Bowen Island is a pine covered rock approximately ten miles long and six miles wide nestled off the shore of Vancouver. It is home to a small community of approximately 10,000 people, a mix of perfectly normal families, artists and the very comfortably retired. It’s not so small or remote as to be a place of last refuge for those wanting to disappear for a while but it is the sort of place where you can reliably be on first name terms with at least half the people you see in your day and you can buy pet food and cartridge toner from the same store. It has the vague feel of the wild frontier town where telegraph poles jostle for position with the spruce pines on the corner of mains street and cut granite bulges on the roadside are restrained by chicken wire cladding. In reality it’s a perfectly tame and otherwise very civilised community, the sort of place you would move to specifically to bring up children or focus yourself on becoming an artist, but it has just enough of a wilderness feel to it to endow it with a sense of charm and adventure.
Earle
I’ve been awake since 3.30am. After a long flight and tiring transfer via train, bus and boat across a rain soaked Vancouver, I foolishly lay down on my bed for just a moment, and then let sleep take me well before time. Right on que my body clock jump started me awake eight hours later, which just so happened to be 3.30am. I killed a few hours with aimless web browsing and then at 6am decided to venture out into the pitch night and the unlit roads and try to find a place for breakfast.
The place I found was the aptly named ‘The Snug’, a welcoming place that serves hearty plates of eggs and potatoes and heaps of hot strong coffee. Most of the early morning custom is from commuters parked up in the queue for the ferry that runs from the island to the mainland every hour. The boat, an ageing white whale of a thing with rust scarred sides and the sickly smell of marine diesel cloying the corridors, plugs directly into the end of main street like a construction set extension to a road which otherwise ends rather abruptly at the edge of the water.
The commuters are a diverse mix of people; some are dressed in smart suits, others in heavy waterproof jackets and trousers with even heavier boots that clump over the wooden floor. They have a look of Big Foot about them but given the fact that it’s properly tipping it down outside, you can see the logic. Among this mix is Earle, a weather worn figure in a faded and ripped red coat, wild nicotine stained beard and a craggy complexion. He looks like he has led a hard and physical life and might perhaps be mistaken as homeless. He pours a gallon of coffee into a stainless steel canteen, adds lots of cream and sugar, tests the brew and then leaves. I feel the prick of a missed opportunity but console myself with the fact that it’s still only 8am and the light from the recently risen sun is not making much of an impact through the heavy rain clouds.
I spend a good few hours in The Snug; I even leave a couple of time only to quickly return when it becomes apparent that the rain is not about to let up. When I do finally decide that my one day to explore on the island deserves a more concerted effort, I wander down main street towards the harbour and explore the few shops that there are in the hope of finding some waterproof trousers. Round the back of one shop is a wood veranda with a bench overlooking the pine forest mountain that rises up out of the side of the dark green harbour waters. On the bench is Earle, drinking his gallon of coffee and smoking a tightly rolled cigarette that is slowly adding to the amber colouring of his grizzly Adams beard. I get the second tingle of opportunity and open a conversation with him.
We talk for about an hour or maybe more. The conversation is not just interesting its enthralling. It’s not that I’m surprised by this, though his presentation is certainly such that I confess I had myself assumed he was homeless. But still the insight and interest with which he talked about his life as part ski guide in Whistler and part ski coach and technician to the Canadian Olympic ski team is fascinating. He spends his time now between Whistler in the ski season and Bowen Island in the summer where he ‘fixes things’. He is charming, interesting and easy to talk to.
When I ask to take his picture he is relaxed and happy to oblige, even commenting that he ‘sits very well’, as if he has been someone’s subject before and been told precisely this. It’s true as well; he finds an easy position quickly and settles himself in the light where I want him looking up the flanks of the steep sides of the harbour.
A little later I meet Ross and Tyler who are moving into their new home. I had overheard this as I walked by and wondered whether I had heard correctly. I wanted them to be a couple, dressed in their lumberjack check jackets, jeans and boots it would make a lovely and deliciously contradictory narrative. I pictured them looking for all the world like rugged, wilderness frontiersmen but embraced in a passionate kiss with the wet clouds evaporating slowly off the dense forest back drop. I figured a way to ask them politely but on approaching them, they kissed to say goodbye and my instinct was confirmed. They were happy to play out this narrative. I stood them in the middle of the road, as brazen as you dare and let them embrace and kiss.