“I cried when the ship went under the Lions Gate Bridge and sailed away from North Vancouver. I had only ever been on a boat once and that was to Bowen Island.”
It was 1948. Dave Brewer, 11 years old, was aboard the Union steamship S.S. Catala, leaving Lynn Valley, the only home he had ever known, for a far away place called Ocean Falls. His father, laid off from his job at the shipyards, had found work as an electrician in the remote coastal community, accessible in those days only by water.
Dave remembers walking off the Catala carrying a folding chair, part of the family’s household goods. It was September, just before school started, and most likely, it was raining.
Bev Baird was among the children waiting at the dock. “We would all come to the dock when the steamships came in,” Bev remembers. “It was a big deal for us, something happening.”
She noticed the boy as he disembarked and wondered why he was carrying a chair. That boy lived for the summers when he would return home to his friends and the familiar forests and mountains of North Vancouver.
Dave and his brother Gerry would meet up with Charlie and Leroy Cartwright and Tom and Bruce Lewis. After a visit to the corn orchard and another at the chicken farm at the top end of Engine Road, just off Coleman, the three sets of brothers, and assorted dogs would hike to their cabin in the Lynn Valley hills.
There they would spend their days, swimming in their pond, and feasting on fresh corn and chicken.
Returning to Ocean Falls in the fall wasn’t much of a hardship for Dave. He and Bev were high school sweethearts. After graduation, Dave and Bev were off to Vancouver, where Bev lived at Fort Camp at UBC and studied nursing. Dave worked two jobs and studied bookkeeping at Sprott-Shaw business school. “I would pump gas at the Royalite station at Third and Forbes, go over town on the ferry and run down to the Esso station at Georgia and Denman to pump more gas.”
A third job, in the accounting office at the Canadian Fish Company, led Dave to the City of Vancouver’s purchasing department, “everything from stationery to police horses,” and then to business services at Capilano College.
In the meantime, Dave and Bev married in 1960, set up housekeeping in North Vancouver and started a family.
In 1965, when the world was being introduced to the threat of nuclear war, an ad appeared in the North Shore Shopper seeking volunteers for civil defense duties.
Dave and brother Gerry applied, along with Karl Winter from B.C. Mountain Rescue Association and nine other local citizens. Their training began with a focus on civil disasters, collapsed buildings and the like, expanded to wilderness search and rescues (SAR) and led to the establishment of North Shore Rescue.
Over North Shore Rescue’s 50 years of operations, founders Dave, Gerry and Karl have seen an enormous increase in outdoor activity throughout B.C.’s rugged wilderness. SAR volunteers must be in top physical condition, experts in techniques and use of equipment, and ready to deploy at short notice. Today, North Shore Rescue’s volunteer SAR teams and their expertise are recognized internationally.
Dave worked to develop provincial and federal SAR standards and policies. Volunteer teams continually train to be safer and more effective in their operations, the public is educated about practical back country behaviour, and countless lives, in Canada’s wilderness and internationally, have been saved.
Throughout Dave’s working life, volunteering in SAR was virtually a second full-time job. His contribution as a trainer, leader and innovator extends beyond the North Shore mountains. “I help where I can and I love to share the expertise developed over the years at North Shore Rescue.”
In recognition of Dave’s contribution, he received the National Search and Rescue Secretariat award of excellence for leadership.
Not everyone gets to live where the wilderness is in their backyard. Dave’s work in search and rescue is his way to give back to the forests and mountains that shaped him into the man he is today.
Laura Anderson works with and for seniors on the North Shore. 778-279-2275 [email protected]
