February 7th

Weather is supposed to clear today, apparently most of the Island is getting wind but it is quiet here.
A few errands today and continue getting the M/H ready just over a week before we toodle off.
Once again I have been remiss in creating any new writing so will look into my file again.

IRVINE’S LANDING

I

 lived at Irvine’s Landing from 1944 until 1947.  It was a rustic and isolated little community within what in later years would be known as the Sunshine Coast.  We lived first in a small one bedroom house that overlooked the Strait of Georgia, then later in a two bedroom place just a couple of hundred yards from the first, this one overlooked the bay and the government wharf. 

  The government wharf ran out in the middle of the bay bisecting it into two areas where floating docks had been built and anchored.  The one set were for overnighters and was attached to the main wharf.  The others were in two separated rows between the big wharf and a steep moss covered slope rising straight from the water.

  In the immediate area of the wharf there was a hotel and grocery store, a two-room forestry office, a one-room post office, the community hall and 8 residences.  Less than half a mile were other homes scattered along the one road that accessed the community.  The one room school housing about 15 students from grade one to grade six was a mile up the road.

  I loved that place!  We would fish for cod and perch from the docks, my friends, two Billy’s, Sonny and Eddie would build huge moss forts on the hillside above the bay and wage war on each other.  We roamed the bush, met the Union Steamship on “boat nights”.  There was no TV and only brief moments of radio it was great!

  A few days ago while on a short driving tour I detoured off the main road and drove down a side road with a pointed sign that said “Irvine’s Landing”.

 We went past a small lake I remembered as Hotel Lake and there surrounded in trees was my old school.  It is rundown, there is a sign on it that proclaims it as the Community Hall, but it was the same building, just older.  We continued the mile to where the wharf had been. 

  A short jetty that appeared to be a viewing area had replaced the wharf, there were no floating docks, no post office, no hotel, no forestry office, no two bedroom house.  I turned the car and drove the two hundred yards towards where I remembered the first house had been.  Overlooking the Strait there were three large expensive looking homes, but as I started to turn the car I spotted a small shingled house – our house from 1944, old then and much older now![1]  I took a couple of pictures and was happy to have found this second piece of my boyhood.

  My wife said, “Why don’t you go back over to where your other house was? I’ll take a picture of you there.”

  I did, and as I looked out over the bay, I could vividly see in my mind’s eye, those floats, Billy Davis’ Dad’s boat the ‘Margie D’, my Dad’s Forestry boat the ‘Beatrice R’, Billy Wray’s Dad’s boat the ‘Sonny Jim”, I saw the pile perch checking our bait and I remembered again the day we all raced our home- made sailboats against each other.  In my mind’s ear I could hear the echo of young voices and laughter echoing down from the moss covered rocks.

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[1] See the author’s fantasy story “The Window” 

See two pictures in side bar