Category: This BackLit Universe

British Columbia is truly unbelievable. As the mass of North America barges imperceptibly westward over the molten core of the earth, great waves of mountains are heaved up along its western rim. Shells long lost under ancient oceans may now be found thousands of feet up in cloud country. Great…

At our Sechelt place we were anxious to avoid making irreversible mistakes. If, for example, we should later wish that we had a tree growing in the exact place we had earlier cut one down, we couldn’t set the fallen one back up again on its stump. We therefore made…

When the big stumps, soil and tumbled rock had been removed to make a “notch” in the hillside—a shelf for our cabin-to-be—the bedrock underneath was exposed. At the south end of this, down below, was our small excavation. If I took out more rock there, we’d gain valuable space under…

Now don’t think that all I did during those summer holiday periods at Sechelt was work with stones. Stonework was only what I did most of the time! I love working with tools. We also went on some long sailing expeditions. In Ontario I had designed and built what was,…

The Sundays we spent at Sechelt were special days for rest and re-creation. I laid aside my tools. My projects remained as they were. The ache in my muscles eased up. No new scrapes and cuts. In the evening we had our own “church service” with Carsons. Collectively we could…

Once young Martin had qualified for his “captain’s papers” he was free to take the outboard-powered cartop boat anywhere in the inlet within sight of home base. He and Karen quickly learned for themselves the marine lore of the area—where dangerous submerged rocks lurked, where the ospreys and eagles nested,…

Every place you live this side of paradise has its associated problems. We have at least two problems about our Sechelt place. First, the time we can live there each year is as yet far too short. And second, every fall we have to say farewell to it and leave….

We weren’t the only people who had discovered that the Sechelt area is a beautiful place to live. Cabins and houses soon began to appear here and there along the shore and back up the hill in the woods. Every time a new family took up residence, a new boat…

After a few summers of roughing it in tents at Sechelt, we began to consider providing a little more personal comfort and convenience for ourselves. A long hard day of slugging it out at the rocks, and my weary bones called for better support than the rolling ridges and billowing…

One afternoon high up on the beach I found a feather—a big feather, sixteen inches long in the white shaft and an inch wide in the vane. This brownish grey dun-colored feather had fallen out of the air. Neither tide nor wave had washed it ashore. What great bird had…