CLAM GARDENS

We’ve just read Judith Williams CLAM GARDENS, ABORIGINAL MARICULTURE ON CANADA’S WEST COAST. We found it at Billy Proctor’s Museum in Echo Bay. It’s changed the whole feel of the Coast for me.

Early in my sailing days I read about an amazing light-keeper’s family at the Scarlett Point lighthouse. William Hunt of Fort Rupert, his native wife Vivian and 2 sons, went to Scarlett Point in 1908. They had 7 more sons and a daughter. William, Vivian and family kept the lighthouse for 30 years and the family thrived. The keeper who came after them ate only canned food and complained that Scarlett Point was “impregnated with the odour of smoked fish and clams.” He almost starved when the supply ship couldn’t come in. After only one winter he was taken to hospital with “gastric disturbances.”

Dried clams have been a major food source on this coast. Dipped in oolichan grease they provided a spectacular balance of protein, carbohydrates and Omega 3 oil. They were easy to store and trade. In 1792 the explorer Valdes described a gift from Chief Tetacus’s people as “dried floury fruits.” They must have been smoked clams! When I lived in Boiler Bay in Egmont, clams and oysters were our basic staples, alive and available depending only on the tide and our own efforts.

In past years, as we’ve traveled up and down the Coast, I have sometimes felt lonely, longing for human community, saddened to think of years gone by at a crumbling cannery or mill town, or watching a sunset in a long ago picturesque homestead imagining the people resting at the end of a hard-working day. The clam gardens are much older than that. And they are still here, still providing sustainable protein to people who are in touch with this coast. As we gather food, in the company of all our animal neighbours, we are also surrounded by the special places of the people who came before.

This clam garden is in Monday Anchorage in the Broughton Archipelago.

The "wuxwuthin"--clam gardens--are butter clam terraces that have been enhanced and maintained by First Nations people since before memory. Described as “making things better for the next time, removing stones,” the wuxwuthin, over time, became raised beds fronted by rock walls. Creating the rock walls not only enhanced the productivity of the clam beds, it raised the level of beds otherwise only accessible at the lowest tides.

Clam Garden rock wall

Judith Williams first became aware of the wuxwuthin while she was researching a project for the UBC Museum of Anthropology. She talked with Elizabeth Harry (Keekus) of Sliammon Village, and decided to visit Waiatt Bay on Quadra Island where Keekus’s family still harvest “the best clams on the coast.” This visit was the beginning of her enthusiam for clam gardens. But she found a strange silence in the whole body of research about them. “It was perplexing to think that many theories about West Coast Native culture had been formulated by observers who had taken little note of Native husbandry and who were, apparently, unaware of the clam gardens that produced one of the dietary staples.” Why has the evidence of clam gardens been ignored? Perhaps because clams were dug by women and children. Male anthropologists were more interested in hunting, fishing and masculine ritual lore.

Note one delightful detail from an elder: We didn’t harvest the beds closest to the village in the winter. We left those for the grandmas and the aunties who stayed behind when we went fishing and food-gathering in the summer. We would even stock them with clams, cockles and sea urchins for them to gather.

Clam garden with canoe access,

By paying attention to native oral history, knowledge about clam gardens has grown. There are now 365 clam garden sites recognized. This awareness opens our eyes to who these people were and are on the land. As we travel the Coast we see or are reminded of silverweed patches, camas and chocolate lily fields, carefully tended berry patches, culturally modified trees. Historically, coastal First Nations people were not simply hunter-gatherers; they were people who sustainably cared for the land and gently enhanced its ability to produce food.

field of chocolate lilies

Culturally modified tree

Grace Harbour

We have often anchored in Grace Harbour in Okeover Inlet. When Thomas first heard about clam gardens he felt sure this was one. It turns out that this was a winter village, and the upper and lower clam beaches are still harvested. There was a Big House; winter ceremonials included the lovely islet that was used as a podium

Grace Islet

Learning to walk in a clam garden

Codville Lagoon Pictograph.

Another favourite spot turns out to have pictographs and a clam garden!

Billy Proctor directed us to our first clam garden in the Broughton Islands, and from there we have discovered more clam gardens, just by looking closely at low tide. From Judith’s book we learned that Billy has been creating his own clam garden for over 40 years, harvesting it carefully each winter.

Billy Proctor on his dock

Thomas remembers being in Strasbourg, France, one summer. The people there were celebrating their 2000th anniversary. Our family property in Crippen Cove, originally a First Nations site in Metlakatla Pass, goes back 5000 years. Human habitation at Namu goes back almost 10,000 years!

Often when we come into a First Nations’ site we are met by the “old ones”--the spirits who are still very much there. And the spirits are very often women; maybe because it was the women who cared for the land—the clam gardens, berry patches, silverweed and camas fields. And so, as we slip quietly into a cove with a terraced beach at low tide, somehow I’m not lonely anymore.
And we might just start a clam garden for our grandchildren at Crippen Cove.


Books:
CLAM GARDENS, Aboriginal Mariculture on Canada’s West Coast, Judith Williams, New Star Books, Vancouver, 2006.
LIGHTS OF THE INSIDE PASSAGE, Donald Graham, Harbour Publishing, 1986.
HEART OF THE RAINCOAST, A Life Story, Alexandra Morton and Billy Proctor, First TouchWood Edition, 1998.
FULL MOON, FLOOD TIDE, Bill Proctor’s Raincoast, Bill Proctor and Yvonne Maximchuk, Harbour Publishing, 2003. (Bill’s section on clam gardens pp. 33-35, expresses the same awe we are experiencing.)

Links:
http://vancouver.kijiji.ca/c-events-Archaeological-Society-of-BC-Dr-John-Harper-Clam-Gardens-W0QQAdIdZ53734826

http://thetyee.ca/Books/2007/02/08/ClamGardens/

Native Ingenuity, Christopher Arrnett
http://greatanotherone.googlepages.com/LRCArnettJan-Feb2007.pdf.

SFU research
http://www.sfu.ca/pamr/media_releases/media_releases_archive/media_release06020801.html

NORTHERN NEIGHBOURS

Stellar sea lions

We’ve had wonderful experiences of wildlife as we’ve sailed north. Some were so dramatic we’ve been learning to upload videos to share the joy.


On these rocks in the southeast entrance to Fife Sound, Broughton Archepelago – the mainland across from northern Vancouver Island – we watched this huge colony of stellar sea lions. There appeared to be both large males, females and young pups. And what sound effects! Here’s the video: Stellar sea lions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncgELwnsz4w


These grizzlies were watching us as we headed into a favourite anchorage near Princess Royal Island. Thomas anchored very gently, and tho they looked at us carefully and the cub started to run away, they stayed where they were. And we had a wonderful time watching.

See how close the bears are to our stern line.

The bears ate and ate, turning over clumps of greens (silverweed) and munching on mussels on old branches at the tiideling. The sedges grizzlies need this time of year hadn’t come up yet – it’s been a late spring.
Here are 2 little video’s:

Grizzly “Mom & Cub” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rQl0qD7bJI

Green Inlet grizzlies http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lET7F7rIQ4Y

Elephant seal Here’s a bathing beauty we met in Princess Royal Channel

Humpback whale near Dryad Point lighthouse

We watched this exuberant whale for what seemed like hours. After anchoring in another favourite, beautiful anchorage, watching and listening to a mating pair of sandhill cranes, the next morning our whale was still diving and splashing nearby.

Here are 2 more videos:
Dryad Point Humpback
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiQ-OkuK7LQ

Humback rolls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVfZAfADi1g

Thomas has been reading and sharing an inspiring book we borrowed from Irene on Cortez. GREENPEACE, How a group of ecologists, Journalists and Visionaries Changed the World. By Rex Weyler, 2004

The whales we see are such a gift, real affirmation and forgiveness. A joyful sign of hope.

Here’s a poem from Lawrence Ferlinghetti, written in 1977 aboard the James Bay, Greenpeace’s ship, off Cape Flattery.

Dreamt of
Moby Dick the Great White Whale
Cruising about
with a flag flying
with an inscription on it
“I am what is left of Wild Nature”
and Ahab pursuing in a jet boat with a ray gun
and jet harpoons and super depth charges
and napalm flamethrowers and electric
underwater vibrators and the whole gory
glorious efficient military-political
industrial-scientific technology
of the greatest
civilization the
earth has ever
known
devoted to
the absolute extinction and
death of the natural world as we know it
And Captain Ahab Death Captain Anti-Poetry
Captain Dingbat No Face Captain Apocalypse
at the helm
of the Killer Ship of Death
And the blue-eyed whales
exhausted and running

but still
singing

to each other…

NOT A PIECE OF CAKE

Not a new tradition on La Sonrisa

With a lemon that needed using and leftover pie-crust dough it seemed a lemon meringue pie was in order. We’d finally used all of the canned pumpkin from Tamaya’s Halloween decorations, and the last of Ike’s apples. Thomas wondered “Will this become a new tradition crossing Queen Charlotte Sound?” When the pie ended up sideways in a plastic bag in the sink we concluded: “Not a new tradition!”

We’d looked forward to Kalect Island Cove, one of our favourite anchorages where we often wait for weather to cross the Sound. This time it was blowing too hard to jig for fish and raining too hard to enjoy leisurely beachcombing (this is the anchorage where Ted and Katharine did yoga on the slanted smooth pebble beach and Deacon Dave got lost in time among the low tide limpets). So when the weather forecast predicted a break in the southeast gales, with unfavourable weather likely for some days to come, we decided to take a chance. Soon we were sailing at 6+ knots with 2 – 3 metre waves crashing on our beam. We started with the little staysail. “I should reef the main,” says Thomas, as though he might not. “Yes! Yes!” says Elizabeth. We slowly added sail as the winds lightened though the waves and swell didn’t. It was a very fast trip, often 6-7-8 knots. It took 8 hours to do 40+ miles, a record for La Sonrisa. One of our crossing traditions--Thomas getting out the northern charts and putting the southern ones under the forward bunk--was left half-done. No time for pictures till we neared Calvert Island on the other side.

Calvert Island ahead - the waves always look smaller when photographed.

Eventually we sailed into spinnaker wind. And that’s when the humpback whale greeted us, at first with a resounding whack and splash of fin. Then we saw two of them fishing in circles. Such a welcome sight! Here we are in the north with the wonderful wildlife.

Humpback whales in Fitzhugh Sound

Eagle in the rain

One of the gifts of southeast winds, other than blowing us north, is the familiar rainforest rain. Our quiet little anchorage just before Addenbrook Light was as though the winds had never been. So we went fishing.

Rockfish, ling cod and greenling

The next day’s sail was almost as wild, minus the swell, and took us all the way to Codville Lagoon.
..to be continued

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE NEIGHBOURHOOD?

Spring flowers remain from an old homestead

Do you remember when people said about black folk (or Jews, or Pakistanis) moving into the neighbourhood, that property values would plummet and the neighbourhood generally go to the dogs? Well, it’s happening with an interesting twist on the Coast.

It’s a lovely spot. We call it Castle Anchorage after the impressive rock face on the east side: Last stop before running the rapids going north (Yuks – Dents – Greene Pt.– Whirlpool), first stop returning south. There’s an old rickety float in the cove and some wonderful lingcod, rockfish and greenling where the current swirls around the point. It’s where Elizabeth first learned to talk raven.

We were cleaning fish on the aft deck. A hot September afternoon. Two eagles watched with hungry eye and quickly swooped for the carcasses we threw overboard. Several ravens were on the dock, giving us what for. “They can’t get the carcasses out of the water,” Elizabeth said. “They want us to throw some onto the float.” And then she began talking to them in a wondrous mixture of raven and English.

Sure enough, that is what they wanted. “Thank you (Hy-clops),” they said!

Last fall a new thing appeared in Castle Anchorage: a fancy wharf attached to the north shore, with an airplane ramp complete with plane. Several cottages had been built over the years, around the point, and one fairly substantial house. But nobody seemed to be at home. We edged our way carefully in, tied up to the old float, and proceeded to catch a lovely lingcod in the shadow of the plane’s pontoons.

blue lingcod

This year we had a boisterous spinnaker run north from Irene’s on Cortes Island,

planning to overnight at Castle Anchorage, catch some fish, and time our departure for the turn to ebb in the first set of rapids next morning. The plane wasn’t there, but a powerboat was. Again we carefully edged in and tied to the old float.

gifts from an old coastal homestead

I was down below lighting the fire, Elizabeth on the float sorting flowers, when a nattily-dressed man strode down to the new dock and yelled across: “Private!” Elizabeth called me up from down below. Standing on the aft deck so I could hear, I asked if he had a problem with us tying up there. “It’s private property,” he said.

Not wanting to argue, I asked if it was all right, however, to spend the night. “O.k.,” he said, grudgingly: “But only the night. Don’t go ashore, and don’t come back!” “Hy-clops,” I said, “(Thank you.)” But only the ravens understood that I was trying to be polite!

Technically, unless he has a foreshore lease for the cove (which I doubt), the old float with anchors and buoys, cables and chains, simply clutters up a public anchorage, making it impossible for anyone else to use it. And it’s one of the few anchorages within striking distance of the rapids. Maybe if we meet again I’ll ask to see a copy of the lease.

Needless to say we didn’t feel much like fishing. Elizabeth immediately wanted to start a new blogspot called “!&%*# of the Coast,” but her gentler nature prevailed.

It is a problem, however. As property values increase, only certain people can afford to own and build on the Coast. They have no real investment in the life there. Nor do they understand coastal etiquette or appreciate the needs of those who travel these waters. Money talks, private property prevails, and—unfortunately--there goes the neighbourhood!

EGMONT

When I lived in Egmont 25 years ago it was a fishing village. The locals fished commercially right in front of our cabin in Boiler Bay. Our dietary staples were salmon, clams, oysters and rockfish. When the fishboat was out we rowed into town to Bathgate’s Store, or hiked in on the trail that goes to the Skookumchuk Rapids. The kids did school by correspondence, and later attended the Egmont one-room school. Favourite outings were to the Egmont Thrift Store next to the little Post Office, and seasonal celebrations in the Community Hall. All our neighbours were down-to-earth and resourceful. Vera Grafton, First Nations elder and whafinger regularly rowed over to look in on us.

There haven’t been any commercial salmon openings Jervis Inlet for decades now, and the kids bus to school in Pender Harbour; but that may be all that’s changed, really. There’s a plaque for Auntie Vee on the Egmont dock. The locals still harvest seafood, and do just about anything else that’s possible. Whether a fishing village has to turn to tourism or recreational property is still an open question here. What I see in Egmont is people making a living as they can, while still in touch with their surroundings - animal and human neighbours, forests, tides, weather, environmental concerns. There is some of the worst logging I’ve ever seen scarring the whole mountainside above the gravel pit – and the pit has become much more of an eyesore since I lived here. And yet it’s beautiful in Egmont. Maybe because it’s rural, sort of forgotten about, human life is in perspective with all the other creatures.

We come to Egmont to go up on Billy Griffith’s marine ways.

Tzoonie River

Billy built his seine boat Tzoonie River in the early 70’s. He’s a good fisherman, and Tzoonie River is often one of the high catch boats in the commercial salmon openings out of Prince Rupert, but Billy is most proud of awards for best by catch recovery levels. He and other family members are active in the local salmon enhancement program. Right now he’s getting ready for the local prawn season. His son Johnny sold his seiner in the buy-back and is a computer expert in the lower mainland, but Billy’s grandson Michael is fast learning about boats.

Michael’s boat - two half barrels lashed together a la Huckleberry Finn

Iris Griffith Field Studies and Interpretive Centre

Michael’s mom, Maureen invited Thomas and I to hold a session on “Foraging” at the Iris Griffith Nature Centre. Iris was Billy’s late wife and leader in environmental concerns on the Sunshine Coast for many years. At the beautiful, peaceful centre with the sounds of frogs, birds and ducks all around us, interested people shared their knowledge and experience with local wild plants.

drying wild onions
stinging nettles, a prized spring green
Foraging discussion at Iris Griffith Nature Centre

Discussing mushrooms with John Field,
who will hold classes on mushrooms at the Centre in October

Why foraging? Why gather wild food? Spiritually, to be intimately in touch with where we are, fed by the nourishing gifts of nature. For health. For those trying to move towards the 100 mile diet you can hardly get closer than your local dandelions. And in economic/political terms, well, Maureen gave me a button to wear: “Be Subversive, Buy Local Food”
I kept thinking “Iris would have loved this gathering!”
Learn more at this link:
www.lagoonsociety.com

Maureen also invited us to join her family for one of their regular beach walks. Adults and children spend hours looking at the neighbours.

the flatworm's little face
this starfish has its new little leg in a strange place

Michael complains that his science class at school is boring – but the highlight of his week is “Lagoonies”, the after school nature study at the Iris Griffith Centre.

Some “Egmonsters” are newcomers, it’s been home for others for generations. I recognize cabins and boats from 25 years ago. We were tied beside decades of history in the boats people have left behind. And among the old, new life.

Three classic boats

The swan is a classic tugboat built in 1907. It’s present owners Chris and Christina are giving it a new chapter of life, after all the stories of its many adventures. Chris says you can read its history on the internet. (Google something like Swan 1907)

Tom, the former owner of Swan, came to Egmont as manager of the new museum. He is now lovingly restoring The Widow Brown.

Widow Brown

There’s another new/old neighbour in the waters around Egmont. Henry the humpback whale is regularly seen, and heard. We saw our first humpback in Georgia Straight 2 years ago near the mouth of Jervis Inlet. There haven’t been any humpback whales in Georgia Strait since 1903, when the whole population of 99 humpbacks were hunted and killed, processed in Nanaimo. And now, finally, they are coming back. Henry is very welcome!

Here’s what Henry looks like

Last year we saw Ralph the seal, and heard about his friend Serena. These two orphaned seals were rescued and bottle fed on ground herring and milk. Later the kids caught shiners off the dock and put them in an inflatable swimming pool so the seals could learn to catch their own food. The seals visit their human friends regularly.

On La Sonrisa we love to trade. We traded crab for some organic Canadian grain and beans. But when the crab started clicking, like they do, in their bucket, Paul thought they were laughing and he couldn’t cook them. One of them, Harold, became Michael’s pet. He put him on a string and takes him for walks on the sea bottom.

Of course we had to offer our old crab bait for Harold’s food. And he needs a lot of watching, so humans have to spend a lot of slow time on the dock and shore. But Michael is sad to report that Harold has escaped – he’s somewhere between Henry and Ralph, enjoying the waters of Egmont.