretty well. And the back, I guess we'd be five and six for me that those were the days when the whales went through here. Now this has to be mentioned, Mary, because it would take three days for the herds of whale to go through these narrows. And I mean, night and day that was really flat quickly. And they'll tell you now that killer whales are not aggressive and all like that. It's only because there's so few of them. Because Paul gave me the fights that went on out there was absolutely epic. And no fishermen would say, the Japanese or the Indian fishermen, anybody, they got to shore fast when the schools went through the other the natural enemy notes other way around, the natural enemy of the Ceylon is the whale. And they would come up on the beach, and they would roar their heart out, but they wouldn't stay in the water. And you could get within 10 or 15 feet of these enormous bull felines and he had roar at you and sort of make lunges, but he'd do anything but go back in that water. And they would sit on the rocks for as long as the whale went through it sometime would be three days. And you got to know that all

Unknown Speaker 37:25
the different worlds are different. Some of them have different needles, some

Unknown Speaker 37:29
are much more. The school, particularly the Blackfish. There were others weren't they they were other whales went through but it was not the killers they went to in the spring they seem to go north, and then the fall it becoming back and they'd have the young wisdom. And that would be something as you'd see this enormous fin and then the little fins beside the noodle.

Unknown Speaker 37:53
Of course we used to as children. Well, we started walking three miles to school to central at least we always said it was three I think it's since shrunk to two and a half or two. And our actual entertainment as children was mainly in robots on the beach. And Ken the oldest brother he his main Saturday occupation was catching octopus off the rocks and some of them are literally huge.

Unknown Speaker 38:25
We've got nine feet legs. So that was about 20 pain of saying the word wrong the tentacles call them legs. But that the beat cam sure was just literally playground. Yes, it was.

Unknown Speaker 38:46
Well when you started farming that was about making 46 mothers

Unknown Speaker 38:55
proximately in both that was what's the cause of truck $25 I think no barn no nothing. Before we finished it was 30 cows. A couple of trucks two milking machines

Unknown Speaker 39:11
three females

Unknown Speaker 39:14
know well of course the thing is to farm on assaults when you need as much equipment to farm seven acres as you would heart farm hundreds of acres you needed the convenience of it which defeats any project.

Unknown Speaker 39:28
I love your expense experiences on that milk round are absolutely marvelous

Unknown Speaker 39:37
for the want of a better word devastating.

Unknown Speaker 39:41
Ruth and George used to start delivering at four o'clock in the morning and of course, nobody was up then or if they were up. There would quite often be some fantastic arguments and different the wrong cars were parked in front of the royal houses quite I think this is the loveliest part of it because Yeah, the population was considerably smaller and everybody was known by the car, you know.

Unknown Speaker 40:06
And you'd see the wrong cars at the wrong gate for in the morning and you go into the village, and know where you were last night. And they either hated you or else they were very nice to you, we figured would do the best good.

Unknown Speaker 40:22
tell a little about your trips with the tracking the slow or, you know, the early trips you had, well, this would just break the heart of a normal person I think.

Unknown Speaker 40:34
Well, I don't know you it's it's so funny now. But at the time, he didn't sit in the middle of the road and he I simply will not know. But I think our epic trip was out trip Road, five o'clock in the morning, and the snow plows had been out and they plowed the road out and made right angle turns into all the driveways. And turning the van around was just next door to impossible without a lot of two inch giggling George was never the most patient man at that moment, hour in the morning, get out and tell me where I am. So you'd smack the side of the truck. Whichever side he was supposed to turn to. It took 30 turns to get him turned around at Telford's of all places. And I guess you can close to miss turning that when he did get back onto the road. He took off and left me on the road. You see. I'm thinking what density is it's if I yell I'll wake up profits but I'll never deck George's he's daily going on off the central wondering why the old bag isn't answering immuno to all these questions. I'm not even in the truck. He has to come all the way back has to go with central turn around comes back and the same damn thing happens all over again this turn. You're gonna leave me in the middle of the road again. But anyway, he didn't

Unknown Speaker 42:02
it seemed to me that it was the last thing you needed on the milkman was sensitive feelings because particularly it was always Snow, Snow weather. For a few winters we had some dandies it was it started laboring up the hill, it's getting the back meaning the extra wheat was needed and you'd get up the hill or the particular bad spot may never remember to stop let to get back in the car and you be standing still get like a prize spaniel or something. Anyway, it was, you know, but this time we didn't start taking a thermos with is to sort of break the monotony and six o'clock in the morning when cars are going to the ferry. And here's the Hi, he's having coffee and what's with them people keep making

Unknown Speaker 42:55
through.

Unknown Speaker 42:59
But it seemed to me we were always on the road long before the road crew was. I don't know why we didn't wait except that if it was cold weather, and you waited too long, the milk froze and rose above the top of the models. Well, hon cube but not many people are going to buy milk it's exposed to. So we got it out there or we did. Mitzi What the Why you bothered for the simple reason, if you don't get it out, you don't get paid for it. And that was rather an important part of our economy was to get that money at the end of the month, which not always came in and many times was well, we're, we're overdid it at Christmas. So you'll have to wait or we'll we're planning to go away for our holiday. So you won't mind waiting? And if you did mind, you wouldn't dare say so not to them. We had lots to say about preferably when they weren't there. Or best things were said when nobody was there. But it was good, but I don't suppose anybody in the right mind would repeat it. It's particularly in the early morning, I

Unknown Speaker 44:09
wanted to hear a little more about the Model T that your father had. What was that thing? We

Unknown Speaker 44:15
we spent one winter in the cranberry following these particular time mills. I guess it's when we were all coming home that I didn't know everything was such an occasion. Mother would get in the front and one by one we would get into the back and everybody would be settled. And then father would crank it up. And we're on our way back and we went over that bank that's just past the old depending which way you're going. If you're coming down from the crown bridge just past what's now the gossip farm there Foxconn farm. I think it was about a 6070 foot Bank, which we went right to the bottom and then rolled over nobody was hurt. Too big Swedes pack the truck As the car backup to the road and we drove it home it always had a bad turn to the right. You never knew where it was going because it angled that way. And it scared the Jeep with other people that were coming toward you, particularly if you made a left hand turns looking like you're going right

Unknown Speaker 45:18
and of course it was happened several times that you would be driving down the road and look ahead of you and here would be your front wheel tearing a car along the road ahead of you and the car didn't it stayed up even though it didn't slop like a car would nowadays

Unknown Speaker 45:38
we knew better but you're forgetting that mother was

Unknown Speaker 45:46
yes money didn't drive but she she was very vocal. I don't think any car survived. Instructions. You know of any particular funny incidents that happened I'm thinking of Mrs. Inglis, a store

Unknown Speaker 46:05
lead. These are local people here reasonably newcomer to the Bay in this Titus Tiki just didn't spend a nickel. If he could get away if he could borrow that is

Unknown Speaker 46:17
but he went to

Unknown Speaker 46:18
the store and bought a cake for three cents. And then when he got home, he found that he had a little piece of soap. So he bought it back and said he'd only washed on it once. So which might take I don't know whether she did or not probably did.

Unknown Speaker 46:38
Perhaps more driving stories to other people driving you.

Unknown Speaker 46:45
Hello, these are new modern ones in a modern liberal. No, Austin when I needed a ride to Ganges very badly. And Margaret Carlisle, one of her very sweet old lady in our valued neighbor to decided to drive me and you started 90 Miles standing start and you fly into the ditch over the white line into the ditch all the way to Ganges and when you hit the biggest hill she says I never drive very fast. You know, I have no brakes and this state of total collapse or you're hysterical. So

Unknown Speaker 47:26
rest of us about the team that were brought back from Kraft and that night they'd been over

Unknown Speaker 47:34
this this goes back even before my dad's time but had to be couldn't be basketball because that's a reasonably new game isn't it had to be a soccer team that had been been to Duncan to play soccer and they used to get a launch to come from Maple bay or do the two is pick up the team and take them back and then they play the game by the time they got back here it was getting the wee small hours in the morning anyway. Totally excited team arrive and the launch lets them off at the rocks and they all clamor ashore and find had been left on the farthest island of the point and they walked the island all morning for me where they all the road had got up

Unknown Speaker 48:22
and then there was a rather serious merit which I think we should record here. Which was when you found that family

Unknown Speaker 48:32
man and his wife and two youngsters had been clam digging in booths canal and they tried to go home in the face of a storm and didn't make it washed up on the beach. Actually the storm where it was boat now was amazed at this happened and why it was so cold but it was a bitterly cold wind unexpectedly chemo three of them washed in the father didn't turn up for a month it sold

Unknown Speaker 49:02
well what time of the morning you you went you were looking out of the window. And so

Unknown Speaker 49:07
my habit is that look at the beach first thing in the morning and there's a bucket on the meats I went down to retrieve it and pet me fell over these mother and two children that were washed ashore.

Unknown Speaker 49:20
For one thing in this particular channel, which is Stuart channel, it's one of the most treacherous areas in as much as the storms can get up. We'll years ago we didn't have weather forecasting and they could could literally get up in 10 minutes it would be calm and within 10 minutes it would be a real raging storm and if you happen to be well I think Ruth remembers this when we were I was seven and Ruth was eight and we were caught out in a storm. We started out in September and the weather was beautiful and mother was with us. And this speaks very highly of Ruth stability was a boat and maybe operation probably

Unknown Speaker 50:04
dead. Can my brother gone hunting over at the cranberry outlet? And we were to go and pick them up? I can't remember what the time was to be mid afternoon, I guess. We were within 10 minutes of getting to that beach. And four hours later, we still hadn't made it. Sure. And

Unknown Speaker 50:23
we finally went with the wind and came up on Laird speech, which was the the Rainbow Beach camp. It was an art record that Ruth rode that time. I don't know how she did it. She was 30. That certainly was the license. I

Unknown Speaker 50:41
don't imagine you had much choice you were there. Makes heroes out of a lot of people plan to be I don't know we were we were to go over there by ourselves. And last minute mom decided to come with us. And I don't know if that was good or

Unknown Speaker 50:56
bad. Well, I think it was in a way because she you know, could at least have an adult's outlook on things. But she had just recently recovered from a very serious operation and she could have been no help. No, well, this is probably a

Unknown Speaker 51:13
stroke stroked us in

Unknown Speaker 51:19
one of the things when these herds of whales would go to the population of whales and Sealand, just absolutely stupid you couldn't. It's unbelievable the hundreds and hundreds of these animals that were here and the big, Ceylon rookeries were up at Kate mud. They still are but they're very minimal mill. And it was the Mounties in those days had nothing to do with civil policing at all. They were strictly federal and fisheries is federal and they would go up with multiples and turn the machine guns on rookeries to keep the population down they just 1000s of them and they had to be controlled. But keep much isn't that far away and these beasts would float down and they've got about a half inch thick leather hide on them so by the time they got down here they were well and truly high. But the leather would hold them together. When they landed on the beach and they ruptured, it's absolutely unbelievable. It will usually be in the summer. So getting rid of these 210 Beast was always an epic. Sometimes they take them out and try to sync them That's an impossibility But dad had a fantastic way of turning Marsiling everything you know like you kids get rid of that seal and tow it out and hope that we get in the current that would take it somewhere else. Just merely come back on the beach rock with these neighbor boys and ourselves we told these damn things out and one time we ran into a Tug and tow going through had a big boom on it we hooked the Sealine on to the end of the tow and it would take a little explaining in Vancouver why it had a dead sea line on the end of it but then the other thing was you couldn't get rid of them. There was no such thing as dynamite human which didn't work anyway. But we were told more than one to cross tie it to the worst. The worst across them people could do is let go but they would go in on their beat. It wasn't a matter of eliminating the evidence or anything like that it was just spreading it around a bit and if we didn't have the problem will then craft and did they could do as they choose about it. But the other story of the same sort of thing was when the Laird's originally came to the island which had to be even over that would be in the early 1900s They had a whale go up boost canal and smother itself in the mud up there in the lair. This is when Toby I think was 17 and his brother was a year or two older or younger and their solution was to dynamite the thing and get it into small pieces and then it would wash out was a tide but being their age and everything else they overestimated and they didn't blow the thing to pieces to grow with a tide and you blew it up into the trees all summer that you'd be walking through the woods out there with bash of wheel this is nice to see well pack a shovel if you find a piece bury it well how do you bury about a 40 ton whale?

Unknown Speaker 54:44
You know, I think you should tell that story about snake your cat when you left it at the at the animal shelter. And George thought perhaps just perhaps it might have come up the Canal Street

Unknown Speaker 54:59
It is probably the only one that ever got out of Irene Harkness. We went on our first holiday after we sold a herd and I thought we were going to Europe because I've been getting given the presence of matched luggage but we went to Barkerville and camps. We had to put the dog and the cat into the kennel and when we got her we were gone two weeks. The day after he left, this crazy cat of ours escaped. And we hadn't found at least two weeks later, but George got the real epic idea that the cat would find its way home they always do but he'd gone help look for it. So he takes his gun. It was hunting season and he walks straight through here which is two miles to the canal.

Unknown Speaker 55:48
Thinking you might see a bird Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 55:52
Your time if you're in hunting country you're hunting if you're looking for the cat. He's roaming through the boot here giddy giddy giddy. And he meets Ben Greenough who says the Marvel Mater that cat runs through the bush with Georgia totally embarrassed he didn't want to be caught calling kitty in the bush when he supposedly hunting deer. Anyway, the cat did become home we found a graveyard two weeks after we got home so he'd been on his own. Just wondering what took us along like it's

Unknown Speaker 56:32
I don't know how all this will come out on tape. But I've rarely spent such an enchanting and entertaining morning and I just want to thank you both very much indeed.