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Tide Rips and Back Eddies: Bill Proctor’s Tales of Blackfish Sound (Harbour $24.95)
Echo bay on gilford island in Blackfish Sound, with its year-round population of ten, has been home to four authors who have produced nine books.
Alexandra Morton, now widely known as the province's leading opponent of fish farming, lived at "Billy's Bay,"; raising her son and daughter on a floathouse and working as a seasick deckhand on Bill Proctor's fishboat from the mid-'80s until 2007.
Artist and homesteader Yvonne Maximchuk also worked as Bill Proctor's deckhand for eight seasons and co-wrote his first book, Full Moon Flood Tide - Bill Proctor's Raincoast (Harbour, 2003), nominated for the Bill Duthie Booksellers Choice Award in 2004.
Following Maximchuk's own memoir, Drawn to Sea: Paintbrush to Chainsaw, Carving out a Life on BC's Rugged Raincoast (Caitlin Press, 2013), she collaborated with the old salt for Tide Rips and Back Eddies: Bill Proctor's Tales of Blackfish Sound (Harbour $24.95).
Newcomer Nikki Van Schyndel took up residency on Bill Proctor's land after the release of Becoming Wild (Caitlin, 2014), a memoir about living in the Broughton Archipelago for a year-and-a-half, foraging for food and making tools from cedar and bone.
Blackfish Sound expert Billy Proctor was
born at Port Neville in 1934 in a cabin near the Port Neville Store. A month later he moved with his parents to Freshwater Bay on Swanson Island where he spent the next twenty-one years. Here, in this excerpt Proctor recalls evading formal schooling at age twelve:
"Round about that time there were two missionaries who came once a month to visit Mom. They'd paddle over in a dugout canoe and Mom always told me to go down and help them out of the canoe. So I would and one would always say, "How is the heathen today?";
"This was because I was not going to school. They were always trying to get Mom to send me to boarding school. Finally they reported me to welfare. Then the government boat called Sheila started coming around.
"I took to hiding in the bush when I saw them coming, so I ended up spending a lot of time in the bush. It really bothered me to think that these people wanted to take me away and leave my mother there alone.
"As I was spending a lot of time in the bush, I got to know all the different species of trees and plants that grew on our land. In 1948, a salesman came in selling books, so I bought a 10-volume set of The Book of Knowledge, which I still have and I still use.
"So, instead of going to school, I was learning about the things around me. Now when people come to my museum, some ask me, "How often do you go out in the real world?";
I say, 'I think this is the real world.'";
Tide Rips: 978-1-55017-725-1
Alexandra Morton, now widely known as the province's leading opponent of fish farming, lived at "Billy's Bay,"; raising her son and daughter on a floathouse and working as a seasick deckhand on Bill Proctor's fishboat from the mid-'80s until 2007.
Artist and homesteader Yvonne Maximchuk also worked as Bill Proctor's deckhand for eight seasons and co-wrote his first book, Full Moon Flood Tide - Bill Proctor's Raincoast (Harbour, 2003), nominated for the Bill Duthie Booksellers Choice Award in 2004.
Following Maximchuk's own memoir, Drawn to Sea: Paintbrush to Chainsaw, Carving out a Life on BC's Rugged Raincoast (Caitlin Press, 2013), she collaborated with the old salt for Tide Rips and Back Eddies: Bill Proctor's Tales of Blackfish Sound (Harbour $24.95).
Newcomer Nikki Van Schyndel took up residency on Bill Proctor's land after the release of Becoming Wild (Caitlin, 2014), a memoir about living in the Broughton Archipelago for a year-and-a-half, foraging for food and making tools from cedar and bone.
Blackfish Sound expert Billy Proctor was
born at Port Neville in 1934 in a cabin near the Port Neville Store. A month later he moved with his parents to Freshwater Bay on Swanson Island where he spent the next twenty-one years. Here, in this excerpt Proctor recalls evading formal schooling at age twelve:
"Round about that time there were two missionaries who came once a month to visit Mom. They'd paddle over in a dugout canoe and Mom always told me to go down and help them out of the canoe. So I would and one would always say, "How is the heathen today?";
"This was because I was not going to school. They were always trying to get Mom to send me to boarding school. Finally they reported me to welfare. Then the government boat called Sheila started coming around.
"I took to hiding in the bush when I saw them coming, so I ended up spending a lot of time in the bush. It really bothered me to think that these people wanted to take me away and leave my mother there alone.
"As I was spending a lot of time in the bush, I got to know all the different species of trees and plants that grew on our land. In 1948, a salesman came in selling books, so I bought a 10-volume set of The Book of Knowledge, which I still have and I still use.
"So, instead of going to school, I was learning about the things around me. Now when people come to my museum, some ask me, "How often do you go out in the real world?";
I say, 'I think this is the real world.'";
Tide Rips: 978-1-55017-725-1
Submitted on February 29, 2016 in By David.
