A columnist’s second-to-last crutch is My Amusing Family. A columnist’s last crutch is Our Cottage Holiday.
So Our Cottage Holiday began with my loading the van in the morning gloom and treading on the corpse of a slug that should have been removed in daylight, repositioning the unattractive blotches throughout the house. Not an auspicious start, would you say?
Once under way, the cat, Hobbes, a newish acquisition, complained for 45 minutes without taking a breath of imprisonment in his cat carrier. To no avail, as novelists used to write. Whereupon Hobbes stepped up his protest to a distinkly – not a misprint – higher level.
The odour from his deposit penetrated air, upholstery, clothing, provisions, and Kaylan the Lame Dog’s hair. I admired my wife’s dexterity, uncomfortably swiveling from the passenger’s seat, in releasing Hobbes and removing the disgusting substance in one smooth motion.
On the car deck, ferry passengers raised two eyebrows on spying a dog and a cat pressed together in coexisting slumber on my wife’s generous lap.
Unwilling to test the animals’ tolerance if left alone, we scratched the eagerly anticipated buffet for coffee and Low Sodium Wheat Thins in our seats.
Turning that corner, we had two weeks of culture, history and socializing – better than in Vancouver.
Surely I jest? No. Less culture by weight and volume, of course. But reachable in airy minutes.
In the city, the vast menu of choice is exhausting. The Giambori Quintet was the only one-night-stand game in town on our island. But this occasional congregation of professionals – a husband and wife from London, from Mayne Island, from Seattle, a UBC music teacher, appearances by another Seattleite (both Juilliard grads) and a local pianist and accordionist – enchanted the audience with Elgar, Beethoven, Schubert. And with the usual intermission complimentary treats. Don’t get that at the QET.
And in a few days we socialize more than in a year at home. John Kane, the quintet leader, asked if there were cellists in the house. The inauspicious woman beside me held up a hand. Later we talked.
Years ago she had an audition planned with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Ten days before, she fell and permanently injured the third finger of her left hand. Career over.
Discoveries. Stories. People open up on a small island.
Did I mention this is Saturna, pop. 352? It has deeply felt history too. Spaniard Jose Maria Narvaez was the first European sailing these waters – he named the island’s east point Saturnina – in 1791, less than a year before George Vancouver.
This month a fine ceremony was held unveiling a federal heritage plaque for the nearby lighthouse’s fog alarm building, made into a stunning historical/interpretative centre led (to invite the inevitable omission of many hands) by Richard Blagborne, an outstanding architect (with Arthur Erickson) and planner (various international Expos) and delightful storyteller over a beaker, with brilliant displays by artist and professional photographer Nancy Angermeyer.
Former cabinet minister Patricia Carney – in retirement resuming her Vancouver Sun journalistic career and still an untiring advocate and expert on B.C.’s West Coast, including its lighthouses – spoke, as did, handsomely, Lorne Underwood, First Nations liaison with Parks Canada. Green Party national leader Elizabeth May unveiled the plaque.
Orcas obligingly showed up.
Adopting my hard-nosed reporter impersonation, later I challenged Blagborne: “Why no presence of Spain here?” Ha, smarty-pants – Blagborne smilingly responded that Spain is proud of its connection. A few years ago its cultural attaché in Ottawa and his wife visited, and the embassy sent grants for a couple of videos.
For a typical cynic with the hidden heart of a romantic, the thought that sunny Spain has left an indelible mark on our cold waters and Ibsenish shores is among the little solaces for life’s preposterous insults. Of course many more such enthralling tales could be told of our cottage holiday. On our first day a raccoon ambled past the tool shed – where my wife, the cottage’s owner, graciously allows me to sleep – and dabbled in the waters below.
That night I heard an odd, urgent weeping, or so it seemed.
The next day we saw a baby raccoon, its tiny face peering sadly – or, again, so it seemed – from a tree.
Was that first raccoon its mother? Alarmed by humans, had she left, abandoning her baby?
The piteous weeping was weaker the second night. Then stopped.
Did the mother come back and reclaim her child? So my wife wanted to believe. So did I, with doubts. So did I.
Former Vancouver Sun columnist Trevor Lautens writes every second Friday on politics and life with a West Vancouver bias. [email protected]
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