100 KM DIET

Lots of people these days are looking for concrete ways to take positive action in the climate change crisis. A very basic way to be involved is in our eating habits. It’s a revolutionary new idea - eating locally. By-pass the agribusiness multinationals and their giant fossil fuel imprint, and get more in touch with what’s around us. We cause some consternation or embarrassment in grocery stores, asking for local produce. But sailing on La Sonrisa is a a great opportunity for eating locally.

Digging clams in Cockle Bay

Blue huckleberries in the rainforest

Another way we try to practice food justice is by seeking out Fair Trade products, where the grower receives a living wage and environmentally friendly methods are used in production. And we try to find sources of just meat – where the animal has a good life!

A great way to move towards eating locally is to grow it yourself – or trade with someone who does.
Gardening and living on a boat don’t go together easily. That’s why this summer at Crippen Cove was such a delight. We started our garden last summer by building a raised garden bed. We collected planks on beaches and towed them to Crippen. Thomas and nephew Matthew constructed the bed on a patch of removed sod, then we layered the upside down sod, large rocks, beach gravel, sand and then soil removed from the sod. We dug more soil from what had been gardens years ago and covered it all with a large layer of seaweed.

We spent the winter planning our seeds and headed north with what we’d found. Here is the La Sonrisa greenhouse, it felt great to be surrounded with little green children:

Cockpit greenhouse

When we got to Crippen Cove the garden bed was perfect. We tucked the little egg carton nests into the soil and planted more seeds. And watched things grow!

First garden salad

Open bottom buckets with rhubarb and potatoes to seed for next year.

Garden stir fry

On La Sonrisa we gather food wherever we go – it is our way of being part of the neighbourhood. The basic activity of getting food from our surroundings we have in common with all our coastal neighbours.

Our favourite wild green is goose tongue - sea plantain. It's also a favourite of deer and geeese

Our diet is based on what we find around us, and we eat whatever we gather.

Giant mussels and goose neck barnacles

We have been discovering ways to efficiently process food aboard. Often we are adapting methods from past generations. Our "root cellar" is in the cool storage near the hull. There is always something drying in the cockpit or galley.

salting bait

mint and apples

Black current jam

Just before heading south we harvested the garden



And brought our harvest aboardNow we just have to figure out how to grow winter gardens at our families' places down south.

On a sad note, as we were leaving Prince Rupert we spoke to a seasoned gill net fisher preparing to head home.
"How was the fishing?"
“Good year for the pink salmon. In all my years fishing, I’ve never seen ‘em that plentiful.”
"That's wonderful!" we said. Last year was a very poor year for pinks.
“But we can’t sell them. Price went from .15/lb to nothing. Same as we were getting 20 years ago and look at the price of gas!"

Wild Pink salmon are the most affordable and sustainable source of protein that coastal people can eat. Our natural, local food is overflowing the fishing nets. And yet pink salmon aren't in our diets. The "market" deems them worthless. Somehow we 100 Km Diet people have to turn this around!

KEN AND HELEN’S PRINCE RUPERT

Prince Rupert rainbow

Helen (Green/Phelps) Harding was born in Prince Rupert and lived here all her life. Even when her husband Ken retired after 40 inspiring years as manager of the PR Fishermen’s Co-op and considered moving elsewhere, Helen refused to leave this place. Both Ken and Helen were deeply committed to community life in Prince Rupert, and gave much of themselves to make it what it is.

On August 4 we spread their ashes in Crippen Cove, in the little sand and gravel beach bay where Helen’s grandfather, Reg Green came in 1907 to start a herring saltery. 100 years later Helen’s daughters Anne and Susan and son Thomas and spouses, and granddaughter Jo-Lynda gathered on the beach to say good-bye.

We shared stories and loving remembrances. It was emotionally harder than anyone had expected; time has passed since Ken died in 2003 and Helen in 04. But somehow the bay is richer, something has been added to the striking beauty of the point of land that stretches from rainforest into busy Metlakatla Pass. Their spirits are present; the love they shared in all kinds of ways during their lives blesses us all.

From when I first came to Prince Rupert in 1999, Ken and Helen have been for me the heart of a vital and genuine coastal community. The city is shaped by the diversity in this natural crossroads. There are the original Tsimpsian people, the traditional Scandinavian fishing community, and people from all over the globe drawn to the north Pacific. And now the Vietnamese crab fishing folks.

Here where the land meets the sea, human and animal clans intersect, and human enterprise is not so full of itself. Ken and Helen and their neighbours put up with the deer in their backyards because they understand they share space with all kinds of creatures.

Prince Rupert is a community-sized city. There seem to be a significant set of people who care primarily about the well being of the whole community. People have time for each other. When our friend Gordy was seriously injured in a fall from a ladder while painting his house, we thought he wouldn’t be able to look after himself. But whenever we go to check in on him, there’s a steady stream of neighbours: dropping in, bringing food, walking Kimbo, running errands. The word was all over town before he got out of emergency.

Here are Gordy and Kimbo as they will be again in a couple of months.

Our first summers of sailing on La Sonrisa, Ken Harding always met us at the dock in the old Subaru. Now the tradition is upheld by Gordy and Foster - with Foster's wife Hilda, the last of Ken and Helen’s bridge-playing set.

One of my cherished memories of Ken and Helen was sitting between them in their pew near the front of First United Church. It was like going back into Thomas’ childhood, sandwiched into love passed from generation to generation. Since their death their church has become our northern church family, where we feel especially close to them. It has long been one of those very alive church communities, where people aren’t afraid to share their gifts and get involved; and they make a difference in the larger community. At announcement time we told about spreading Ken and Helen’s ashes. Jean was inviting people to take part in making new wall hangings, and told us about the ones hanging all around us this Sunday. They were made years ago, when she asked every person in the congregation to make a square. Now she tells us the money for the material came, quietly, from Helen. That was her way, she would slip money from her piano teaching fund to this person and another.

One of the quilted hangings we saw in the sanctuary

People from First United came for a picnic at Crippen Cove. Ken and Helen were very close!

If any blog readers want to add to this story, please leave a comment or send an email to elizabeale@yahoo.ca

SUMMER

Once a First Nations ancient basket weaver was asked how she collected her weaving materials.
“Oh, I go in the summer to my places.”
“When is summer in these parts?”
“Oh, sometime in August.”
“When is summer over?”
“Oh, sometime in August.”

Summer is elusive on the north coast. It comes in bits and pieces, part of an afternoon, a few days of light northwest winds. Summer is a feeling, a lifting of dark skies, a light heart, possibilities overflowing.

Summer is when the salmon come up the inlets, preparing themselves for the arduous journey up their native streams to spawn.

Tzoonie River, Billy Griffith’s seine boat pulling in the net (05)

And with the salmon come the seals and the whales, and all the neighbours who are fed by salmon.

The humpback whales were late this year,
these two were off the islands south of Baron Island, during the last week in July.

A north coast summer isn’t necessarily warm, and sometimes the sun comes out of the clouds just in time for sunset.

La Sonrisa in the morning mist

But after days of rain and drizzle, whenever the sun arrives it’s suddenly summer! The kids didn’t wait for the rain to quit this day when the sun broke through.

Sun on a waterfall slide makes the cold water bearable

Summer is the sweet little packages of light dangling from branches - salmonberries, red and blue huckleberries, raspberries. Us and the bears and ravens take our turns.

Current bushes grown up the old apple tree

Iain Lawrence, coastal writer (Far Away Places) used to live in Dodge Cove, next bay south from Crippen Cove. He and his wife sailed south for the summer and north for the winter (opposite to us) and wrote of their experiences. They labeled their berry jams and jellies with the names of the places they were picked. They called them “Summer in a jar”

“Summer in a jar”

REG GREEN’S HERITAGE

Reg Green didn’t just help start a herring saltery in Crippen Cove in 1907 and serve this coast with his tug “San Juan Prince”, he also made his mark on some fine people.

Aunt Chris Green is Reg’s daughter-in-law, and a pretty special person.
Chris is the last Green of her generation left in Prince Rupert. Right now she’s on her way to the scout jamboree in England. She has the Silver Wolf award, and rarely misses gatherings of scouts from around the world.

Every year we sail and picnic with Chris and her foster grandchildren. We’ve had adventures at Lucy Island, Crippen Cove, Pilsbury Cove, and Salt Lake. Here we are on Tugwell Island.

Picnic on Tugwell Island

Sailing with cousin Bill and Bobbie Crane

Lucy Island Salmon Bake

This sailing trip was a rediscovery journey. It’s been 20 years since cousins Bill and Thomas have seen each other. They kept discovering little things they have in common, and how much each was imprinted by going out on the troller "Earl Roy" with Grampa as teenage deck hands. They share an appreciation of wildlife, food gathering, quiet solitude, and a joy in solving puzzles – mechanical, navigational, whatever comes up.


Jo-Lynda Hill is Reg Green’s great granddaughter. When she’s not at her demanding job as wharfinger of the Prince Rupert Rowing and Yacht Club, with daughter and assistant Stephanie, we love to have Jo-Linda join us on La Sonrisa. Here’s Jo helping out at the Crippen cabin.

Somehow, Jo seems to be there in the challenges. She helped us make a trail through the salmonberry thickets on Lucy Island, we laughed together waiting for the tide to lift us off Devastation Island bar, remembering earlier escapades on Tugwell beach. We’ve enjoyed seafood feasts and beautiful coastal sunsets, and weathered some sad times. Niece Jo-Lynda Hill is a daughter of this coast, 100 years on the Green side, 1000’s of years on her Tsimpsean heritage side.

The waters around Prince Rupert have known many Greens. Cousin Rob and Sharon wave from their gillnetter Ganhada. Nephew Owen toots his horn on his way to the Khutzemateen as skipper of the tour boat Georgia Master. Uncle Bud’s ashes were spread in his favourite crabbing bay in Metlakatla Pass.

Thomas’ mom, Helen Harding, is Reg Green’s daughter. This summer is a special time of remembering Ken and Helen Harding. We will be spreading their ashes in Crippen Cove next month.