Pubilshed in Summer edition of Wavelength Magazine
Sprawled out on Bill Procter’s dock amidst a mess of charts in the afternoon sun I am absorbed in a scene framed by the image of a freshly painted boat “Ocean Dawn,” a beautiful classic troller built for open waters by second generation Vancouver ship-wright Morris Gronlund. The boat is set against a backdrop of glassy water and homes perched along the densely treed and steep rocky shoreline of Proctor’s Bay. I have known Bill casually for about 8 years since I began bringing my kayaking groups into Echo Bay as a guide on commercial sea kayaking trips in the Broughton Archipelago and Johnstone Strait . A visit to “Billy’s Museum” situated in the Proctor Homestead was a highlight of these trips. Lining the floor and shelves are artifacts or what he calls “junk,” collected during a lifetime of logging, fishing and beachcombing. The scene always reminds me of Martin Alderdale Grainger’s Woodsmen of the West 1908 description of the shops on Cordova St. in Vancouver in the early 20thth century:
You come to shops that show faller’s axes, swamper’s axes – single bitted, double bitted; screw jacks and pump jacks, wedges, sledge hammers, and great seven foot saws with enormous shark teeth…
Antique bottles are lined up on the shelves in translucent rows and glass topped wooden boxes house large displays of ancient projectile points, awls and hammer stones. The trolling spoons on the wall hang in testament to a legacy of commercial fishing history on the coast and an adjacent building sells local art, crafts and literature. I liked dropping by the Proctor’s because it offered a glimpse into rural coastal life and its history and Bill was always happy to talk or “bulls...t” with my groups about his home: “The area from Drury inlet to Johnstone Strait … called the Broughton Archipelago by government agencies, but the residents of the area simply call it the Mainland” as described by Bill & Echo Bay writer Alex Morton in Bill's life story, Heart of the Raincoast. Moreover, they contend “[t]here are very few family homesteads left on this coast and here is unique, with three generations living on it until 1997…”
A visit to Echo Bay was always complemented by a stop over on Village Island further south in the Archipelago at the beginning of our kayaking trips: the site of a large abandoned native village which is documented vividly in J.P Spradely’s Guests Never Leave Hungry: The Autobiography of James Sewid, a Kwakiutl Indian. Both places book end our journeys through the islands, inlets and open sea between. These visits also provided experiences from which a cultural landscape could be formed in people’s imaginations which I hoped would enrich and frame their paddling experience with a heightened sense of place that people could carry away with them.
After a week spent camping on secluded shell midden beaches and weaving through a dizzying maze of islands, we paddle slowly into Echo Bay ’s small protected harbour. A faded pictograph on the steep south facing cliff at the entrance beckons, and the Windsong Sea Village with its funky disarray of brightly painted float houses comes into view on the north side of the bay. These houses, floating on log booms, display a decidedly Caribbean-like disposition in contrast to the characteristic diffused light of the west coast, which Echo Bay artist and writer Yvonne Maximchuck of Sea Rose Studios (www.zoombuy.net/searose.html) described to me once as “mother of pearl white”. On the south side of the Bay sits the Echo Bay Store and the Echo Bay Resort.
On a typical trip during the summer, we would land on the white shell midden beach at the head of Echo Bay and set up camp high on the meadow above the rim of black organic soil and shell bank built up during thousands of years of human settlement. Other times we’ll paddle one bay further to Bruce & Josee McMorran’s Paddler’s Inn (www.paddlersinn.ca), a rustic & cozy wilderness kayaking lodge with world class views and paddling at its doorstep. It’s heart is the main float house with warm lantern lit rooms, hot showers and inviting atmosphere. In a past life it housed a church and stained glass windows glow reverently as if in religious testament to the surrounding glory and splendor of islands, ocean, trees and mountains; its pulpit, a large hostel style kitchen where hungry paddlers preach the gospel of kayaking over self prepared gourmet meals. If you choose the catered option, Josee’s cooking can be described no less than fresh, heavenly and organic.
Inevitably, where ever I end up staying, I eventually wander off to the Proctor homestead by walking past the community hall in Echo Bay , nestled in the meadow beside Echo Bay Marine Park , past the Echo Bay School and across the tidal flats. Much of Bill’s personal history, environmental values, and political views were well known, as he had published them in Heart of the Raincoast and an award winning place history of the Broughton Archipelago Full Moon Flood Tide, co-written with Yvonne Maximchuck. They describe a passion, intimacy, depth of knowledge and deep connection to the land gained by exploration of its islands and deep inlets as a commercial fisherman, a logger and a trapper.
I once asked Bill to describe or define his “sense of this place” by inquiring “if you have…one sentence…to describe the area or what the area means to you …?” This question elicited a thoughtful pause and a good natured, hearty laugh. Bill shook his head and exclaimed a jovial “I don’t know. I have no idea,” that expressed the obvious difficulty in trying to describe something so complex. He declared “Anybody…comes and leaves here I always tell them to enjoy our beautiful country…”
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