David Giblin - Gilly the Ghillie

The Codfish Dream

Chronicles of a West Coast Fishing Guide

ISBN 9781772032420 (pbk)

ISBN 9781772032437 (ebook)

After spending fifteen years as a fishing guide on the BC coast, David Giblin decided that the offbeat people and places hed encountered during that colourful period in his life had to be preserved. Like any good fishing story, wherein the fish seem to grow faster after they are dead, the forty-seven interconnected narratives in what eventually became The Codfish Dream took on a life of their own. The result is a series of hilarious, strange, keenly observed, true (or mostly true) stories of Giblins experiences. These whimisical tales are held together by a thread of international intrigue that affects everyone in the small community of Stuart Island over one eventful summer, when FBI agents visit the island to investigate insider trading. The Codfish Dream is an unforgettable book imbued with an undeniable sense of place and time.

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Praise for Gilly the Ghillie

A delightful and entertaining tale that captures our (often eccentric) West Coast island communities, complete with gum boots, pot plants, fish gutting, wood stoves, and salty, blustery storms. Makes me want to get a fishing guide and go fishing!

Anny Scoones, bestselling author of Island Home: Out and About on Vancouver Island

A winningly entertaining set of linked stories concerning the lives of fishing guides and their clients along the upper BC coast. The foibles of characters such as Baba, Troutbreath, and the eponymous Gilly, along with the authors understated dry humour, beg the questionwhat will they get up to next?

Don Hunter, author of the Stephen Leacock Medalshortlisted Spinners Inlet and Return to Spinners Inlet

You invite a handful of Very Important Writers to a large formal dinner to hear their stories. For some reason, a fishing guide is at the table, too. By dinners end, everyone is rolling around laughing at the guides stories. Ladies and gents, meet David Giblin, storyteller of Stuart Island...

Jamie Lamb, author of Christmas in Mariposa

The lives of fishing guides on Stuart Island are every bit as complex, quirky, and turbulent as the tidal rapids and whirlpools they negotiate daily in search of enormous salmon. David Giblins engaging, often funny, tales effectively portray life on BCs wild waters and remote islands.

Joy Davis, author of Complicated Simplicity: Island Life in the Pacific Northwest

Praise for The Codfish Dream

Youll meet eccentric shore workers, wealthy guests who arrive by yacht and floatplane, as well as essential guides Big Jake, Lucky Petersen, Vop and Wet Lenny... A deadpan narrative keeps the absurdity coming as earnest RCMP, FBI, and Fisheries officers encounter the salmon-obsessed denizens of the island resort. This book is a keeper.

David Conn,Western Mariner

The Codfish Dream is a lively read with many layers. Those who fish will no doubt identify with the chronicles of the fish and those who pursue them.

Kenneth Campbell,Ormsby Review

David Giblin is a marvellous storyteller, and The Codfish Dream is a wonderful book: witty, whimsical, well-written, and a terrific read from cover to cover.

Ian Ferguson, author of The Survival Guide to British Columbia and winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Village of the Small Houses

As skillful a writer as he was a sports-fishing guide, David Giblin deftly hooks, reels, and lands us in the watery world of Canadas wild west coast of the 1980s. Each cleverly crafted story offers a porthole view into a rollicking season of unforgettable characters, capturing a time and place changed forever. With insights and humour as finely honed as a dressing knife, we walk a mile in his gumboots in the hunt for the mighty tyee salmon.

Sylvia Taylor, author of Beckoned by the Sea and The Fisher Queen

Copyright 2020 David Giblin

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, audio recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher or a licence from Access Copyright, Toronto, Canada.

Heritage House Publishing Company Ltd.

heritagehouse.ca

Cataloguing information available from Library and Archives Canada

978-1-77203-335-9 (pbk)

978-1-77203-336-6 (ebook)

Edited by Lenore Hietkamp

Proofread by Nandini Thaker

Cover and interior design by Jacqui Thomas

Cover image by David Giblin

Ebook by Alexandra Santos

Dictionary definition on p. xi is adapted from Dictionary, Mac G4 ed., v. 2.0.3 (51.5). Apple Inc., 20052007.

Excerpt from Vancouvers log on p. 175 is from The Voyage of George Vancouver, 17911795: VolumesIIV, edited by W. Kaye Lamb (London: Hakluyt Society, 1984)

Heritage House gratefully acknowledges that the land on which we live and work is within the traditional territories of the Lkwungen (Esquimalt and Songhees), Malahat, Pacheedaht, Scianew, TSou-ke, and WSNE (Pauquachin, Tsartlip, Tsawout, Tseycum) Peoples.

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

For Blake

Ghillie

noun

variant spelling of gillie.

|'gil| |'g i li|

1. (in Scotland) a man or boy who attends someone on a hunting or fishing expedition.

historical: a Highland chiefs attendant.

2. (usu. ghillie) a type of shoe with laces along the instep and no tongue, esp. those used for Scottish country dancing.

ORIGIN Late 16th century, from Scottish Gaelic gille, lad, servant. The word was also found in the term gilliewetfoot, denoting a servant who carried the chief over a stream, used as a contemptuous name by Lowlanders for the follower of a Highland chief.

Sense 2 dates from the 1930s.

All night the storm had been building. Nelson was roused from a deep sleep several times by strange sounds. When a grey dawn finally broke, ragged black clouds scudded past and small branches were already being stripped from the trees. A cruel wind swept the rain and sleet before it. The sound of the rain pelting the picture window filled the living room.

It was that kind of morning. Why get out of a warm and dry bed when the wind was blowing a gale? The guests werent due to arrive for another couple of weeks, and all the preparations were well in hand. Just roll over and go back to sleep. Of course, Nelson found that impossible to do.

He lay in bed and listened to the sounds of the storm, sorting through them to try to figure out what had woken him. Most were familiarrain on the windows and skylights, the cracking of branches giving way in the wind; all pretty standard. From farther away came the usual creaking of the docks below as they rose and fell and rubbed against the pilings.