August 19

9C sunny.
Right after I made my entry yesterday, the gold finches showed up again, maybe they knew it was going to be a cold night.
I bottled wine yesterday, about 46 litres. This was from 2 kits, a merlot and a shiraz which I blended together in the sedcondary ferment. Initial taste gives it a thumbs up. I also got some paragraphs done on the Pearces.Then managed to squeeze in some time to read.
Here is the other part of Going Back.

LUND

I

 lived in Lund and started school there in 1940, another remote community on the BC coast.  My parents and I and my Grandmother all lived in the hotel, as it was the only available rental accommodation.  The school housed about 15 to 20 kids I think it went from grade one to grade eight.  Lund plus the tiny fishing village of Finn Bay may have had a population of 200 people.  But together they were a true community.  The people helped each other, they visited each other and they did community things.

  On the same day that we visited Irvine’s Landing we took the ferry and drove on up to Powell River and on to Lund.  Lund is the end of the road today as it was in 1940.  There have been changes to the waterfront.  Some of the bay has been filled so that waterside development could occur.  There are floating wharves and a Marina where none existed 67 years ago.  The hotel we lived in is still there, remodeled and changed in its interior, but still visibly the same hotel.  The three large cedar trees that grew at the front door are gone and there are parking lots where blackberries once grew.  The school is gone and where it stood the ground was bulldozed to fill the bay.  The forestry house on the point is gone and the float where the two forestry boats moored are also gone and the space is part of the marina.

The old community hall is still there but the shack below it is long gone.[1]  I would estimate the population has only slightly increased during the intervening years.

  Does this all paint a depressing picture? Perhaps if I had gone there expecting to see it as it had been it would have depressed me.  But my old home (the hotel) was still there, everyone we talked to was friendly and you could feel that the spirit of the community still thrived.  The hall was there and I could visualize the school on its small hillside.[2] Being there again invoked memories and I could share those long ago days with my wife and our two friends.

  We didn’t have time to look up anyone, but that hour we spent there reminded me that I must make and take the time to do that and perhaps find memories that are still hidden away.

  “ I returned and I shall do so again”

 

 

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[1]  See author’s story “It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time”

[2] See author’s story   “Death of a Woodshed”