Interview of Goodrich Sisters
Memories of Vesuvius
Interviewed
by
Mary Williamson
On
April 28, 1977
Audiotape
transcription Oct. 25, 2013
Transcription corrections Nov. 4, 2013
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, wasnÕt 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 lanternsÉ
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 didnÕt 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 ÒBearsÓ.
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 tilÕ 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 itÕs
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 Ôwell as
deaf as he is if I yell, I'll wake up Trelfords but I'll never get GeorgeÕs
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 oÕclock 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 ÒWell we
overdid it at Christmas, so you'll have to waitÓ or ÒWe're planning to go away
for a holiday so you won't mind waitingÓ. 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 didnÕt 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
– youÕd 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.