Knots and Stitches

The houses, shacks, and boat sheds of Dodge Cove dangled like colourful plastic charms from a bracelet of gravel that circled a rumpled-taffeta bay. I’d gaze out the kitchen window through winter dusk towards the scattered sequins of light in the village below. Scraps of sound drifted upwards—a thudding axe, the shrill voices of children disembarking from the school ferry, the barking of dogs. Red pinpricks of light moved swiftly toward the dock as commuter boats returned home. A larger fishboat slid in slowly with a quiet, steadfast throb.

We moved to CBC Hill above Dodge Cove in 1989. Our first morning, we awoke to a horrendous lightning storm. I was terrified because we were right under the tall radio tower, which I imagined attracting fiery thunderbolts. We were late for work because I was too scared to leave the house.

In our clean, bright, spacious new home, our belongings looked bedraggled and worn-out, and they smelled. Everything we brought from Salt Lakes, especially our books and clothes, had a brash fungoidal taint, a hint of mouse droppings and decay. I was suddenly aware that anything we had taken on our boat trip reeked of mildew and diesel fumes, though I hadn’t noticed this while aboard.

            But our new home had its own peculiarities: a huge brass ship’s bell on the front porch that chimed dolefully when the wind blew; small acid-green frogs and high-jumping cricket-spiders that lived in the basement, most likely in the cistern that held our water supply. When it rained, our living room filled with the soothing and meditative gurgle of rainwater funneling from the eavestroughs, through a filter made of old nylon stockings, and into the cavernous concrete vault directly below the sofa. White worms grew through the nylon if we neglected to change the stockings regularly. Turning a tap or flushing the toilet activated a whining electric pump which urged the water upward.

A stormy day, with daffodils. Our springtime view out the front window was stunning, a field of daffodils with the harbour entrance and the misty islands beyond.

Dodge Cove kids Photos by Garry Sattich

Up on the Hill, I was distant from Dodge Cove’s family-oriented bustle. I was not part of the boating ‘car-pools’ for hockey practice and ballet lessons in town, or of the child-minding network that allowed kids to roam freely from one end of the village to the other, or to row a boat within the safety of the Cove. I sometimes attended a birthday party or the Easter potluck, but my favourite celebration was the winter solstice, when children and adults gathered on the cold dark shore of Marine Bay and launched home-made candle boats into the midnight waves.

I asked an 11 year old boy who had moved from Dodge Cove to Vancouver about city life versus north coast life. He answered thoughtfully: “We were a lot more independent at Dodge Cove. We didn’t have to worry about strangers, kidnappers, all that stuff they teach you about here in Vancouver. In Dodge Cove you could ride your bike around, do whatever you wanted. A lot of people might say it was dangerous, riding boats and stuff, but when you are raised there and grow up in boats, you didn’t really think like that. And the kids there were all close friends.”