Why I’m Joining Up!

December 2003 - January 2004

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.
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by Lyn Hancock

The group helping to carry kayaks to the water!

In 1963, I lived in a two-room cabin on one of the hundreds of islands in Barkley Sound, BC while married to a wildlife biologist who was studying bald eagles. We knew the island as Dutch Harbor.

Those were idyllic days and they inspired me, an Aussie by birth, to spend the rest of my life in Canada. It was a dream of mine to find the place again.

But where was it? Memory dims over 40 years and not even Henk, who is Dutch himself and runs the water taxi for Sechart Whaling Station Lodge, knew of such a name. After poring long over its description in the book I wrote about those days, There’s a Seal in my Sleeping Bag, I narrowed my search to the Pinkertons—dozens of little islands that hug the shoreline just west of Sechart Whaling Station Lodge.

My normal kayaking companions, bent on more usual routes to the national park islands, poo-pooed the idea of paddling the little publicized Pinkertons. Then some friends mentioned they were booked in at the Lodge and I jumped at the chance for companionship in my search for Dutch Harbor, despite a twinge of masochistic guilt that I would be sleeping in a room and not a tent.

Gloria, LJ, Bonita and I were up before dawn to be the first to meet the M.V. Lady Rose in Port Alberni. I looked a little enviously at a big group of kayakers who seemed to know each other well and had their cars parked, their kayaks loaded and dockside totes filled before we did. One of them particularly caught my eye, an older woman with white hair who was effortlessly trundling her double kayak along the dock on wheels like a toy. “Only way to go”, she beamed as she passed us.

It wasn’t till three hours later, after we had cruised down Alberni Inlet and unloaded at Sechart Whaling Station Lodge, that I learned her name—Joan Hume. She was past president of the Nanaimo Paddlers and present coordinator of their trip to Barkley Sound.

To my surprise, I also learned that in joining my girlfriends I was now part of this group, a group which my tough, highly individualistic male companions of the past four years had told me were a bunch of old fogies who didn’t go anywhere or do much of anything (‘sofas’ was the word they used).

Joan Hume led the pack in more ways than one. She had spent many of her 65 years on the water. Her mother was a commercial net fisher who built her own boat and made her own nets. Joan and her husband ran the Brechin Point Marina for 18 years and she was the first female officer of Nanaimo’s Power and Sail Squadron. She was also an award-winning search and rescue volunteer in the Coastguard Auxiliary. Some sofa!

Rafting up for a departure chat around Joan Hume, in white.

I was impressed to learn that Joan had just come back from leading a trip to the Bunsbys the day before and that the day after our trip finished in Barkley Sound, she would be off again with another group to the Broughton Archipelago. Both destinations were at the top of my own wish list.I was thrilled when she announced that our first paddle at Sechart would be to the Pinkertons, “Lovely little islands we will return to often”, she said.

LJ and Gloria paddled singles, Bonita shared my double. “Usually we stick together for safety”, Gloria said as we grouped on the water within earshot of our guide. But Joan knew of my special mission to the Pinkertons and told the other paddlers not to worry if I veered off from the group.

We paddled off and poked in and out of idyllic, narrow, winding channels around dozens of little islands, many of which would become joined at low tide.

“I learn something new every time I go out with this club,” Gloria told me as we paddled. “We share knowledge with one another. At regular monthly meetings and occasional courses, we learn map and compass skills, safety tips, and how to use weather, tide and current data.

“And Joan’s incredible. She never pushes, never bombards, she’s so patient, teaching us one thing at a time.”

Lyn in front of the Dutch Harbor cabin in the Pinkertons, Barkley Sound.

“She’s like a mother hen with chicks”, LJ added. “One night I was out and it was nearly dusk. She knew my leg had been bothering me and there she was, sitting quietly by herself on a rock, watching and waiting. I was really touched by her concern.”

Joan often paddles a double kayak so she can share it with members who lack the stamina or the interest to do a full day’s paddle in a single.

All the while we talked, I was keeping an eye out for Dutch Harbor.

Then, on the far side of the archipelago, in a protected backwater close to Vancouver Island, I saw the little bridge I knew so well. I signaled to Joan, she waved me on, and I excitedly nosed my kayak towards the island—no, two little islands connected by a wooden bridge with a cabin on one and a shed on the other.

Everything looked familiar—the bridge, my oyster and mussel garden, the stone corral where I trapped perch to feed eaglets, one of the five eagle nests I could see from the beach.

Over the next few days we paddled back a few times to the islands and I was able to talk to two women who lived on an adjacent float. I learned that the original owners were long dead and the island had been bequeathed to the son of my former neighbors on Hand Island. He had just started to renovate his parent’s cabin and put in a dock for his float plane.

Lunch break on the northern tip of Alma Russel Island.

I left a note attached to his dock and have since heard from him with an invitation to return for a visit. He also said that since the islands are unnamed on the chart, he would like to refer to them by his family name, Nicolai.

For the balance of the Barkley Sound trip, although I was still an unofficial member of the group and could have paddled alone, I chose to do most of the day trips Joan suggested and to learn from her. And I’m glad I did.

The 150 or so members of the Nanaimo Paddlers club may range in age from 16 to 90 (two of their charter members are legendary steward of Wildwood, Merv Wilkinson, aged 90, and George Hermans, over 70), but despite a high proportion of middle-agers, they are certainly not a bunch of old fogies.

Their trips are as short as a practice dump on Westwood Lake in Nanaimo to as long as the Yukon River; from as protected a waterway as around Newcastle Island to as rugged as the western Queen Charlottes; from as catered a place as Sechart Whaling Station Lodge to the live-off-the-land style of the Nimpkish Valley; from the calm of a moonlight paddle to Protection Island to the excitement of tide rips and whale-watching in Seymour Narrows.

The Nanaimo Paddlers are now in their 22nd year and this ‘old fogey’ will be one of them in their 23rd year, I promise!

© Lyn Hancock lives in Nanoose Bay where she watches seals and eagles. After 30 years in the Arctic, she has traded in her rubber raft and float plane for a couple of kayaks and is now paddling to old haunts on the BC coast.