Freighter cruising affords an up - f labyrinthine Inside Passage

p32-35,44-45_Aurora_DriveSmart.indd 32 2/6/12 9:58:19 AM Push the BEACH - front glimpse of B.C.’s

BY KERRY MC P HEDRAN

hile most of us are space shuttle – that provide a privileged snug in bed on land glimpse into an unknown world, one no in the dark of night, cruise ship or ferry ever reaches. And now know that if the tide every spring, when the Pacific is relatively is right, somewhere storm-free, a dozen lucky new adventurers along B.C.’s convo- join a crew of captain, fi rst mate, engineer, luted coastline of deckhand, cook and steward every week on a bays, coves, inlets and islands, in some three- or fi ve-night Aurora sail along a pro- remoteW logging camp, fi sh farm, First Nations tected coastline unlike anywhere else in the village or rare homestead outpost, the shal- world: to the Broughton Archipelago, the Dis- low-draught Aurora Explorer is “pushing the covery Islands or a “mystery” destination beach” powered by two 260-horsepower Cat- revealed only on the day of sailing. erpillar diesel engines. Like a scene from On this particular run up the coast, Cap- World War II’s D-Day landings, her bow tain Ron Stevenson is briefing us over an ramp drops down. And under the glare of after-dinner “mug-up,” tracing our four-day fl oodlights, a handful of men, using mostly route on the wall chart in the passenger hand signals and a hydraulic crane, unload lounge. We’ll travel north from Menzies Bay freight and pump diesel with familiar ease. near Campbell River and through the Dis- Crew cabs rumble off; empty fuel drums and covery Passage for deliveries on Sonora and dumpsters take their place. A shore dog races Stuart Islands, then up – one of the back and forth amid the excitement of new wildest inlets on the coast. On the return leg, humans and new smells to sniff. we’ll drop down Calm Channel past Cortes The Aurora has been ferrying freight since and Twin Islands for a stroll on tiny Savary 1991. But back in 1994, former owner Alan Island’s famous white-sand beaches, with a Meadows decided there might also be a mar- last night tucked inside dreamy Desolation ket in transporting passengers curious about Sound. Thirteen scheduled freight stops lie B.C.’s working coast. Barely a year later, he ahead of us, some as brief as 15 minutes. knew he was onto something. “We were at Still the only scheduled vessel working the Scott Cove logging camp at 2 a.m., when I B.C.’s Inside Passage to welcome passengers, looked up and saw fi ve of our eight guests – all in their housecoats – watching through the WORKING COAST REVEAL Thanks to a midlife refi t that has added signifi cant wheelhouse windows. Two a.m.! But they length, width and expanded decks, the weren’t going to miss a single cargo delivery.” Aurora — piloted here by Ron Stevenson I know why. In the Aurora’s wheelhouse, (opposite, centre) — can deliver heavier freight and even more passengers to an those passengers had stumbled into one of ever-changing coast. (opposite, bottom)

(top right and bottom) Jennifer Gaze, (centre) Kerry McPhedran Kerry (centre) Gaze, Jennifer right and bottom) (top those rare seats – like astronauts aboard a Corporate retreat on Stuart Island.

(opposite) Boomer Jerritt/All Photos WESTWORLD >> SPRING 2012 33

p32-35,44-45_Aurora_DriveSmart.indd 33 1/27/12 8:33:58 AM the Aurora has witnessed a tidal wave of pregnant women willing to row to “civiliza- weeks. Yet surprisingly, says Adams, it’s a change in 20 years. For one thing, “what the tion” just in time to give birth; mid-19th cen- greener forestry industry today. He sees it in coast consumes cargo-wise has definitely tury bachelors posting poignant signs by their the Aurora’s backhaul. “We’re taking out changed,” notes Guy Adams, the Aurora’s cabins – “Wife Wanted”; English women raised things for repair or recycling that, before, current owner. “We used to deliver a lot more by servants in colonial India now raising chil- would be left in the bush: batteries, oil barrels, consumable freight. Now, those kinds of cus- dren and gardens in a rainforest. What wasn’t used oil, old vehicles, steel and wire.” tomers – the coast’s isolated camps, fl oating afloat – and most things were, from logging What hasn’t changed, though, is the homes and small villages – are gone.” camps to houses – was on skids, so it could be coast’s all-important link to the outside He’s right. When I fi rst sailed the Aurora loaded onto floats and pulled north after the world: the boat. From the 1870s through the 15 years ago, her cargo deck was a virtual work. It was a tough life. And those who stayed 1950s, a rowboat was a local’s most prized Rubik’s cube of interlocking boom chains, were self-sufficient and, often, loners. Yet the possession; some lived aboard their tiny ves- spools of wire rope, Caterpillar treads and coast was surprisingly social; residents thought sels for months, even years, sleeping under propane tanks, but also books marked “Little nothing of rowing to nearby islands for a dance. tarps. Later, Union steamships worked Wolf Preschool” and pallets of groceries. This By the 1920s, the area’s “pink” gold rush coastal waters with onboard dances, along- April, there are no books or foodstuffs, just had become the main draw, with more than side the Anglican mission boat, Columbia, heavy equipment, machinery and 200 salmon canneries where religion took a practical back seat to diesel for logging camps, and the pal- booming and funky lit- onboard weddings, dental care, minor surger- lets are loaded with manure and soil tle family run resorts ies and reel-to-reel cartoon screenings for mes- alongside a lone Cadillac golf cart for scattered up and down merized kiddies – many of whom, including

SOUTHGATE

Loughborough BRITISH Inlet Bute Inlet COLUMBIA Phillips Arm

Toba Inlet Hardwicke Is. East Stuart West Thurlow Is. Thurlow Is. Is. Sonora Ramsay Arm KELSEY BAY Is. Raza Is. Maurelle West Is. East Redonda Redonda ISLAND Read Is. Is. Quadra Is. Is. MENZIES BAY Cortes Is. CAMPBELL RIVER Jervis Hernando Inlet Is. Savary Is. POWELL RIVER

ONBOARD BOUNTY The passenger the coast. Coastal kids such as writer and pho- Kennedy, were born and baptized aboard. freighter’s overnight spot-prawn trap yields tographer Liv Kennedy (now back in Nanoose Today, BC Ferries plies the coast’s waters and a succulent feast for crew and passengers — plus $36 in toonies for the closest guess Bay after years sailing the world) were free- fl oat planes transport cargo and passengers to to the 200-plus catch count. range rowboaters, familiar with riptides and its more remote outposts. Most coastal com- giant whirlpools that swallowed and spit out munities on and the main- American billionaire Dennis Washington’s 20-metre-long “boomsticks” (logs). By age land have also had road access since the 1950s. private golf course on Stuart Island. nine, Kennedy was already fi shing solo in a But even today, amazingly, the mainland’s From the 1870s through the 1960s, dinghy off then-Crown-owned Stuart Island. main coast route – Hwy. 101 – ends at Lund, though, this coast was hopping. The draw for Today, the canneries, pulp mills and just 198 klicks north of Vancouver; much of early settlers? Millions of acres of cheap independent loggers are almost all gone (see B.C.’s convoluted 25,725-km coastline Crown land (160 acres could be had for one sidebar), replaced by a corporate, highly mech- remains without road access of any kind. In dollar and a promise to clear 10 acres in 10 anized and mobile forestry industry with other words, B.C. explorers still need a boat. years), salmon that almost jumped onto a minimal workers. “Up to the early 1990s, we fi shing line and more Douglas fi r, cedar and delivered to the same logging camps all teaming north aboard the Aurora hemlock than could be felled by one man spring, summer and fall,” says Adams. “And accompanied by porpoises and with a crosscut saw in a lifetime. Folks came when the loggers moved to their winter screeching gulls, we quickly fall into from around the world for their share: adven- camps to log cedar, we’d deliver there.” These a soothing routine of doing “noth- turous husbands scouting ahead of their were the years when forestry companies cut Sing” punctuated by occasional shore treks: wives and broods; strong, young Finns and much larger volumes; now they’re seldom in reading in the passenger lounge with a fresh Norwegians rowing north from Vancouver; one place more than a few months or even cup of coffee and sticky cinnamon bun;

34 WESTWORLD >> SPRING 2012 (route map) DT Graphix, (prawns/sides) Jennifer Gaze, (passengers) Kerry McPhedran

p32-35,44-45_Aurora_DriveSmart.indd 34 1/27/12 8:34:01 AM afternoon naps in our bunks and chats in the main event: 75-kilometre Bute Inlet. No hour. But of the scattering of tenacious souls the galley doorway with Pat Stephton, the luxe resorts here, along what is widely who live and work on this stretch of coast, cook, while she keeps an eye on a simmering viewed as one of the grandest fjords in the with addresses such as Echo Bay, Blind Chan- soup pot. Best seat in the house? The “bleach- world. It is a wet, rich, green, wild place fed nel and “Head of Bute Inlet,” one has ordered ers” – a raised day bunk behind the wheel by the ’ vast Homathko the last delivery of our trip. Near the rich and navigation table providing 24-hour Icefield, where 2,000-metre-high cliffs Homathko River delta, a lone prospector access to the ship’s operations centre, an plunge 650 metres to the sea, where we waits for fuel – convinced he, too, is sitting on increasingly rare experience in today’s secu- throw our heads back to gaze at unending the mother lode. By 21:55, we are secured to rity-conscious world. “We get lots of men up waterfalls and nights skies suddenly crowded the Bear Bay booming ground for the night. here who served in World War II convoys in with stars. Yet pleasure boats typically give Day Three and we’re back in the Discov- the North Atlantic, as well as those who’ve Bute a pass. There are few safe anchorages ery Islands, where ferry-served Quadra – a always just wanted to work on boats,” says and the notoriously chilling outfl ow wind bedroom community for Vancouver Island Stevenson, as he points out a curious seal can howl down the inlet at 100 knots an Continued on page 44 popping up to starboard. “They’ll be out on the bridge wing letting us know ‘It’s good back here.’ ” By the time we tie up to a log boom on the first night, we’ve made deliveries to a logging camp and three fish farms on Sonora, the latter part of a local aquaculture market that today relies on a range of highly specialized vessels. One delivers smolts, another brings in barges, cranes and crew to manage the net changes and anchor-drop- ping, a third ferries salmon to market – while one odorous specialist circumspectly scoops up only the “morts,” as dead fi sh are known in the industry. That night, with the Aurora securely tied to a boom in Okisollo Chan- nel’s Woods Bay, I sleep like a mort cradled in a cedar chest. Despite the ship’s brochure warning of vibration and working vessel noise, I need an alarm clock, not earplugs, to awaken next morning. Day Two: Hot fresh-baked muffi ns, fruit and freshly brewed coffee surface on the gal- ley shelf at 07:00. Meanwhile, Stephton hustles together sage-and-apple sausages, eggs, hash browns and toast for our “real” breakfast. As if on cue, a small black bear lumbers by on a nearby beach. No grizzlies will prowl the spring river grasses this trip, but porpoises race our bow and soaring eagles cry like kittens overhead. Sea lions laze in back eddies, waiting for schools of fi sh. Stuart Island is still a fishy place. But mom-and-pop fi sh camps like Brimacombe, with its simple cottages and big tyee that appealed to Hollywood’s Roy Rogers and, later, Washington scions such as Robert and Ethel Kennedy, have given way to out-of- scale, strangely urban, megabuck corporate retreats owned by the likes of Dennis Wash- ington and the Ritchie brothers. On neigh- bouring , the award-winning Sonora Resort bills itself as “where pure wil- derness and perfect luxury meet.” Soon we’re pushing a steady six knots up

WESTWORLD >> SPRING 2012 35

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