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Raincoast Chronicles Fourth Five edited by Howard White (Harbour $39.95)
If there's a typical entry in the 400-page Raincoast Chronicles Fourth Five, edited by Howard White, it might be Alder Bloom's memoir that begins, "It was late August in 1937 when I first sighted Ceepeecee, or should I saw when I first smelled it."; CeepeeCee, or CPC, was an abbreviation of California Packing Corporation, an American company that built a processing plant for pilchards (sardines) on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, southwest of Tahsis, 'behind' Nootka Island, in 1926. Eight years later this plant was sold to Nelson Brothers Fisheries who added a salmon cannery. "It was very smelly,"; recalls Bloom, "but so are most industrial towns, each in its own way. To someone looking for work, the smell meant money."; After stints as a carpenter at McBride Bay, Nootka and Port Albion, as well as working at Gibson brothers' logging camps, Bloom returned to the cluster of wood-framed buildings known as Ceepeecee in 1941, to work for Del Lutes, the virtual king of the town, who kept 'dry laws' in place.
"Lutes ran a very strict camp but he had to relent a little during the war years,"; Bloom recalls. "Esperanza Hotel, just 15 minutes away by boat, was a modern building with a good-sized beer parlour."; Zeballos, two hours away by boat, had cafes, hotels, a doctor and a bawdy house, described by Bloom as a frontier necessity, but cannery hours made the trip prohibitive.
Prior to refrigeration, most canning had to occur near the fishery. Therefore the denizens of Ceepeecee were isolated at the head of Tahsis Inlet, dependent on the bi-monthly arrivals of the Maquinna and a radio wireless that used only Morse code. "Mr. Lee, the Chinese cook, and his helper served tasty and abundant meals for the crew,"; Booms writes. But the most essential citizen turned out to be a little Scotsman who could squeeze out tunes on his little accordion.
Bloom fondly recalls how Scotty went to the hotel on weekends so the few girls in town could do their fast steps with any of the boys who could keep up-and Bloom wasn't one of them. "One Sunday morning, Scotty didn't check in for his reduction plant shift so a search was started. Scotty travelled in his own little skiff and tied it up at the unloading dock. He had to climb a ladder to get to the dock and somehow he fell. "We found him at low tide resting on the bottom below the ladder. Scotty was everybody's friend and he gave more pleasure to the crew than anyone in camp. In a place where radio reception was very poor, his little accordion was a godsend."; Another godsend was Florence French. One day when Bloom was picking up supplies from Ceepeecee in the fall of 1940, she noticed him and smiled. A few minutes later Bloom was in the company store, she glided in, smiled again, bought her cigarettes, and left. Two years later they became the first of several Ceepeecee couples to tie the knot. Their first son Bob was born in Port Alberni in 1943. The Blooms left Ceepeecee in 1946. With the sudden disappearance of the pilchards in the late 1940s, shore workers like Florence could no longer be sure to work four-month stints of 12-hour days at 35 cents an hour. Ceepeecee closed in 1951, along with other wooden cannery communities along the coast. Some were left to rot; Ceepeecee's buildings were destroyed by fire in 1954.
White's fourth compilation of Raincoast Chronicles--begun in 1972--also features Pat Wastell Norris' reminiscences of Alert Bay along with her book-length history of Telegraph Cove (released as Raincoast Chronicles 16). Among the longer entries Fourth Five also reprints Stephen Hume's Lillies & Fireweed (Raincoast Chronicles 20), a panorama of some noteworthy B.C. women.
Douglas Hamilton recalls the worst fire aboard ship in B.C. history when the steamer Grappler sank in Seymour Narrows in 1883, with more than 100 lives lost. Conversely, Doreen Armitage recalls rescues by tugboat skippers in the days before search and rescue. Classic West Coast raconteurs Dick Hammond, Arthur Mayse, Bus Griffiths and White himself add some levity. Other subjects include shipyards, squatters, log barging, fishing superstitions, the Pisces sub, West Coast patriarch Claus Carl Daniel Botel, pioneer photographer Hannah Maynard, the 'mega-village' of Kalpalin on the shores of Pender Harbour.
Margaret McKirdy recalls how her mother placed The People's Home Medical Book alongside the Eaton's catalogue and the Bible-and its influence was greater than either. More fundamental than even the Joy of Cooking, this 1919 treatise, known in many households as simply 'the Doctor Book,' advised that most means of contraception were injurious to a woman's health. One of several contributions by Douglas Hamilton, 'Who Shot Estevan Light? A Traditionalist Returns Fire' returns to the controversial subject of why the Estevan Point Lighthouse was shelled on June 20, 1942. Hamilton refutes claims made on Fifth Estate by lightkeeper Donald Graham that the attack on "the boldest, most beautiful lighthouse in British Columbia"; Canadian government was instigated in order to incite public alarm. Citing Bert Webber's Retaliation: Japanese Attacks and Allied Countermeasures on the Pacific Coast in World War II, Hamilton states, "A number of daring raids on the west coast of North America were carried out by Japanese submarines in 1942."; 1-55017-372-3
[BCBW 2006]
"Lutes ran a very strict camp but he had to relent a little during the war years,"; Bloom recalls. "Esperanza Hotel, just 15 minutes away by boat, was a modern building with a good-sized beer parlour."; Zeballos, two hours away by boat, had cafes, hotels, a doctor and a bawdy house, described by Bloom as a frontier necessity, but cannery hours made the trip prohibitive.
Prior to refrigeration, most canning had to occur near the fishery. Therefore the denizens of Ceepeecee were isolated at the head of Tahsis Inlet, dependent on the bi-monthly arrivals of the Maquinna and a radio wireless that used only Morse code. "Mr. Lee, the Chinese cook, and his helper served tasty and abundant meals for the crew,"; Booms writes. But the most essential citizen turned out to be a little Scotsman who could squeeze out tunes on his little accordion.
Bloom fondly recalls how Scotty went to the hotel on weekends so the few girls in town could do their fast steps with any of the boys who could keep up-and Bloom wasn't one of them. "One Sunday morning, Scotty didn't check in for his reduction plant shift so a search was started. Scotty travelled in his own little skiff and tied it up at the unloading dock. He had to climb a ladder to get to the dock and somehow he fell. "We found him at low tide resting on the bottom below the ladder. Scotty was everybody's friend and he gave more pleasure to the crew than anyone in camp. In a place where radio reception was very poor, his little accordion was a godsend."; Another godsend was Florence French. One day when Bloom was picking up supplies from Ceepeecee in the fall of 1940, she noticed him and smiled. A few minutes later Bloom was in the company store, she glided in, smiled again, bought her cigarettes, and left. Two years later they became the first of several Ceepeecee couples to tie the knot. Their first son Bob was born in Port Alberni in 1943. The Blooms left Ceepeecee in 1946. With the sudden disappearance of the pilchards in the late 1940s, shore workers like Florence could no longer be sure to work four-month stints of 12-hour days at 35 cents an hour. Ceepeecee closed in 1951, along with other wooden cannery communities along the coast. Some were left to rot; Ceepeecee's buildings were destroyed by fire in 1954.
White's fourth compilation of Raincoast Chronicles--begun in 1972--also features Pat Wastell Norris' reminiscences of Alert Bay along with her book-length history of Telegraph Cove (released as Raincoast Chronicles 16). Among the longer entries Fourth Five also reprints Stephen Hume's Lillies & Fireweed (Raincoast Chronicles 20), a panorama of some noteworthy B.C. women.
Douglas Hamilton recalls the worst fire aboard ship in B.C. history when the steamer Grappler sank in Seymour Narrows in 1883, with more than 100 lives lost. Conversely, Doreen Armitage recalls rescues by tugboat skippers in the days before search and rescue. Classic West Coast raconteurs Dick Hammond, Arthur Mayse, Bus Griffiths and White himself add some levity. Other subjects include shipyards, squatters, log barging, fishing superstitions, the Pisces sub, West Coast patriarch Claus Carl Daniel Botel, pioneer photographer Hannah Maynard, the 'mega-village' of Kalpalin on the shores of Pender Harbour.
Margaret McKirdy recalls how her mother placed The People's Home Medical Book alongside the Eaton's catalogue and the Bible-and its influence was greater than either. More fundamental than even the Joy of Cooking, this 1919 treatise, known in many households as simply 'the Doctor Book,' advised that most means of contraception were injurious to a woman's health. One of several contributions by Douglas Hamilton, 'Who Shot Estevan Light? A Traditionalist Returns Fire' returns to the controversial subject of why the Estevan Point Lighthouse was shelled on June 20, 1942. Hamilton refutes claims made on Fifth Estate by lightkeeper Donald Graham that the attack on "the boldest, most beautiful lighthouse in British Columbia"; Canadian government was instigated in order to incite public alarm. Citing Bert Webber's Retaliation: Japanese Attacks and Allied Countermeasures on the Pacific Coast in World War II, Hamilton states, "A number of daring raids on the west coast of North America were carried out by Japanese submarines in 1942."; 1-55017-372-3
[BCBW 2006]
Submitted on November 24, 2005 in By David.
