So here is another bit of my writing.. from twenty years ago. The girls, my grand children, and I went to Prince Rupert this past summer.. it was still raining and just as I remembered. We rode the train from where they now live in Telkwa, had sushi in Cow Bay and stayed in a hotel on the water. It seems the more things change, the more they stay the same. The ferry I rode up on in this writing, ended up on the rocks very close to Hartley Bay years later. Jeri has the painting that a friend of mom's painted. Funny how life seems to connect so many of the details in our lives.
Time is just our journey through change. My adventures in Hartley Bay, almost twenty years ago, marked a total change of course for me- a new era in my life. Change can be painful, but without it, we stop growing and time no longer holds value.
August 2001
"I was waiting for the call, but when it came on Monday I was out! Whether I had been in the bathroom, or just outside taking out the garbage I don't know. Wherever I was the message was there and it wasn't going to happen again! On Tuesday I stayed home. No working in the garden, no watering plants. I just stayed inside and waited. I wait well. I do nothing else, but wait. One of the reasons I need a job. I am tired of waiting for my husband Micheal to come home from his endless work on machinery- Or my sons to come visit, or make it back from town after a party or get together with friends. I need to be working and practicing what I have been studying so long. I need to be teaching, and this call from Hartley Bay was important to me. I told friends who called that if call-waiting kicked in I would just hang up on them rather than miss the call. By nine o'clock I had almost given up, by ten I went to bed. At eleven, my husband brought the cordless phone into the bedroom. I had my interview while laying in bed, half-asleep!
On Tuesday, they told me they would call me on Friday and let me know if I had the job or not. Friday, there was still no call when Sherrill and Royce came for dinner. I was waiting again, but we had a lovely dinner, during which Royce lent Gabriel, my crazy son, his Jaguar to go get some medicine for a sore tooth. A nice gesture which took my mind off 'the call' and onto 'where is my son in the Jag!?' But he came back safe and sound as we were saying good-bye to our friends out in the drive way, the phone rang and Mike called me back into the house: It was Lynne at Hartley Bay. I had the job!
I had been looking for work for 9 years, subbing in Jaffray whenever I was home, but mainly keeping myself busy getting more education and travelling. After I received my teaching certificate and there was no job, I went on to get my bachelor degree. Still no work so I took an ESL course and tried my hand at teaching English as a second language in Peru, China, and finally in Mexico. Just too far from home, and not enough money for my liking, although the experiences were wonderful and I would do it again and probably will. But never for very long! After I received my masters degree, I decided I needed to get 'a real job". Harltey Bay is a remote coastal village, about 7 hours by boat south of Prince Rupert. Even though it is Reserve land, the school is a public one and so the wage is paid according to B.C. Teachers Federation. Plus, we get paid extra for living in an area so remote. So the pay is there. Yet, it is sort of like a foreign land.
Hartley Bay is a long way from anywhere. I remember in China, being part of an international group of teachers talking about education, and what works and what doesn't. It was made perfectly clear to me that my opinions meant nothing, as I came from a country that had vast landmasses but almost no people using them. I felt that if the discussion had been about using raw resources, I could have contributed, but how could a Canadian possibly know anything about educating the masses? His words came home as my sister Jeri and her husband Harry drove me up to the north part of Vancouver Island from Earls cove on the Sunshine coast. My mother was going to come with us as well, but as it turned out my father had an appointment in Vancouver for re-occurring skin cancer on his face. Apparently it is the same type that Ronald Regean's daughter succumbed to at age 60. Mom decided she should accompany dad to Vancouver, as he did not like travelling into the city much. So she missed this trip into the vast loneliness of the West Coast of BC.
We traveled through vast areas where there was nothing but highway, and green green trees. I sat in the back seat amazed at the green! So different than anywhere I saw in Mexico and the US the year earlier. Magnificent! So void of people! It had rained most of the way, and when the sun did filter through, there was a thick fog blanketing the world! On a Tuesday morning at the end of August, they took my three plastic 'tote' containers out of their car, and placed them on the waiting cart by the terminal, with my two boxes of books. I walked on to the BC Ferry, "Princess of the north" and began my journey up the Inside Passage. I began to empathize with the Chinese frustration of vast resources and no one there to see and enjoy them. It is truly mind-boggling! Mile after mile of nothing and no one! It took the ferry about fifteen hours to get to Prince Rupert, and although the meals were wonderful, and there was a fair amount to do on the boat, I was glad I had booked a small berth, as the trip was a long one! There are just water, sky and green mountains, hour after hour! By Bella Bella I saw salmon jumping right out of the water. I have tried to find out why, and people seem to have lots of theories: food, exercise for the trip up the river, bigger fish chasing them under the water, but no one seems to know for sure. It only happens in September and so must related to spawning, but how, I don't know. The fishing industry is not doing well this year, but BC as a whole is not doing well! My waitress said friends of hers in Rupert paid $180,000 for a fishing license and only got three six hours days so far this year!
When the captain said there were Killer Whales, which I later found out the First Nations People call Blackfish, off the starboard side, I thought the whole boat would roll over with the rush of the tourists all running for the same side of the boat. It was just like in the coffee commercials! We caught glimpses of Humpback whales apparently, although all I ever saw was something, far off in the distance. There were dolphins too, and they were a little closer. The waterfalls off the top of the mountains are spectacular, although they were hinting at the amount of rain in this area, I guess I don't take hints very well!
I was surprised that, although the Rupert school district teaches 50% First Nations kids, there is a huge population of people from China and India in Rupert. My taxi driver was a young man from India, and he was determined to carry totes alone, even though they had handles and I offered to share the load. I had packed photo albums, my computer and other things I wanted to keep dry in the totes. I even carried a tortilla maker, presented me the day before I left by friends visiting from Mexico. They were hardly light! But, I was greatly relieved in the days following that I had packed my things in waterproof containers as the rain here just never stops! The Chinese population supplies about four restaurants in Rupert, serving Chinese food. The First Nations people love Chinese food! They even get it delivered by Harbor of Inland air, to the smaller communities.
With my bigger bags in storage at the Coast Rupert Hotel, and my suitcase in my room, I attended a two-day workshop, hosted by the District. It was a great workshop and as well as introducing the new teachers to each other and the resources available, it also let us know the expectations of the District. The Superintendent of Schools, Bob David, turned out to be a great speaker and a really pleasant man. He seemed to really have some goals and expectations, and let us know that the slogans and goals were not to be treated administratively, but as signposts to guide us whenever we had a question as to whether what we were doing was right or not. During the second week of school, Bob had a stroke, and I sincerely wish him all the best!
Peter Port is the assistant superintendent and really seems to be a bright man. I thought at first he might be a bit boring.. a very monotone speaker. But it turned out that his speech reflected his wry sense of humour and the fact that every word he speaks has been chosen as the right one to reflect the idea is presenting. I found his ideas, such as teaching beyond the scientific method. He believes science is limited in that it is rigid and has no depth. If we go beyond that, we can forge ahead and not take new paths, but rather develop paths that were not there before. We should attempt to fulfill ideals, teach the curriculum without being 'curriculum driven'. The idea that we make our future is "same old", yet it I heard it differently this time, and found it very profound. I hope I can pass some of this joy for learning and optimism toward the future on to my students. Life is, after all, the journey, not the destination. We don't know where these kids are going! We can only, as Lynn says, try to guide them to become the best they can be.
On the Friday I bought some groceries and a TV. I decided TV was important to me, and I might just as well get one right away. I bought one with a built in VCR. While DVD's are all the rage, many of the educational stuff is on video and I wanted to be able to view material at home. It also has a built in radio and I was hopeful that when I got my dish set up, I could receive CBC radio. It just seems more like home when I am listening to CBC radio!
We were to leave on Saturday, but as it turned out, and as I quickly learned to expect, the weather changed. Gale force winds forced us to spend another day in Rupert. I wondered how my three big containers of 'stuff', plus two boxes of books and five boxes of groceries were all going to fit on the boat with thirteen other people and all their stuff! But as I quickly found out, these fishing boats are huge! We put our things down where the fish are kept, below the deck. On deck there is a rescue boat big enough to fit us all, a kitchen (galley) with a table and stove, water etc. as well as the bathroom and a bedroom with toys for the kids and two bunk beds. There are also three bunk beds below the galley, where people can take a nap during the 8-hour trip between Rupert and Hartley Bay. Above the galley is where the captain sits and drives the boat. He has his Captains chair, but there are also two bench seats, and sometimes we put in camping chairs in the open space, so more people can sit in comfort. We often have 8 or more people in this area alone!
The boat has an instrument panel that is quite high tech. There are two depth finders, although the newest one was out of commission. These are also fish finders, and let you know what is going on in the water below the boat. We often see schools of fish showing up as a solid mass. There is radar on the boat, which shows a picture of everything to a scale you can choose. With the radar we can see boats coming and going, and by their shape, usually predict what they are. There are tugs pulling barges down Grenville Channel, turning inland through the Douglas Channel and up to Kitimat. Sometimes these are full of sawdust, or oil, and sometimes containers. We often see other fishing boats, although it seems most of these are used as ferry's rather than fishing. Once in a while there is a sailboat, as some adventurer sails up the coast of BC or to the Alaskan PanHandle and on to Alaska! There is also the Ferry. The BC Ferry also travels down Granville Channel. It is quite narrow at times, but very deep. We also see the occasional Cruise Ship. Apparently the "Love Boat" used to be seen regularly on this route, but currently it is the ?????. There is a Global Positioning Unit, which lets us see exactly where we are, though it is not as interesting to me as the radar. The boat is also equipped with at least two different communication systems as well as the cell phones people carry with them.
It was still raining hard when we left Port Edward, just south of Prince Rupert. We drove out of Rupert past the closed pulp mill and lumber mill. The area is obviously in an economic recession. As we floated out of the harbour, we road past a number of now closed canneries as well. There are still some being used, but obviously not as in days past. Going into Chatham Sound the water became a little rough, and we saw a school of dolphins playing in the open water, but as we made out way into the channel, things calmed down, although the rain continued. When we pulled into Hartley Bay eight hours later, it was still raining hard. I got off the boat with the other new teacher, a French Canadian that had spent much of the last ten years teaching in the northern regions of Canada, the principal's wife Lynn and the principal's mother. We huddled under the umbrellas as we made our way down the wet boardwalk toward our new home.
Three hours later I
was still alone in my new home, with nothing to eat, and no blankets on the
bed. The principal, Ernie and his son
Cam were in charge of unloading the boat.
There was a lot of stuff! They
had enlisted the help of some neighborhood kids, but had obviously taken a
little time off to get some dinner. I
was starving, and went in search of Therese, the other teacher. She had brought a little food with her on the
boat and treated me to tea, cheese and crackers! I tasted wonderful! While enjoying the welcome dinner, some kids
showed up on a quad with a trailer loaded stuff, and so it went.
Comments