CATCHING UP WITH FRIENDS AND FAMILY

CATCHING UP WITH FRIENDS AND FAMILY

One of the great bonuses of this trip has been the opportunity to catch up with people we haven’t seen for a while.

The Walls were friends of our family when we were children. Two of the sisters now live on this side of the world. Colleen and her family live in Spokane Washington and they recently visited her sister Bridget and family who live in Duncan BC.
Bridget and Don have certainly had an interesting life. Don is Canadian born and visited Rhodesia in the early 1970’s. Bridget was teaching at a mission school at the time and happened to pick up a hitchhiker one day. The rest is history, as they say. Their son was a newborn when they began a 10year sojourn, traveling to many parts of the world in their sail boat. Paul learned to walk on deck. They now live on a float home in a small float home community.
We spent a lovely day with the two families, taking in a couple of events, canoeing and archery, at the North American Indigenous Games, which were being held in the Cowichan Bay area early in August.
These games draw competitors from various 1st nation groups coming from as far away as Washington state and Alaska. Some of them traveled here in traditional war canoes and these trips took anything from a couple of days to 2 weeks. The canoes all landed on a beach near our RV resort, which is on native land, on the 1st Saturday in August. It was interesting to watch them coming in. They spent a couple of nights camped here where the local band had organized festivities to celebrate.

Colleen also gave a guy a ride many years ago while traveling in BC …. Those sisters must have had a special knack!!!
Much more recently, this past May, she and Fred and their son Bryan spent 6 weeks in Zimbabwe so we were lucky enough to see their power point presentation of photos which included a couple of shots of our old family home, looking very changed and overgrown.

I have mentioned our friends the Bells, neighbours from our Mississauga days. We had another enjoyable visit with them, this time while their son Dave and his new wife were visiting them from Penticton. Al and Emi were there too and there was much laughter and reminiscing; memories such as the time the still small children, got together and made a movie; and how on Canada Day they’d spend hours making a Burning Schoolhouse, which became the grand Finale at our fireworks evening. Each year as the children grew older this part of the evening became more and more dramatic and hazardous.

On the 11th August we took the ferry to Vancouver for a couple of nights.
Here we visited the Howes, old friends from our Pretoria days. They immigrated to Canada about a year after we did with 2 small children and one on the way. They spent their first month with us while they found a place to live and during that time we somehow all got sick. Those were the days!!!
They picked us up from the ferry terminal and we spent a great day with them, visiting Granville Island where there is a famous market and where artisans and artists work and sell the wares; picnic lunching in Stanley park and taking a beautiful drive along the north shore towards Whistler, driving as far as the area where there had recently been a huge rockslide. In the evening we had a pizza dinner and beer with the now all grown up family.
Other highlights of our time with the Howes were visits to 2 National Historic Sites, Fort Langley and the Gulf of Georgia Cannery.
For thousands of years Aboriginal groups traded furs among themselves. As early as the mid 1500’s Europeans became involved in the fur trade. In 1827 Fort Langley was established by the Hudson Bay Company, strategically located on the Fraser River where there was a large Aboriginal population.
“Fort Langley prospered as a trade post partly due to marriages between Company men and Aboriginal women. These helped newcomers break into established Aboriginal trade networks. Abundant salmon, fertile soil and Aboriginal labour allowed the Company to diversify into farming and salting fish for export to new markets.”
These were the early days of capitalist imperialism in North America.
Further down the Fraser River at Steveston is one of BC’s few historically intact canneries, the Gulf of Georgia Cannery. At the turn of the 20th Century there were about a dozen canneries in the area processing the salmon that returned to spawn up the river. We were given an informative tour through the cannery following its workings and history. The original machinery is still there and has some working parts, which made it an interesting demonstration. One could imagine what it must have been like working in that noisy smelly place where the floor was frequently slippery with fish guts.

Our 2 nights in Vancouver were very comfortably spent with my cousin Chris and his wife Val, in their beautiful home. It made quite a change from maneuvering in the limited space of the trailer, which we certainly appreciated. Lots of quality conversation, walks around their neighbourhood and delicious meals made our time with them very special.