Well, here it is again, Gibsons, and retired. There’s the old government wharf. I used to catch ling cod off of it. Those planks came from Dad’s little sawmill, Sucre Lumber Company. The little sawmill up on North Road did the cutting.
Later when his skin cancer advanced, the graft on the nose at the Mayo Clinic didn’t take even after twenty-three operations, Dad would walk proudly in retirement up and down that wharf wearing a false plastic nose that had to be glued on with strong-smelling alcoholic spirits. They smelled up the bathroom in our house up on Seaview Road.
It was an enormous house – two suites rented out in the basement, one of those huge octopus looking oil fired furnaces that kept breaking down all the time, our living quarters in the middle above the basement and an attic suite above. Dad had purchased the huge black and white monstrosity with plum, apple, cherry trees and even a grape vine with restitution money from Germany. Thank God for Uncle Adenaur, Dad would often exclaim! He was the German Chancellor in the early 1950s that had some empathy for the German Jews who had fled and survived. Fled? Yes. Survived? Perhaps, depends upon what you mean by survived! The kids at Gibsons Jr. Sr. High used to connect the German Chancellor to a daylight saving time joke. What was the difference between standard time and daylight? You add an hour!
It was both awesome, tough, gut wrenching and yet somehow soothing looking at that wharf after so many years! It appeared basically the same, looking at the scene myself and now also retired. Nothing seemed to have changed and yet, in another sense, everything had changed.
It seemed like yesterday, we were living down by the water, the Union Jack was flying, King George had passed away, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth had been filmed and carried by the Royal Canadian Air Force across the Atlantic so it could be broadcast in living black and white over the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, coast to coast! In Gibsons there were perhaps a dozen lucky kids who could watch at home.
One of those lucky tykes was Johnny who lived past the swings and the teeter-totter next to a float where we used to fish for shiners, perch and tommy cod. That glowing white Sylvania 17” TV set pulled in a lot more instant friends than it did channels. The roof spotted a huge aerial with channel 2, 4, 5, and 12 heads. On a good day when there weren’t any tug boats or power saws operating close by, Channel 2 in Vancouver and 12 in Bellingham, Washington came in with hardly any snow on the screen at all! Sometimes when conditions were perfect Pinky Lee and the Mickey Mouse Club from Seattle’s Channel 4 and 5 appeared with a picture that was almost acceptable. This invention called television was amazing!
Look at the view! Unbelievable! Over there, that’s where the old bluff used to be, covered with red-barked Arbutus trees, now with monster houses, dozens of them, overlooking the islands, and a with huge Canadian flag flying. I still remember the day Jimmy Sinclair came to our house to say hello during an election year. Mom and Dad both said he was a great Liberal and represented our area well. In fact he saved my Dad’s bacon – no Dad didn’t keep kosher. I didn’t even know what kosher was. I only knew what The Holocaust was. There wasn’t a day that my parents didn’t bring up in some form or another about what had happened! Sinclair was also Minister of Fisheries. His daughter would someday marry a man by the name of Pierre Elliot Trudeau! Today their son, Justin Trudeau is Prime Minister.
How politically correct we have become since! Like the report cards at schools, computer- generated, and wonderful concepts called “projected learning outcomes”.
Comments that should never offend only encourage. Included is a Social Studies curriculum that in its new elements in elementary school no longer stressed teaching the basic history of the land (unless of course, one did so unofficially in a clandestine way). Now an arithmetic additive suddenly stresses fractions with unlike denominators shouldn’t be tackled until at least grade seven because the concepts might be confusing for some.
Dad couldn’t bring in a scow to the government wharf for pickup for transport to Vancouver. The wharfinger had apparently stated, “No Jew is going to be able to tie up here.” Jimmy Sinclair sent a telegram to the wharfinger and from that point on there were no further difficulties. My parents became Liberals for life.
Being liberal with a small “l” is something we learned or absorbed like osmosis. Different lifestyles, particular points of view, are what made Gibsons interesting. I suppose that could be the case for any small town particularly in the 1950s before the Sputnik, the satellite dish and the Internet. Yet television provided a visual link to the outside world.
When the Soviet Union’s leader, Nikita Khrushchev began making overtures in the UN with his shoe, the Goslins on the end of our street began making preparations. They lived in a huge wooden frame house with cats and their waste often left on the bare kitchen and living room for cleanup…eventually. Both Goslins were devout spiritualists, one more practical than the other. He spoke to Napoleon and Queen Victoria quite regularly and certainly was not amused with the impending nuclear war that was always around the corner. Very well-read with experiences in the Boer War, old Jeremy would often be spouting his latest predications of doom and gloom while Mom served tea and cookies and Dad listened with slightly bemused though respectful attention. Sometimes a friendly, neighbourly gesture was to bring over a powerful homemade hootch that when swallowed appeared strong enough to be used as a conventional weapon by itself!
TO BE CONTINUED...