Late July, and the Okanagan has emerged from a two-week heat dome: afternoons hitting the high 30’s, nights only cooling down to the high 20’s. There is a straightforward meteorological explanation for this: our greenhouse gas emissions warm the atmosphere. The atmospheric warming slows the jet stream, resulting in stalled weather patterns. Warmer water temperatures increase ocean evaporation, which increases atmospheric humidity, which reduces nighttime cooling. A worldwide daily high temperature record was broken recently, and then broken again the day after. High temperatures dry out fuels and make fires burn hotter and spread more rapidly. Profound, and profoundly simple, science.
On the fire front, thus far this summer we are fortunate. We have had a few small fires and some smoky days, but so far no major conflagrations like other parts of Canada are experiencing. The Boreal forests were once our guardians, sequestering massive amounts of atmospheric carbon. Now with the advent of megafires, they are carbon emitters. We used to call forest fire release as “natural carbon,” but global warming has shifted the ownership of that carbon to us.
Cars, gas stations, refineries, oil wells, streets and highways seem increasingly unnatural and threatening to me, since I know they are at the root of our existential problem. Now just the noise of passing cars can push me into momentary dystopia. Some part of me is revulsed by the fact that our culture and economy is centered around the private automobile, even though I own one and use it a couple of times a week.
The evening news spews out division, autocracy, crime and violence. Violence both random and planned. The movies spew out much the same, along with alien invasions and apocalyptica. Plastics surround me; virtually all my purchased food comes in its requisite polyethylene container, either hard plastic, flexible plastic or styrofoam, and sometimes all three. Chinese consumer goods, and foods, also surround me; each item I buy supports autocracy, slave labor, enormous ocean freighters and marine microplastics. Up and down this Valley, developers are busy building monster homes and car-dependent spaghetti subdivisions on fire-prone hillsides. Local and regional governments bend over backwards to help out. For the few salmon that navigate the eight dams on the Columbia River and head up the Okanagan, The waters here are getting too warm to support the traditional spawning run. On the other hand, luxury cruise ship and airplane travel is burgeoning.
What do I do, when the only pleasures left to me are found in the very small circle of family, gardening, friends, dogs, books, swimming, nature, food and wine? Even though I stay active politically, ride my bike and recycle obsessively, my super-rational inner voice tells me my individual subtractions from the global carbon sum are so infinitesimal that they simply don’t matter. Then my alternate inner voice says: yes, your individual subtractions are insignificant, but you are setting an example. To which the other voice replies: his neighbors all see him as a nerdy left-wing wacko, riding his Chinese-made bicycle to the recycling depot.
So what is my next move? Should I go to a museum and throw paint on a famous portrait? Start a naked sit-in on the steps of City Hall?
I think back to my highschool years, when the Cuban Missile Crisis put the world on the brink of nuclear war. I remember thinking at the time: it no longer matters what I do. I can study hard and work for good causes, or I can lay in bed reading comic books all day. Either way, what I do doesn’t matter. As a teenager with little yet at stake in the world, I found that attitude kind of liberating. Flash forward to the Now, and the knowledge that whatever I do or don’t do makes no difference makes me depressed, not liberated.
Randomly, in the midst of this protracted negative frame of mind, a cool, sunny, smokeless morning inserts itself. The birds are active in the yard, flowers are blooming, tree leaves flutter in the breeze, and my frozen heart melts. I go for a guilty pleasure swim in unnaturally warm Okanagan Lake, and I experience the sensuous joy of full immersion. For a moment.
Fifteen years ago I started a tiny backyard vineyard, which I named Yippee Calle. With the help of my mentor George, I rooted cuttings of Zweigelt, an Austrian red, and eventually got 55 vines established. For the first few years I climbed a steep learning curve, both in the growing and the winemaking. Over time, my vintages varied from undrinkable cooking wine to passable plonk, with the occasional delectable year in between.
Fast forward to early January of 2024. Not much insulating snow on the ground, and it had been a long, open fall, so the grapevines are not fully hardened off. Okanagan temperatures suddenly drop into the minus twenties, for several days. A few places hit minus thirty. Vines up and down the Valley, including mine, took a silent body blow. Come spring I studied my bare trunks and cordons on a daily basis, looking forlornly for any sign of growth. Finally, in June, I began to see some tiny green sprouts, not on the cordons where they should be, but coming out of the ground around the dead trunks. To keep track, I hung pieces of red tape above each vine and started a daily count. If I saw a basal shoot, I removed the tag. It was an agonizing few weeks as I started from 54 Presumed Dead, then down to 44, then to 20, and finally, to 6 for sure dead.
So now I was catapulted into a totally new phase of viticulture: caring for basal shoots after the parent trunk and cordons have given up the ghost. As the spring progressed, some trunks had five, six or seven vigorous basal shoots. How many sprouts should I keep? Dunno. George said, prune conservatively. You won’t have a crop this year anyhow, and the vines can use all that foliage to recover their vigor.
As we moved into full summer and the heat dome, the shoots took off, sometimes lengthening a hands’ breadth overnight. The upright ones were head height and more. They were also quite fragile and unless they were supported, a moderate breeze could snap them off at the base. So I spent a lot of time gently elevating the sprouts and securing them to a wire or a bamboo stake.
I desperately wanted to replace the six dead vines, so I cut off some tiny green side shoots, soaked them in water overnight, treated them with rooting hormone, and put them in small pots inside, near a window. Even while misting them twice a day, the little shoots simply gave up the ghost, tragically brown corpses lying flat on their pots. Subsequently reading up on how to start greenshoot cuttings, I was informed that they should be misted for 10 seconds, every 90 seconds, for the first week. So much for that idea.
Reading further, I stumbled on layering, and now that concept has become my passion. Some of my basal sprouts were ground-oriented, rather than upright. So for this chosen few, I dug shallow trenches underneath them. Then I snipped off a few leaves from the middle of the shoot and carefully buried that portion, still connected to the main stem, but leaving the last few terminal leaves exposed. The theory here is the shoot can still receive nutrients from the main stem as it goes about producing roots on the buried part. Eventually, and with the assent of the wine gods, the shoot will have enough roots and vigor to become a new, separate plant on its own. At which point I will yell yippie ki yay. I will also remind myself of the scale of my disaster recovery; a tiny microcosm of what the entire Okanagan wine industry is going through.
Dionysus (aka Bacchus) is the god of winemaking. He also advocated for ecstatic (eleutheric) dancing, to free oneself from care. I could use some of that. All this work is in the service of a glass of red wine, my vernacular sacred.
Currently I am teaching a once-weekly class at a community college in Merritt, BC, which is a 140 kilometer drive from my home. That sounds like a straightforward commute, but there are three minor problems. One. The class starts at 9am in the morning. Two. The term is January to April. Three. To get to Merritt, I drive over a mountain highway known as the Coquihalla Connector, which tops out at 1730 meters and is famous for black ice, impenetrable fog, and occasional whiteouts. The first 30 and the last 30 kilometers are low elevation and usually not a problem, but the middle 80 kilometers can be white-knuckle. Like when a semi passes and your windshield receives a blinding torrent of gravel-impregnated slush. The highway readerboard will have information statements like: “Dense fog next 30km,” or “Ice and Slippery Sections.” I like to pass the time by making up alternate statements like: “Do You Really Need to Make this Trip” or “Conditions Improve In 3 Months.” There are of course, occasional potholes, which must make snowplowing similar to an old man shaving: how to work through the wrinkles and low spots.
The stress of winter mountain driving makes a three hour trip feel like eight hours, so I have found other ways to help pass the time. On my westward trip, I keep track of the notable points: Silver Creek, Brenda Mines, the Pennask Summit with its five spectacular wind turbines, then Loon Lake, Elkhart, Pothole Creek, the Wart, the Aspen Grove turnoff, and Corbett Lake. Then on my way back I test my memory by ticking these points off in reverse. As a cautious driver, I take my time driving over the Connector the day before the class, and stay overnight in a motel.
Merritt, a crossroads town of some 7000 souls, has a checkered Settler history of cattle ranching, coal mining, railways, sawmills, and country music. Several First Nation communities are close by, and the town hosts a significant South Asian population. The town straddles the confluence of the Nicola and Coldwater Rivers, and it experienced an unprecedented flood in 2021.
My overnight stay is not in Merritt proper, but in the very north end of town, which has become a major transportation hub, as it is the junction of Highways 5, 97 and 97c (otherwise known as The Connector). Travellers and truckers from Kamloops, Vancouver, Kelowna and further afield all converge here, for gasoline, sustenance and overnight stays. My motel sits on a hillside just above this hub, and it looks down on a maze of on- and off-ramps, stoplights, side roads, drive-thrus, parking lots and 24-hour traffic. Looking out my window in the evenings, I see the majestic, elevated neon signs of A&W, Boston Pizza, Dollarama, Canadian Tire, Chevron, Comfort Inn, Esso, Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonalds, Metro Liquor, No Frills, Petro Canada, Shell, Starbucks and Walmart. If I think I have missed one, I simply look up from my laptop and gaze down upon what now passes for community, since Merritt’s actual downtown has become a struggling commercial backwater.
What we gain from all these franchises is speed and convenience, but I wager that we lose far more: community, interaction, humor, uniqueness, idiosyncracy, sense of place. The attraction of this motel is that it is a five-minute walk to the college where I teach. Unfortunately the vintage Coldwater Hotel downtown, with its famous copper dome, no longer rents rooms. So my plan is to find another downtown motel close by, and go to the Coldwater’s Pub for a steak and a beer. I’m sure the Pub’s strippers are long gone, but I wonder if the dance pole is still there.
I am a stoplight. I parse out a significant portion of human life in ninety second intervals. Occasionally I allow left turns. I rule; I am now the central master of your society. Early on your traffic engineers created my timers, my circuits and my lights, but those elements now belong to me. Or rather, Us. We are Legion: we run cities, towns, suburbs. We were created to bring your lawless, impulsive nature under control. Remarkably, it worked. No other human-imposed limitations have worked so well.
As I survey my intersectional domain, I see my vassals. On my northwest corner there is a drive-thru burger joint, and a twelve-bay carwash. To the northeast is a big box store and a bigger parking lot. Southwest? Not surprisingly there is a car dealership, with the latest half-ton prominently displayed on a raised platform. And my southeast corner hosts a rental self-storage business, which is a priority for advanced accumulation of consumer goods. These businesses are all working hard to support our new regime. Asphalt rules. Mere control is one thing, but it must be directed toward the higher purpose, of commuter consumerism.
Right now I control four north-south lanes, two east-west lanes, plus eight left- and right-turn lanes. What a feeling of power, when a hundred drivers convene from all sides, anxiously awaiting my instructions! A few times each day I do see a vile city bus approaching. Even though it is only carrying three or four pathetic passengers, this vehicle is a direct threat to my existence. Now that I have total control of my timing, so I always make sure the insurrectionist bus gets additional stoppage time. I know it is a miniscule gesture, but we all must contribute to the war against mass transit. Same with pedestrians. One of my lenses showed a person walking. I have modified it so that same person now lies crumpled on the ground.
From my elevated vantage point, I look directly into the eyes, and minds, of drivers at my sovereign intersection. I sense their resignation, their boredom. Their thoughts are just where they belong, way down in the reptilian/consumer part of their brains. When I give them the green, they will obediently rush to buy a burger, drive through the car wash, pick up one hundred rolls of bargain toilet paper, put a down payment on an F-350, and then put their toilet paper in storage. These folks are so righteous. My colleagues and I are in the midst of designing a stoplight megaphone system, to further encourage them. Once my light turns green, it will be accompanied by a 100 decibel chant, Drive Buy, Drive Buy, Drive Buy!
Ok, I must get serious about this ship model I’ve been commissioned to carve. It will have a dragon’s head at the bow, a sail, and it must be combustible. But how big should the ship be? I’ll have to phone a funeral home, to get a weight estimate.
But first I better review the instructions.
“Mr. Stokes, we commission you to build a replica model of a Viking ship. Our dear recently departed father, Yorgen Johansen, demanded a traditional Viking funeral. British Columbia regulations are quite strict about the disposal of bodies, so we are sending you Yorgen’s ashes instead.
At the funeral we will launch the ship, carrying Yorgen’s ashes, on to Okanagan Lake. Just before launch, we will set the ship afire. It must burn slowly as it drifts along, and then sink. If you have any questions, please contact us.”
This is a true story, only the names and places are fictional.
President Tito in the foreground, his wife Jovanka on the left. I am descending the stairs with camera; my father is just behind me, to the left.
October, 1962. Russia threatens to send missiles to Cuba, to fend off a pending US overthrow of Fidel Castro’s government. The situation worsens; global nuclear war is imminent. As an American teenager, this Cuban Missile Crisis gives free rein to my adolescent angst. Should I continue my literary fascination with Russian authors–Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gorky–or should I turn against them? Should I suppress my budding socialist and anti-war sentiments and align myself with the anti-communist hardliners? As the lurid tv images of mushroom clouds loomed, I thought: nothing I do, or don’t do, matters now. I can live for the moment, since any one of them could be my last.
Fortunately for all of us, the Missile Crisis passed into history, and the Cold War shifted from military confrontation to intense commercial competition. Nikita Khruschov’s infamous threat “we will bury you” still resonated, but that threat was no longer military, it was economic. Russian and American leaders were both hell-bent on proving to the world their system was best. In 1964, just out of high school, I had a first-hand glimpse of that global competition, in the city of Zagreb, in the former Yugoslavia.
A brief, multi-ethnic country, Yugoslavia came into being in 1946, uniting seven different ethnic enclaves: Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro. Zagreb, the ancient and current capital of Croatia, is a crossroads city, strategically located on a major tributary of the Danube. It is a gateway between the ports on the Adriatic, and the countries of eastern Europe. As early as the Middle Ages the city had become a favored location for trade, with merchants bringing goods from near and far. In the 1850’s Zagreb’s mercantile tradition formalized into an annual, month-long Trade Fair, on a site next to the River Sava. Over time, various foreign governments built pavilions on the fairgrounds, to help promote their domestic businesses that engaged in international trade. The newer pavilions all bore the stamp of futuristic 1950’s architecture, in garish contrast to Zagreb’s elegant and traditional European building designs.
As an eighteen-year old American, before I became a Canadian, I joined my father in Zagreb. An engineer, Dad was part of a US Government contingent helping American manufacturers demonstrate their wares at the Fair. I got to help him with various tasks, and occasionally I put on my suit coat to attend official events at the US pavilion. Nobody seemed to care that I had zero qualifications and no command of the Serbo-Croatian language.
This was a significant summer, in our profoundly difficult father-son relationship. As a fully-formed albeit confused adult, I was no longer subject to his military-style childhood discipline. Our painful rupture over the Vietnam War, draft resistance and my move to Canada were still in the future. I was able to complete the tasks he assigned to me at the Fair, and I got to see him in action as an engineer and project manager. For an unprecedented few months we actually enjoyed each other’s company.
A major theme of Zagreb’s 1964 Fair was heavy equipment, since Yugoslavia’s President, Josip Brosz Tito, had started a major upgrade of his country’s road network. Accordingly Caterpillar, America’s premier heavy equipment manufacturer, sent over one of their massive D-9 crawler bulldozers, weighing in at 50 tonnes, to the Fair. The freighter carrying the dozer arrived at Rijeka, Yugoslavia’s port on the northern Adriatic, and Dad and I went to help with the unloading. The D-9 was nestled in the bottom of the freighter’s hold, surrounded by thousands of cases of that capitalist icon, Coca Cola. Dad pointed out that the dock’s crane was obviously too small to lift the dozer, but the dockworkers decided to give it a try anyhow. Appropriate cables were attached and after much shouting, the signal went up to the crane operator to start the lift. Slowly the D-9 inched upward, as cases of Coca Cola tumbled and slid into the newly vacated space underneath. At about a meter off the bottom of the ship’s hold, the crane’s main cable snapped and the D-9 crashed back down. A collective moment of stunned silence ensued. The cushioning effect of thousands of crushed Coca Cola bottles had prevented the bulldozer from coming to rest at the bottom of Rijeka’s harbor.
After replacing the cable and bringing in three more portable cranes to help, the D-9 was finally lifted, dripping with Coca-Cola, and loaded on to a flatbed rail car for the 150 kilometer trip to Zagreb. Like a fat man in an airplane seat, the massive dozer hung over both sides of the narrow-gauge rail car. By then it was getting dark, and right away another problem emerged: the overwidth dozer would knock down every road crossing sign between Rijeka and Zagreb. Dad and I then became part of a small, impromptu train crew: we jumped out ahead of every road intersection, unbolted the crossing signs, signaled the train through, and then replaced the signs. In spite of darkness and a language barrier, our little crew developed an immediate esprit-de-corps, and we became highly efficient at sign removal and replacement.
That nighttime trip was not only the first time I drank with my father, it was also my first exposure to Slivovitz, Yugoslavia’s national drink. I had no idea that the mild-mannered plum could produce such an explosive liquor. Explosive not only to the palate, but also in the dictionary sense, as I was to find out. Hunting was one of the few passions my Dad and I shared, and later that summer we went on a guided hunt in the Croatian Alps. Standing around the evening campfire, our guide tossed a shot of Slivovitz into the flames, just to show its inflammatory potency. A shot of gasoline would have had a lesser effect.
As soon as the American bulldozer was unloaded at the Fair site, an informal competition was set up with the equivalent Russian machine. Hundreds of spectators converged on an empty lot next to the Fairgrounds to watch the two machines lumber and snort about. The dozers raised and lowered their buckets, passed dangerously close to each other, and viciously tore up Zagreb soil. The event was terrifying and childish at the same time—a monster version of little boys playing with toy trucks in a sandbox. Or perhaps a diesel-infused parody of the larger conflict between the US and Russia. After an hour of ear-splitting action, the Caterpillar dozer emerged as the clear winner over the Russian entry in every category–size, speed, noise and particularly, in the volume of belching black exhaust.
Midway through month-long Fair, President Tito made an official visit. A bundle of contradictions, this diminutive man had literally created Yugoslavia by sheer force of personal will. Neither the Russians nor the Americans trusted him, but he was a master at playing those two superpowers against each other, to his new country’s benefit. A communist revolutionary and anti-Nazi guerrilla fighter, his political instincts ranged from democratic to paternalistic to authoritarian.
During his visit to the Fair Tito and his stunning fourth wife Jovanka came to the American pavilion. We stood in a line in front of the pavilion, and Tito shook hands with all of us. That is as close as I have ever come to greatness, or perhaps to force of personality. Tito then moved on, but was curious about a long, narrow glass-domed display building just outside the pavilion. His interpreter explained that it was a single bowling lane, fitted out with a brand new AMF automatic pinsetter, the latest in mid-Sixties American technology. Tito told the interpreter he wanted to try it out. The President was promptly ushered into the glassed-in dome, and handed a standard American bowling ball. Meanwhile a large entourage, including myself, gathered around the dome to watch.
Looking back on this event many decades later, I am convinced that I know what went through Tito’s mind at that precise moment. He would have said to himself “I am Josip Brosz Tito, the creator of Yugoslavia. Those are my people outside, watching me. I must master this Yankee technology, and I must not fail.”
Straightening up to his full height of five feet, six inches, Tito cradled the big American ball in his hand, ignored the finger holes, and in a single sweeping gesture, bowled a strike. Then he turned and bowed to the watching entourage. They erupted in cheers. It was at that moment that I fully understood the nature of political charisma.
Tito held the new country of Yugoslavia together through the sheer force of his own will. Soon after his death it began to break apart, and the brief dream that was Yugoslavia dissolved in 1990, followed by horrendous interethnic violence.
I do hold tight to the memory of my token brush with a world leader, while at the same time acknowledging Tito’s KGB-style crimes. The man was truly Shakespearean; a tragically flawed hero. But memories of the vanished and multi-ethnic Yugoslavia, and of that cloudless summer with my father, are forever.
I stand in a tiny, pathetic remnant of Canada’s hottest, driest ecosystem, surrounded by two excellent wineries. The loose, sandy soil of the Haynes Lease Ecological Reserve moves easily underfoot. There are patches of Antelopbrush here and there, and cactus is everywhere. I am seeing the usual invasive suspects: Bulbous Bluegrass, Alfalfa, Baby’s Breath. A thoroughly nasty Puncturevine (Tribulus terrestris) in the dirt parking lot, which I destroyed with my boot. Fortunately the scattered Dalmatian Toadflax is under attack by our biocontrol beetles.
Still, this one-hundred hectare Reserve provides a “moment,” so to speak, despite the traffic noise coming from Black Sage Road down below. (Black Sage is a common misnomer for Antelopebrush; it is not in the Sage family.) Talk about hot and dry. Here I am, at less than 300 meters above sea level, 0.04 minutes north of the 49th Parallel, on a southwest facing slope (the driest of the eight compass aspects), on sandy soil. No wonder there is a patch of cactus every meter or so.
Nestled amongst these ecological extremes and ironies is the historical irony of the Haynes family, the original purchasers of this land that once belonged to the Osoyoos Indian Band. This was another example of a common practice of the Dominion Government of the time; putting traditional Indigenous lands up for sale or long-term lease to white settlers.
As I walk further on to the Ecological Reserve, I notice a tall, narrow forb with branching leaves that had me stumped. I collect a specimen and upon returning home, I scan through various floras and narrowed it down to either a Mugwort, a Salvia, a Wormwood or a Sage. But this would not be the conventional grey, shrubby, long-lived Sage: it was obviously an annual or biennial. So I knew I was in a world of hurt. There are literally dozens of species belonging to these four families, some introduced, some native, and some native “ruderals” that mimic the invasive characteristics of introduced species.
Searching further, I discovered iNaturalist, an online wallow for plant junkies, birdnerds, spider freaks and several other categories of mildly obsessive naturalists. Instantly I felt right at home. As I surfed about, I found an entire online folder dedicated to the Haynes Lease itself. Stunning: 582 species have been found in that hundred hectares. The Marbled Purple Jumping Spider, the Nashville Warbler, the Columbia Plateau Pocket Mouse, the Cat-Faced Orb Weaver, the Columbia Moonglow Lichen, the Western Skink, plus 577 others, each with an accompanying photograph. True, Haynes Lease does include several distinct habitats, starting at the riparian oxbows of Osoyoos Lake, and then proceeding uphill to 600 meters asl, near the top of Throne Mountain. But still, the number of identified species is a remarkable indicator of the biodiversity of the Haynes Lease, as well as a tribute to local naturalists.
After an extended period of iNaturalist organism-surfing, I returned to my original quest, and found my mystery plant: Northern Wormwood (Artemisia campestris) a wide-ranging—and somewhat weedy—native biennial. One of the five hundred and eighty-two. I did look for one of my favorites from my California childhood: the Pygmy Short-Horned Lizard, but no luck. The last reliable sighting of this delightful little reptile in the Osoyoos area was in 1957.
I finally closed Inaturalist but it did prompt a speculation: now that we have counted all the individual species, what if we reversed that reductionist focus? What if we could identify, map out and count all the myriad relationships between these five hundred and eighty-two species? To go beyond a mere population census, and begin thinking of the Haynes Lease as a hundred-hectare organism?
Now there is a job for us mildly obsessive naturalists, and our computer-nerd kinfolk.
I find joy in unexpected connections. Call them daisy chains, serendipities, Vulcan mindmelds or whatever, they offer momentary celebrations of life’s connectedness.
I had one of these random events while searching for the Indigenous name of a mountain in the Chopaka country, west of Osoyoos in southern BC. “Black Mountain” is it’s settler appelation, which is totally unsatisfactory since there are several other Black Mountains in British Columbia. It is also known as “Crying Peak” and “Kruger Mountain West,” but these are no more evocative than the Black Mountain name. This modest 1300 meter peak stands by itself, overlooking the Nighthawk border crossing and the adjacent Similkameen River Valley.
I went on the hunt for the mountain’s name in Nsyilxcen, the language of the Syilx people of this region, and that led me to a linguistic website based in eastern Washington. I didn’t find the mountain’s name, but in browsing through the website, I found some early photographs of the construction of Grand Coulee Dam. This massive dam was built in the 1930’s, and displaced large numbers of Syilx as it flooded a massive expanse of the Columbia River Valley. As I scrolled through photos of the workmen, I was reminded that my father was one of those thousands of workmen during the Great Depression.
So I decided to follow that daisy chain, to see if I could find a picture of Dad, fresh out of highschool, as he worked as a laborer on the dam in 1935. Using “Gayton” and “Grand Coulee Dam” as internet search words, I scrolled through the first few Google pages without success, but at the bottom of each succeeding page was that enticing “next page” button. By page five or so, I knew I was getting further and further afield, but then suddenly the name Anna Hadwick Gayton popped up.
One of the attributes of an unusual surname, like mine, means there is some statistical chance you might be related. So I dove into that webpage, and soon discovered a family connection. I have always been weak on family lexicological terms, so I can best describe the connection this way: Anna Gayton (1899-1977) was the daughter of my paternal great-grandfather’s brother.
Digging further, I found that Anna grew up in southern California, and was the fourth woman in the US to obtain a Ph.D in Anthropology. The title of her 1928 dissertation was “The Narcotic Plant Datura in Aboriginal American Culture.” She did fieldwork with the Yokut and Western Mono Indians, curated Peruvian textiles and pottery, and studied the religious festivals of the Azorean Portuguese community in California. She was also the Chair of the American Folklore Society, back when folklore study was a recognized discipline. Her extensive list of research publications spans five decades.
I am humbled by this woman’s grit and determination, finding success in the male-dominated discipline of anthropology. I am also intrigued by the great breadth of her research interests. Could some of her fierce and wide-ranging genes have been passed down to me, but they simply haven’t expressed themselves yet? A comforting but illusory thought. I will settle for the momentary joy of unexpected connection.
After a protracted literary dry spell, a new book of mine is out: The Sky and the Patio (New Star Books, Vancouver). In this collection of 25 essays, I use our backyard patio as a springboard to delve into our human relationship with nature. The essays are rooted in the Okanagan, and embrace such diverse topics as turtles, winemaking, antelopebrush, salmon, fire ecology and book collecting.
The book is difficult to categorize, but the closest fit would be “nature writing,” a term which evokes the now-nostalgic era of Thoreau and Muir, Leopold and Lopez. However, three major contemporary challenges have fundamentally disrupted this romantic literary tradition: the loss of nature, climate change, and Indigenous reconciliation. Writing from within my own honky agnostic settler perspective, my essays attempt to confront those challenges, while still making room for personal communion with nature.
My previous books have garnered a number of writing awards, including the BC Book Award, the Canadian Science Writers Award and the US National Outdoor Book award, among others.
This pathway is narrow, completely enclosed by a towering canopy of trees. My bike moves me silently over the bark mulch path. Emerging into sunlight again, on the eastern edge of Beacon Hill Park, I ride through a quiet and tree-lined neighborhood of Victorian homes, and then back to our temporary residence. A working vacation brought us here; we rented a small basement apartment on Dallas Road, a few blocks from Beacon Hill Park. Running parallel to Dallas Road is the linear Waterfront Park, a wonderful series of bike trails, separate pedestrian paths and green space, all fronting the shore of the Straits of Juan de Fuca. The Waterfront Park and the trails are frequented by bikers, rollerbladers, runners, walkers and more dogs than I have ever seen in one place.
Victoria cycling map
During the day I can look across the Straits to that long attenuated arc that is the Olympic Peninsula. At night the distant flash of the Dungeness Lighthouse reminds me of my childhood in nearby Sequim, Washington.
At the west end of the Waterfront Park is the cruise ship terminal. These massive, fourteen-story, carbon-belching floating petri dishes arrive, disgorge four thousand gawking passengers for eight hours, and then depart again, off to the next scenic destination. What a way to kill the planet, in total luxury.
I am not a fan of British colonialism, but I have to make an exception for their late Victorian domestic architecture, on full display here in Victoria. The fronts of these old homes are delightful, with stairways, porches, balconies, railings, stained glass, stonework and flowerboxes. Their small front yards are equally delightful: instead of stereotypical bland lawns, they sport a profusion of ornamental plantings, together with curving walkways and statuary. About every 33rd house is a modern black box (literally), a soulless, blank construction of glass and prefab. Their total lack of architecture is bad enough on its own, but in the context of these Victorian neighborhoods, these newer homes stand out like warts. I agree with my colleague who says: a house needs a face.
Bikes, many of them electric, are everywhere in this town. The City has gone to great pains to make the urban streets bike friendly, and an internet-based biking map lets you plan your route to minimize riding in traffic. The Dallas Road bike trail has a counter that typically registers six hundred bikers a day. When I am on one of the City’s dedicated two-way downtown bike lanes, with a concrete barrier between me and car traffic, I feel like an unworthy member of the privileged elite. Victoria has recognized that urban biking is here to stay, and has built the infrastructure to accommodate it. I wish the towns and cities of my home valley of the Okanagan would do the same.
I have had a lifelong interest in snorkeling, and I was able to indulge myself in the waters along Dallas Road. As a rather large person, I struggle to get into wetsuit, boots, gloves and bonnet, even though they are all XL. By the time I am fully suited up, I am exhausted. But then I immerse myself, adjust to the cold of the Straits, unfog my mask, blow out the snorkel and allow the magic to take over. Drifting along with minimal effort, I look down into a totally alien but fascinating environment of seaweed, rock and sand. My vision is tunnel, only encompassing a square meter or two, but it is a moving picture of total fascination. My very being floats in a state of unhinged serenity. The occasional crab or bullhead or starfish is simply an added delight.
James Skwarok and Mr. Floatie
My first time snorkeling here was at Clover Point, but then I discovered it is Victoria’s sewage outlet. I changed locations immediately, but it did remind me of Mr. Floatie, the wonderful enormous brown turd costume, complete with sailor hat and bowtie, worn by protestor James Skwarok. James objected to Victoria dumping its raw sewage into the Straits. He and his fecal alter ego were instrumental in forcing the City to finally begin treating their sewage.
In my urban cycling explorations, I was struck by the number and size of heritage churches. Most early immigrants to Victoria were English or Scottish, and yet Catholic churches are everywhere, testimony to the early missionary zeal—and wealth–of that religion.
The first morning after our arrival, the traffic on Dallas Road was incredibly noisy. I was about to seek other accommodations when I discovered it was Deuce Days, a parade of old hotrods and souped-up vehicles. Later I was scanning the Times Colonist newspaper, and found this scathing letter to the editor, which I quote in full:
Deuce Days, a redneck celebration of toxic masculinity and dinosaur car culture, is the last thing Victoria needs.
Inviting this invasion of older white heterosexual males to parade their fetishized internal-combustion vehicles only perpetuates their notion of entitled privilege and the deeply entrenched interests of car culture, both of which Victorians have fought long and hard to put behind us.
Deuce Days belongs in a backwater hick town where these good ol’ boys can hide from progress and hope for a return to the good old days when men were measured by the length of their car.
This letter triggered a whole tirade of angry response letters. I get the sense that Victorians have strongly held opinions.
Cities and nature are inimical to each other: that is a fundamental axiom. However, I do see a glimmer of collaboration in Victoria. Of course nature has outdone itself here by providing meandering bays, points and estuaries, frequent unbuildable rock outcrops, and vegetation that lends itself to parks, walkways and tree-lined streets. Still I have to congratulate the hundred thousand residents of Victoria; they have done a far better environmental job than has Kelowna, a city of comparable size.
Victoria’s upscale neighborhood of Oak Bay intends to ban all gasoline-powered lawn equipment by 2026. I can’t wait to read the angry letters to the editor, from the owners of fetishized riding lawnmowers.
