Going Home

I've just had the most wonderful weekend. I'm tired this morning and should be getting ready to head to work but I'm still sitting here and trying to figure out how to get myself moved over to Vancouver Island. I really do love it over there and it would be as close to Loughborough as I could get.

My grandpa had a logging company in the late 30's and early 40's. He expanded and had 3 logging companies and somewhere along the way he went broke so in '44 he went to work for the Booth Logging Company up in Loughborough Inlet at Heydon Bay. My grandma went with him and my mom was a young teen and stayed one last year in Vancouver with relatives and then she also went up to Loughborough. She married my dad who was also working up there as the camp mechanic in 1949 and I was born in November of 1950. She came out to Vancouver and stayed with her cousin and had me at Vancouver General Hospital and then brought me back. The only way in then and now was by boat or float plane. Back in those days it was the Union Steam Ship and that is how she brought me home. In 1953 she did the same thing and brought home my brother.

This last weekend we went back. We chartered a water taxi out of Campbell River and had the most perfect man captain us up there. He was born (a week before me!) in Campbell River and lived all his life up there. He was a captain on the BC Ferries for 31 years until he retired last year and now he does this basically for fun and over the summer months. He is employed by the nice young fellow at WayWest Water Taxi's in Campbell River. (If given half a chance I could be very interested in this man! It at least showed me I could be interested in a man again) So he took us up there and it was a trip of a lifetime. He said we were doing something that most people talk about doing and never actually do, going back to where we came from.

As wonderful as it was to see it ourselves it was my Mom's face that really made it for me. It brought back so many memories for her, some really bad but lots really good. My grandpa's ashes were scattered there when he died in 1950. The Campbell River Indian Band now has the land and we had contacted them and asked permission to go up. The chief was very nice and he in turn contacted the fellow up there to tell him we were coming. As we pulled in this speed boat came screaming out to basically challenge us it seemed but when we explained who we were and the chief had given permission etc he said yes the chief was his cousin and had phoned to say we were coming but he was on his way into Campbell River but we could go on in and check things out. He said someone else had been up about 5 years earlier and had brought some pictures and they were on the wall of the cookhouse. We all hopped off and headed up the dock but the captain of our boat stayed back and chatted with the guy and showed him mom's pictures she had brought with us and he asked if mom could leave her phone number so he could contact her and hear some of the history of the place etc. We left our number and mom is going to get some of the pictures copied and enlarged and send them up to him.

We made our way up to the cookhouse and found the pictures on the wall and mom recognized the lady in the first picture and knew who the fellow was that had been there 5 years ago. My brother was moving down the line of pictures and pointed to another and said to Mom, "Do you know who she is?" and mom looked at it and goes. "That's me!" It was incredible and it felt so right to be there. I was 4 when we left and even though I didn't specifically remember the place I did feel like it was coming home. A weird feeling of it just being right. The captain was telling us he was reading this book and it was saying when and where we are born there is a specific magnetic pull and when you go back you sometimes can fee the rightness of where you are and really to me when I get on the ocean and see the mountains and the trees it is just right and it always feels like I'm where I should be.

I have pictures of me on the logging road in front of our house and by accident I stood in basically the same spot and took a picture down the road and the scenery is exactly the same. Amazing to see. Lots more to say but really do need to get moving today and head off to work. We rescued a couple of guys off a burning fishboat on the way back. That was also amazing. As they leaped from their burning boat onto ours the flames were burning through the open doorway of the cabin. All they got off with was the clothes on their backs and their survival suits clutched in their hands. I'll add more tonight but here's a couple of pictures. OK well blogger is not cooperating and will not allow me to upload any pictures so I'll have to try a different approach. Let me work on this ....................

Well in the mean time here is a picture of the where I came from and also a picture of the burning boat.

http://s89.photobucket.com/albums/k207/Axazwrath/?action=view&current=4fd26fdb.jpg

I just realized it shows in an album on there and you can click through the pics so I will label them as I go and you can click through them all. It will probably take me a couple of days to get them all up.