September 7, 2016

“Ah, how well I remember those wide red flats, above tide-mark

Pale with scurf of the salt, seamed and baked in the sun!

Well I remember the piles of blocks and ropes, and the net-reels

Wound with the beaded nets, dripping and dark from the sea!”

-        ---  Charles G. D. Roberts, Tantramar Revisited

Xxx

I walked to the beach.

Willow’s Beach is twenty minutes away from my house on foot, and when I left the house this afternoon there was a definite sense of change, of turning over, that I felt as I headed north-east for the rocky coast. Maybe it was the rain seeping into the pavement, maybe the weak chill clinging to the air. In any case, as I walked I felt the doomed summer taking her last sunlit breaths of the season.

I walked to the beach because it’s the wilderness I know. I come here when I want to stop thinking and feel a bit primal for a while. Sure, with my feet in the sand, I can still hear cars pull into the parking lot behind me, or listen to them snake their way around the road just beyond the sparse forest to my left. But if I choose the right time, say, in the evening following a rainfall, I am usually lucky, and the beach is mostly deserted.

As it is, I am in luck.

My favorite place is in a small inlet, set in a rock wall descending steeply to cold salt water a couple feet below me. From here, the roads and parking lots and beach volley ball players disappear from view. There is nothing but steel-blue water meeting a pale sky streaked rose with the sinking sun. With my sand-specked toes digging into the rock face and the sound of gentle waves to muffle distant disturbances, I can imagine I am alone and apart for a while.

Well, not completely alone. Like Miranda of the Ancient Wood, I see there is no true loneliness in the wild. Nagging gulls and snobbish geese float in mottled grey and white pools over the water’s surface, and twice I spy the curious doe-eyes of a harbor seal peep out at me, before she drifts dreamily down to her sunken rock castles.

I want my project to be about this place. I haven’t the faintest clue how to make that happen; can a place within walking distance of a Tim Horton’s even be considered wilderness? I don’t know. But this place was wild once. And the gulls and geese and seals and rocks and tides – they’re wild still. So I’m going to give it a go.

To find a text that pertains to Willow’s beach would be phenomenal, but unlikely. So my goal is to find a work that deals with the Pacific Coast in some way, and see if and how that influences my perception of my beloved beach.

It is very cold now. My bare toes purple against the rocks, and I can see the lighthouses winking at me through the steady approaching dark.

So, my questions before I go:

Where is the line that divides wilderness from the rest of the world? How is it defined?

Wilderness is often viewed as something “other”, an alien entity. Can humans ever be truly part of wilderness, or can we only ever be its observer?

What divides us from wilderness? And is our perception of separation from the wild justified?

And more specifically, and what I think I will explore for this project: is Willow’s Beach still a wild place? If not, when did it stop being one? 

September 8, 2016

Your three bodies form a curving shoreline,

pink and brown sweaters, bare legs.

The beach glows grainy under the sun's copper pressure,

air the colour of tangerines.

One of you is sleeping, the wind's finger

on your cheek like a tendril of hair.

--Anne Michaels, Women on a Beach

Xxx

Today, I’m having a go at finding the central piece of literature on which to base my project. Starting with a google search, of course. As I owe both the public and school library too much money to take out a book, the best I can hope for is to find a collection of pertinent poetry online, or else to find a book at a second-hand store.

I started with the Willow’s Beach wiki page, that deep-despised source, but it says that the beach was an ancient seaport called Sitchanalth, home to generations of Coast Salish people. Following a link to burntembers.com, I read that indigenous people used to have longhouses bordering this entire coastline. The site does not say when or where the longhouses and their people went (1).

Googling Coast Salish literature brings up a Stanley Evans, a writer living in Victoria right now. He wrote a series of detective mysteries featuring Coast Salish investigator Silas Seaweed. Reviews of the book say “combination of Coast Salish lore and solid plotting is a winner” (2). So that seems promising. The only thing is that Evans is from the UK… does he count as a Canadian author?

xxx

I called Russel Books.

They have a couple titles in stock, so I’m going to have a look. The premise of the book sounds interesting, but I don’t know how helpful it’s going to be in informing my Willow Beach project. Maybe I’ll have to change topics…

September 10, 2016

It took the sea a thousand years,

A thousand years to trace

The granite features of this cliff,

In crag and scarp and base.

 - E.J Pratt, Erosion

xxx

I talked to Dr. Dean yesterday about using Evans’ Seaweed books as the center of my research diary and she warned me about the trouble regarding cultural appropriation in his works. As mentioned before, Seaweed is a First Nations man of Salish descent, and from what I’ve gleaned from the back cover, he uses some spiritual aspects of his culture to solve crimes. This is problematic because the author is neither aboriginal, nor even Canadian. It’s been giving me a lot to think about, because I feel in this case these books are stuck between current society’s equal desires to avoid cultural appropriation while at the same time achieving fair cultural representation. Should non-aboriginal writers be deterred from writing from the perspective of an aboriginal person? Where does the line between empowering and exploitative lie?

At first I thought it was cool that Evans chose a First Nations person as his protagonist, because this set him apart from other detective novels, and to me it made the books seem more uniquely Canadian. But looking back on it now, I can see how that line of thinking is exploitative of Coast Salish culture in creating a “Canadian” character. By tokenizing a culture, Evan’s may be using Silas’ aboriginal identity to make his book “emblematic” of the country, in a way. I’d have to read it to know what Evans does with the character, to know if he’s being empowering or exploitative.

But ultimately, this isn’t what I wanted in the first place.  My initial idea for the book was to use it as a lens to look at Willow’s Beach, and Silas Seaweed is looking like a can of worms I don’t want to open for this particular project. So Dean suggested I make this more of a historical research project, looking into the history of the beach, tracing it back to when it was wild.  But what interests me more is her question, which echoed mine in the first entry: can Willow’s Beach even count as a wilderness? So while I intend on doing some research into its history, I am more interested in looking into the elements of the present-day beach that may still be considered “wilderness”, perhaps comparing today’s wilderness with past wildernesses? Anyway, that’s the plan for now.

October 15, 2016

There is no silence upon the earth or under the earth like the silence
    under the sea;
No cries announcing birth,
No sounds declaring death.
There is silence when the milt is laid on the spawn in the weeds and
    fungus of the rock—clefts;
And silence in the growth and struggle for life.
The bonitoes pounce upon the mackerel,
And are themselves caught by the barracudas,
The sharks kill the barracudas
And the great molluscs rend the sharks,
And all noiselessly —
Though swift be the action and final the conflict,
The drama is silent.

-          --EJ Pratt, Silences

xxx

I found a Master’s thesis by an UVic archeology grad named Willerton who wrote on recent archeological and anthropological findings at Willow’s Beach. The report, Subsistence at Si•čǝ’nǝł: The Willows Beach Site and the Culture History of Southeastern Vancouver Island, was published in 2009, and Willerton cites a Dr. Yin Lam and a Dr. Quentin Mackie as having helped in in his research for this project. Both professors are UVic alumni.

The report explores the pre-history of the region by examining the link between faunal assemblages and the uncovered artifacts that have evidently existed there years and years ago. Most of the report is unfortunately very dry and dull, consisting of mainly graphs and calculations, but the first six or so pages I found helpful, as they give a summary of the juicer historical findings at Willow’s Beach, as well as an overview of the kinds of wildlife that exist there today. (3)

There’s quite a lot to go through, so I’m going to focus on the wildlife today, and move to the cultural/anthropological section of the report sometime later this week.

 According to the report, Willow’s Beach’s forested areas are dominated by Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), arbutus (Arbutus menziesii) and Garry oak (Quercus garryana), though it also makes note of the “significant amount of semi-open meadow land” (Willerton 4) where I spent a large part of the past spring reading in. The report didn’t say much of the seals and seagulls of which I am very fond, so I did my own research on those.

According to www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca, there are six different species of seal in Canada, and the ones I see bobbing up and down in the waters of Willow’s beach are harbor seals (Phoca vitulina). I remember on the evening I wrote the first entry of this diary, a seal popped up right in front of me and I wondered how her immediate family differs from those that form history.  Well, this site indicates that current harbor seal populations are somewhat less stressed than their ancestors. Since 1967, when it became illegal to hunt these seals, their population numbers have been swelling in British Columbia coastal waters. Right now, there are about 25, 000 seals in Atlantic Canada, and they are considered ‘Not at Risk’ by The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, thank goodness. (4)

Of course, I don’t need to consult a government website to know that seagulls have no chance at being an endangered species. But as far as identifying the specific type of seagull at Willow’s Beach…well, there are a couple of options for the gulls. According to birdscanada.org, I am mostly likely spotting a glaucous-winged gull (Larus glaucescens) on my walks along the beach, as they are most common in this area (or indeed any area along the BC coast). They are the gulls that take especially to urban centers, digging through trash and snatching food scraps from unsuspecting tourists. There are small numbers of the western Gull (Larus occidentalis) flying around the island in small flocks, and the occasional Herring Gull (Larus smithsonianus) may float down occasionally from the Sunshine Coast to visit her southern cousins here.

I’ll return briefly to Willerton’s report to note my favorite part of his wildlife section. About midway through, Willerton says that the beach’s “floral community”, as well as her general physical shape and environmental pattern, have been around for approximately 3,800 years (Willerton 4). This was the time that our part of the island decided upon its position above sea-level, which is where it remains to this day. Before that, Willerton says it is difficult to know what the landscape looked like. It enchants me to think that, less than 4,000 years ago, parts of the beach I know so well now had permanent residence under the sea. I wonder how long it has been since the beach was completely submerged, and the rocks overlooking the ocean now were playgrounds and highways to ancient aquatic life. When I go out to My Spot next I’m going to think about this, and imagine the ghosts of grotesque primeval fish swimming in the air around me.

October 17, 2016

“The Indian children did not race up and down the beach, astonished at strange new things, as we always were. These children belonged to the beach, and were as much part of it as the drift-logs and the stones”

-          Emily Carr, Klee Wyck

Xxx

Carr’s comparison of human children to dead trees in the above quote is obviously problematic, but it does relate the point that beaches were central to the culture and lifestyle of many West Coast aboriginal peoples throughout Canada’s history. I knew before taking this class that historically, aboriginal residence in a given area was rarely considered valid by colonialists, and Victoria is founded on unceded land. Today I’m going to research the peoples that inhabited Willow’s Beach originally and find out when and why they were displaced from their land.

Returning to Willerton’s thesis, I found that the Willow’s beach village and her people were known by then name Si•čǝ’nǝł, and they spoke Lekwungaynung. At the “time of contact”, Straits Salish people like those found on Willow’s beach were only semi-nomadic, spending part of the year in their established beach village, living in multi-family wood plank houses. Salmon-fishing, woodworking, and basket making were the essential skills, and the Si•čǝ’nǝł kept small dogs with lots of long hair to use for yarn. Their spiritualty centered on shamanism. The report recognizes that information collected by the Europeans is flawed, as they altered such communities through disease and trade practices.  Most important to my research, however, are these two facts that Willerton includes: Firstly, the Si•čǝ’nǝł lived on the beach until 1843. Secondly, artifacts such as “cobble tools” “flaked stones” and weapons fashioned from bone found on the beach date back approximately 5000 years. (5)

I will deal with the first bit of information first. What happened on Willow’s beach in the 1840s?

I searched the BC archives online at http://search-bcarchives.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/ and found a photograph of a horse show that took place at an established exhibition ground on Willow’s Beach in 1895 (6). Not long after, the Willow’s Beach Fair Grounds were established, and a plaque commemorating these fair grounds remains in the small marketplace. Then I searched the archives of “Oak Bay” and found a photograph taken in 1891 (7) of children playing on “an Oak Bay beach” (the site doesn’t specify which beach exactly, but it does resemble Willow’s beach if viewed from its north-west point.) Both photographs contain evidence of European technology and architecture, but there remains a gap between the time the photos were taken and the time that the Sitchanalth village stood there. 

I then came across a page on the Cattle Point Foundation website which I first took for a historical article regarding Willow’s Beach. However, it is really an action plan for something called the “Salish Seafront Initiative”. This foundation made a plan last year to build a collection of houses, crafted and erected by “first nations youth to resurrect the old skills”, and name the site Sitchanalth in honor of the original village. The action plan is prefaced by some information on the history of the old village. It says the village existed for about 3,000 years, was destroyed several times during that period by tsunamis, and that the houses stretched across Willow’s Beach to Cattle Point, with the Chief’s house likely located at the mouth Bowker Creek. (8)

Today, I have not come across much more information regarding the transition from aboriginal to European inhabitance on Willow’s Beach in the mid-1850s. I found a short paragraph at oakbay.ca that focused mostly on the arrival of European explorers in the 1700s and the consequent establishment of Fort Victoria and the takeover of the beach by the Hudson’s Bay Company between 1840 and 1850.

However, (at risk of sounding insensitive), the information I gathered regarding the ancient history of the original Sitchanalth village overshadows that of the European contact period on the beach in terms of pertinence to my research. I am investigating where the line between wilderness and non-wilderness lies. It is evident that that line was not drawn by the European invasion of the aboriginal seaside village. The inhabitants of Sitchanalth had houses, professions, social and spiritual systems. Through research like Willerton’s, we find that people have been innovating and creating on sites like Willow’s Beach for millennia. In terms of defining wilderness, I do not think we should consider the longhouses that lined the beach thousands of years ago any more or less wild and natural than the modern houses that line it today. In my quest of a wilderness definition, I put these innovations together as equally separate from “true” nature.

Willerton’s research uncovered a bone tool created perhaps 5,000 years ago. Must I then deduce that Willow’s Beach has not been truly “wild” since that time? By that logic, surely no place on earth today remains wilderness, and I would guess most of it has not been so for many years. If human contact or lack thereof is the definitive element that determines a site’s wildness, then I have never known wilderness, and neither has any of my ancestors. Going back to Dr. Dean’s original question when I came to her with the intention of making this beach my subject: “Can Willow’s Beach even be considered wilderness?”

It is as wild as most any other place on Earth. Which is to say, not at all.

October 25, 2016

And this mighty swayed bough of the lake

Rocks cool where the morning hath smiled;

While the dim, misty dome of the world scarce awake

Blushes rose, like the cheek of a child

-William Wilfred Campbell, Morning on the Beach

xxx

I’ve been thinking about the idea of the “beach” itself, mulling over its connotations. I find that is has become a rather domesticated term. When one hears the word beach, I think the most common images that spring to mind are those of white sand, clear bathtub-warm blue water, colorful umbrellas and beach towels, kids shaping castles out of plastic buckets, adults drinking beer out of ill-disguised water bottles and Pepsi cans. The word beach has abandoned its wild origins for more groomed and tame connotation. If one wants to describe a cold, craggy place where the land meets the sea, they might say it is a “shore” or a “coastline” before saying it’s a beach.

My parents are from South Africa, and they have a clear definition of what constitutes a “real beach”: white sand, big waves, in a sunny hot part of the world. I think this view is common to most in our society: the beach is the place we see in movies set in California or Australia, where people surf and sunbathe and fall flightily in love for the summer. My poor gray beach seems a different species entirely from these conceptual paradises. Though the word “beach” technically connotes the concept of something that occurs naturally in the wild, it is often associated today with manicured sites of tourism and carefully-managed recreation. So I interest myself today in how beaches (in our culture at least) came to mean more a type of paradise, and less the natural phenomena which they are.

I found an essay at the history.ac.uk website called The seaside resort: a British cultural export, written by John K. Walton, a professor at University of Central Lancashire. The essay traces the origins of beach resorts back to the 1720s, where they had their start in Whitby and Scarborough. As the “upper strata of eighteenth-century English society” became increasingly concerned with their health, convinced that industrialism was a poison only nature could cure, the inherent restorative powers of the ocean accounted for the increased popularity of the seaside resort in the 20^th century, where it played “a central role in the development of tourism as a great international industry”. Carefully maintained beaches and seaside parks grew in popularity around the world, as people believed time spent in and near the sea served as a physical and mental cleansing experience, a belief that survives to this day. (10)

I drew several parallels between Walton’s essay and the Tina Loo essay I read for class. As Loo points out in her essay, the creation of parks and hunting grounds aimed to satisfy the bourgeois desire for a “sportsman’s paradise”. Members of hunting clubs manipulated wilderness to better serve the requirements of their sport. Within these sites of carefully-maintained nature, hunters believed their “wild” surroundings to be inherently healing and transformative, purging their spirits of the toxins of modernity and industrialism.  (11)

This belief is shared by seaside vacationers. Our idea that nature purifies rings especially true in oceans. We perceive them as possessing a natural resilience to human materialism and intervention. We can’t cement over the ocean, and from the shore we can’t see the pollution, the damage wrought by thousands of oil spills and garbage tankers, the way we would see litter and chopped trees during a forest walk or mountain hike. We can imagine the waves we hear having sounded the same at the time of Earth’s creation, we can imagine the salt we smell in the air as coming straight off rocks that have existed for thousands of years. This quality of immortality and constancy sends people flocking to the seaside when they feel the pressures of modern life squeezing them breathless. Beach resorts owe their popularity to our shared sense that simply being in the presence of moving water can wash away our earthly troubles, leaving us rejuvenated and renewed. And even though Willow’s Beach lacks the manicured attractiveness and warmth of most of these resorts, I still walk there when I am stressed over a deadline or family problem. We have been very critical in our class of people who see nature as a balm to what ails us, but at the end of a tough day, the sound of waves breaking over rocks soothes me. No amount of critical thinking can reduce that.

November 2, 2016

I’ve been thinking more about the duality of the beach as both a natural occurrence and a tourist attraction. The changing tides and blowing winds and slow-shifting tectonic plates gave Willow’s Beach its shape, but people dotted its rocky hills with picnic benches and bordered its sand with cement sidewalk. So can a tourist attraction be wilderness?

Now I’m thinking of Roderick Haig-Brown and his calculating, systematic mind. During his fishing trips through the woods, Haig-Brown still thought in percentages and measurements. What was the likelihood he would catch fish here? How big would his prizes be? Not that Haig-Brown was a purely cold and unsentimental man. When he talks about fishing at the mouth of the river at sunset, his voice contains poetry and awe as he describes the beauty of nature. However, Haig-Brown also considers beauty another number in his calculation of a natural space’s worth. He fishes a river where the physical rewards are small, but the beauty of the place makes up for this shortcoming. Everything is weighed and compared, and Haig-Brown shows special consideration for the “wildness” factor of a place.

He talks about the lakes as if they are live creatures. Some of them are bold and accustomed to human contact, while others “hide” like rabbits and deer, a prize to be claimed only by those who dare to leave the common path and delve into the woods. Haig-Brown is concerned with the number of people he has shared his waters with; the harder a place is for humans to reach, the wilder and more “pure” he considers it.  In this aspect, I am reminded of the old way of thinking, that a woman become less pure with each person she sleeps with. Does a place become less wild with each person that visits it? (12)

I wonder what Haig-Brown would think of Willow’s Beach. From his essay I know he was anti-industry and anti-capitalism, so I wonder if he would have also been anti-tourism?  Either way, I think Willow’s Beach’s easy access would have influenced Haig-Brown’s calculations the most. Anyone with a car, boat, plane, or bike can visit her. I can see Haig-Brown on the sidewalk now, shaking his head at the food stand and busy marina before hiking northwest for the hidden beaches up-island. Too many people have “slept” with this beach to make it worth his time.

But when I stand at the edge of the rocks and look out at the water, my toes just peeking into a tide pool, I swear it has all the magic of the most sequestered secret beach of Tofino. Perhaps Haig-Brown would disagree, but I do not punish the beach or decrease her wild worth due to what we have done to her. No matter how many boats we float over her, her waters remain wild.