The past couple of days in Powell River, the BC coastal town where I was born and spent the first ten years of my life, have been a wonderful time of revisiting and reminiscing. One of my favourite things as a child was riding the ferries and after all these years, that hasn’t changed.
That’s the one that took us from Earl’s Cove to Saltery Bay on the last leg of our trip and there’s our white SUV sandwiched between two big trucks as we make the 50 minute crossing.
When we arrived in town, we immediately drove up the hill to check on the one remaining piece of family history in town, the giant California redwood that my grandmother planted from seed in the early 1940s. It stands in the corner of the yard that was hers and continues to thrive in its unusual location. Back in 2019, I contacted the Powell River weekly newspaper and they published this excellent article about it.
There’s our vehicle again to give you an idea of how big the tree actually is!
The little house that my grandfather built in the 1930s is still standing, but I’m sure my grandmother, an avid gardener, would be as horrified as I was at the condition of the yard. She lived in that house until she passed away in late 1980 and I spent many, many happy hours there.
My childhood home is still standing too, but it’s been completely transformed since we lived in it. When we moved in in 1955, it was a modest family home with two bedrooms and one bathroom, a completely unfinished upper storey, and a partially dirt basement. Later, as the family expanded, my father added two additional bedrooms and a half bath upstairs. Now for sale, it’s advertised as a “stunning 5 bed 4 bath character home” with a walk out basement and an attached bachelor suite and if you happen to have an extra $1.5 million to spend, it could by yours! While I wouldn’t even recognize it as the same house from the ocean side, this view from the street still looks very familiar.
Living on the waterfront, I could hear the waves from my bedroom at night and the beach was my playground. On this visit, we walked the 2.7 km (out and back) Seawalk that is a new addition since our days in PR.
I remember my father telling the tale of climbing Valentine Mountain with his two preschool children (my older brother and I) on Father’s Day 1955 and, in his words, when we got home his wife “felt like having a baby”. My sister was born later that day! I also remember that in his younger days, Dad, an avid mountaineer, would climb the mountain with a pack filled with 40 pounds of magazines on his back to stay in shape. With these family stories in mind, I decided that on this trip, hubby and I would climb Valentine Mountain. It’s actually a short, but steep hike up to a rocky bluff with a beautiful view. The final part of the climb is a made up of steep stone steps.
The panoramic view from the top includes the old pulp and paper mill which was originally Powell River’s sole reason for being as well as a breakwater made of WWII merchant marine vessels.
The mill, now closed, played a very big role in our family history. The grandfather that I never knew because he died in his 30s worked in the mill and my beloved Grandpa, the man my grandmother married when I was 7, was a millwright there for his entire working life. During WWII, when women filled roles left vacant by men who’d gone to war, my mother also worked in the mill and later, my father was employed as an engineer by the company.
While in Powell River, we’ve been staying in a beautiful airbnb with an ocean view. Each evening, we’d watch the sun set and then go out for dinner.
We were halfway through dinner the first evening when I realized that the restaurant we were eating in was probably originally the movie theatre where I’d seen the 1959 film, The Shaggy Dog, with a group of neighbourhood kids. The waitress confirmed my suspicion. Then this evening, we ate in a bistro that is housed in what was always called the beer parlour when I was a child. I remember that back then it had two separate entrances. The signs over the doors said “Men” and “Women and Escorts”. My grandmother spoke of it as if it was a terrible place. I’m sure the ambiance has changed significantly since then!
Tomorrow, we’ll say goodbye to Powell River and return to Vancouver. There won’t be a fashion post this week, but I do plan to write a couple more about our time here. In the meantime, I hope you’ve enjoyed this rambling bit of reminiscing.
We all know that fashion repeats itself. If we wait long enough a style comes around again, although in some cases I really wonder why. After all, isn’t once sometimes enough? A perfect example of this is stirrup pants! Yes, that strange trend from the 1980s and early 90s is back again!
In this compelling family memoir, Canadian lawyer Mark Sakamoto writes about his grandparents’ harrowing experiences during World War II. In so doing, he shares with us one of the ugliest and most shameful parts of our country’s history, the forced evacuation of Japanese Canadians from the coastal areas of British Columbia.
Like many children in wartime Britain, 10-year-old Agnes Crawford was sent out of London to the safety of the countryside where she lived with the well-to-do McIntyre family. Tragically orphaned by the war, she stayed on afterward as their maid and close friend of their daughter, Isobel. When tragedy strikes again, Agnes adopts her deceased friend’s identity and with it the opportunity to become a medical student at a London university. 
Instead of going home after church last Sunday, hubby and I set out for the little village of Donalda and the Willow Canyon trail, one of our favourite places to go hiking. Realizing that the restored train station near the trailhead would make a great backdrop for photos, I wore the outfit that I planned to share with you this week to church and changed into my hiking clothes after the photo shoot.
Not Our Kind is the story of two very different women whose lives intersect on a rainy morning in June, two years after the end of World War II. A minor traffic accident in New York City brings together Eleanor Moskowitz, a bright young teacher on her way to a job interview, and Patricia Bellamy, a socialite whose difficult thirteen-year-old daughter, Margaux, recovering from polio, needs a private tutor. When Eleanor goes to work for the Bellamys, she forms an immediate bond with Margaux, but because they live in a restricted building, she has to conceal her Jewish identity.
Geertruida (Truus) Wijsmuller, a childless member of the Dutch resistance, risks her life smuggling Jewish children out of Nazi Germany to the nations that will take them. It is a mission that becomes even more dangerous after Hitler’s annexation of Austria when, across Europe, countries begin to close their borders to the growing number of refugees desperate to escape. After Britain passes a measure to take in at-risk child refugees from the German Reich, Tante Truus, as she is known by the children, dares to approach Adolf Eichmann, the man who would later help devise the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” and is granted permission to escort a trainload of 600 children (not 599 or 601, but exactly 600) out of the country. In a race against time, 600 children between the ages of 4 and 17 are registered, photographed, checked by medical doctors and put on board the train to begin a perilous journey to an uncertain future abroad. Thus begins the famous Kindertransport system that went on to transport thousands of children out of various parts of Europe during the Nazi occupation of the region in the late 1930s, immediately prior to the official start of World War II.
In 2003, Morris, was introduced to Lale Sokolov, an elderly gentleman who “might just have a story worth telling”. As their friendship grew, Lale entrusted her with the innermost details of his life during the Holocaust. She originally wrote his story as a screenplay before reshaping it into her debut novel, The Tattooist of Auschwitz.
In The Tattooist of Auschwitz, we are introduced to Cilka, a beautiful young prisoner who is forcibly separated from the other women by Johann Schwarzhuber, camp commandant, for his exclusive use. Quickly learning that her survival depends on it, she does what she has to do to stay alive. Although both books are historical novels, Cilka, like Lale, was a real person and at one point, he credits her with saving his life.
Following Augustine 