Alexandra Morton - Heart of the Raincoast

OF THE

RAINCOAST

Copyright 2016 by Alexandra Morton and Billy Proctor

First edition published 1998. Second edition published 2004. Third edition published 2016.

Originally published by Horsdal & Schubart Publishers Ltd. in 1998 under ISBN 0-920663-61-3. Second edition published by TouchWood Editions in 2004 under ISBN 978-1-894898-26-3.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For more information, contact TouchWood Editions at 1031075 Pendergast Street, Victoria, BC , Canada V8V 0A1. Or visit our website at touchwoodeditions.com.

The information in this book is true and complete to the best of the authors knowledge. All recommendations are made without guarantee on the part of the authors or TouchWood Editions. The authors and publisher disclaim any liability in connection with the use of this information.

Design: Pete Kohut
Maps and drawings: Alexandra Morton
All poetry: Jae Proctor

Front cover photographs: Karin Cope and Marike Finlay, from The Sound of Something Vanishing, West by East blog (quoddysrun.wordpress.com)
Karin Cope and Marike Finlay divide their time between Nova Scotia and British Columbia, where they live and work on their boat, Quoddys Run . They have been sailing together and writing collaboratively about travel, art, politics and the environment for more than twenty years.

Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77151-180-3 (epub)

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

To Mum Billy Proctor

To the whales that led me into the Mainland, and their return one day soon Alexandra Morton

IT HAS BEEN EIGHTEEN years since I co-wrote Heart of the Raincoast with Billy Proctor. Since then, some things have changed, while others happily remain the same. The tides still rise and fall, breathing life over the gills of zooplankton, clams, and fish. The hummingbirds arrive from epic migrations to nourish themselves on prolific salmon berry flowers, and eagles gather to feast on herring and salmon.

The return of the humpback whales to these waters has continued, and their numbers continue to build. They trust the rich waters of Blackfish Sound to nourish them after starving through their birthing and mating season.

The mammal-eating orcatransients, we called themhave been renamed. They are Biggs whales now, after the man who taught us that we could identify individuals and thus follow their lives in detail. The ability to tell the whales apart transformed them in our perception from populations to neighbours.

I left Echo Bay when my daughter outgrew the school and moved to an island only minutes away from the outer edge of the archipelago. With the help of a small group of remarkable people, my little homestead has been transformed into the Salmon Coast Field Station, where a generation of young biologists have been touched by the power of this place. Each of them has made a contribution to this place by taking vital signs and translating the wet and wild into data, information that can interface with the legislative machine we call government.

Growing up, I read every book on people who went into the wilds to learn from the wild ones. Every book was divided into three parts: Part onediscovery, adventure, the thrill of new wisdom. Part twoOh no! The place is under assault by human activity. Part threebuild nest boxes for graduate students whose power of concentration is uncluttered by the encumbrances of life and try to learn to speak truth to power.

Having detected this pattern, I was determined to stay in Part one, but my life slipped like an otter into the sea through Part one, two, and three as I was moved to protect my home, the place I love.

Each of the people who come the Salmon Coast Field Station invariably find Billy Proctor, and recognize him as a teacher of the highest value. Of course Billy humbles them with his distinctive brand of humour; he makes sure these students from universities across Canada and even Europe understand the terms of their relationship with him. They know nothing. It takes a lifetime to interpret the complexity of weather, tide, history, fish, whales, wolves, herring, and culture. Many of these factors have nearly vanished; they are icebergs sunk deep into the past with only a sliver of their former influence still visible. Billy still sees the whole story, not the tiny piece bobbing at the surface.

There are many thingsBilly might say most thingsthat simply cannot be known without talking to him, the keeper of the stories of this place.

In science we call it sliding baseline. Without the memory of the people who have been in a place for a long time, one could look at the increase in humpback whales and think they are invaders. We might think the whales are fleeing something. However, Billys stories of Barney and Missus, two humpback whales, one with a barnacle on its head in Fife Sound, or the humpback that slept in the kelp at Flower Island that he touched as a small boy in a rowboat, tell us the whales are returning, because we stopped harpooning them.

Billy Proctor remains largely unchanged by the world around himstill a madman in a speedboat, still keeping a watchful eye on his neighbours. His wife Yvonne has passed away, and his daughters have moved away, but Billy still hosts Easter, Halloween, and other events. His 80th birthday was widely attended by people from far and wide.

What happened to Echo Bay is tragic in many ways. The school is gone, burned to the ground by government; thirty salmon farms with head offices in Norway dot the coastline with a tiny workforce that never sets foot in Echo Bay; algae blooms paint the archipelago a warning shade of orange every summer; sea lice researchers flock to the research station every spring to study the impact of salmon farms on wild salmon. However, Billy and I want to make sure people know that Echo Bay, the archipelago, the coast of BC, and the eastern Pacific Ocean are not dead. This is not the time to give up on the natural world. Yes, its pulse is weakened, but it still beats where allowed.

The Musgamagw Dzawadaenuxw nations of the archipelago never gave up their landsthey preserved their language and are salvaging and regenerating their traditions. This is essential to keeping this place alive.

Science now offers a tool that allows us to hear the fish speak! Genomic profiling allows us to read the immune system of salmon and thus learn where and how we are hurting them. With this tool we can strategically get out of their way and then ask the fish if we made it better for them or not. This is essential to keeping this place alive.

I remember the day when Glen Neidrauer put out a call to everyone in Echo Bay. A boulder had rolled on top of a small waterfall and all the coho salmon were dying, smacking into the boulder. We rallied; many hands tipped the boulder, and instantly coho were streaking upstream between our boots.