31 yo Churchill,canoing, polar bear, hunting, Jack Hildes, Northern Medical Unit,

Maureen had made a unilateral decision to continue on in Pediatrics. She felt that I’d betrayed her by leaving surgery. She certainly had no plans for country medicine or going to Africa. With my being away so much she’d consolidated her plans to be a pediatrician and have a practice with his twin sister.  This had been there longer standing dream.  She was a feminist. Her family had been communist. She called herself agnostic and wasn’t even sure she wasn’t an aetheist.  She loved nature.

She was going to be a pediatrician and we were going love in the city. I certainly was rethinking my future. Every doctor I knew was having trouble with the administration in the city. No beds, rationing resources. I was headed north and enrolled in a community medicine fellowship.

We lived to canoe and cross country ski back in those days. My fondest memories of Manitoba are canoeing.  Taking others along with us to camp in the northern wilderness was my joy.  I loved tenting. I loved the campfire. I loved barbecuing steaks over an open fire. I loved boiling potatoes and making bacon and eggs on the Coleman camp stove.  I’d done the Winnipeg River white water canoeing with my friend Jon.  

At graduation we’d decided as a group of doctors to go white water canoeing. There were 4 of us, 2 canoes, ice on the water. I’d save the life of one of the guys when their canoe flipped in the rocks and rapids. He popped out at the bottom and we rushed to him. His mate made shore but he was struggling.I caught him and pulled him in. I got a fire going immediately and we had his clothes off and a towel around him.

“I’ll give you anything for a fire,’ he kept saying between chattering teeth.

We’d had our California friends come up for a week of canoeing. My brother had a cabin in lake of the woods, a classic A frame with a lovely wood veranda.  We began and ended our trek there. I liked portaging out of the main lakes where there were power boats into these secluded quiet lakes where only a loon’s call broke the silence.  We saw bear and raccoon and lots of swans and ducks and geese. Otters and beaver along the side of the lakes. I caught pike from the rocks casting. We skinny dipped. The girls were beyond playboy.  Such beautiful young women. We were all so healthy and athletic and vigorous. It was so much frolicking fun. At night we’d make love in the tent night bird and animals sounds coming from the woods to join our sounds.

A young bear poked it’s nose  into the tent in the middle of the night pushing the mosquito netting before him. I woke to the sound, Maureen sleeping beside me. On one elbow I used all my might to punch him right in the nose.  Bear are sensitive there. He backtracked and was gone in a minute. Maureen stirred at the sound. 

“What was that?” 

“Squirrels’.

We’d been woken by squirrels jumping on the tent before.  She went back to sleep.  I never told her about the bear.

Miles was a writer and editor I’d get together with him for one of our writer’s circles. 

Previously I’d met with these two girls and a fellow who’d go on to be on the Canada Council for literature.  We’ meet every few weeks and each read stories and poetry.  The beautiful talented sisters had set that one up.

Later I’d meet with Miles and a couple of others. We’d have beers while Miles did his laundry, the pub stratigically attached to a laundry, favourite place of the young men.  The rule was the person who had the best rejection slips had his beer bought by the group. Miles got his rejection from New Yorker and we were impressed. I was rejected by Playboy and Reader’s Digest.  When ‘feminist’ Margaret Atwood claimed she had nothing to do about her ‘feminist’ writing appearing in Playboy all the writer’s laughed uproariously. Everyone knew that Playboy paid the most in the industry which was why more starving writers tried to get published in Playboy than any other journal.  Margaret Atwood was an artist but Like Suzuki she always had her eye on the money. 

Some artists like money a whole lot. Others’ not so much. Margaret Atwood has always liked money a whole lot.  Nothing wrong with it. But really, “I was a victim of my agent. He made me publish in Playboy.”  Classic feminist. Whining Gloria Steinem shit.My female doctor friend loathed them, “rich privileged white girls who don’t have enough at the top they need to steel the limelight from the bottom claiming they’re victims too. I hate feminists.”

“Margaret Atwood had started out at a great writer.  We all so admired until  she became a propagandist.  A bit like the city Toronto. Once a lovely place, now as corrupt and urban as New York and LA.” One of the guys in our writer’s circle critiqued.  

Meanwhile we were drinking cheap beer in a pub attached to a laundromat. Dissecting writers and writing was a a great time. Miles was  funniest man alive. Droll. .  He was a friend of Franks.  Frank was the doctor who assisted surgery. He’d be one of several people who’d meet at the dinner parties that Maureen and I had at our place.

We had bought the new house. 

“It’s a good house. The roof and wiring are good. The foundation is solid.” Dad had approved. 

It was a bungalow on Oxford in Riverheights.  We’d love it. I had the hard wood floors installed that I love so much.  Several houses later I’ve always had hard wood floors.  We had a friend Gord who did fine wood work. We loved his wood furniture, clean simple lines. I loved wood. Gord was a master. Like my friend today Nick. I often wished I’d stayed a carpenter. I sometimes dream of having a studio and just making furniture. Nothing could be more joyful.. I love the smell of wood. I love the grains.  I love wood. I’ll bet Jesus wished he’d stayed a carpenter. 

So Gords’ cabinets and tables adorned our new house. We’d order a piece and wait patiently.  The table was a masterpiece. Oak and long and sweet.  Maureen ,thanks to our California friends mostly ,developed a sophisticated taste for interior design. It became increasingly a problem because I was excluded from her equations.

“It’s a pink house, Bill. She has you in a pink house. You don’t belong in a pink house. She wants to castrate you and hang you on the basement walls.” My friend told me.

My friends talked to me like that.  I felt bull dozed on lots of decisions about the decor of the house. I loved the foundation and roofing and wiring and all the solid stuff but then there’d be these pink walls.

“They’re peach.” She exclaimed.  

“Can you get rid of those pictures.” She demanded. 

The pictures she referred to were a picture of a polar bear and three cubs eating a seal. I’d walked up to it with a regular camera and taken the picture at 10 feet. It was used by the Manitoba government for a travel brochure. Polar bears rarely have three cubs. The mother earlier in the day had chased me when I was out bird watching looking for the famed Ross Gull. Because a biologist had been studying the polar bear with three cubs he saw the Cub take an interest in me and the mother following as I was backing away certain I was dead. Like Evil Keneeval this guy on his motorcycle had charged down the coast leaping boulders and come along side me.

“Get on!” He screamed. I didn’t need to be asked twice. I literally leaped on as the bear broke from a walk to a charge almost catching us on the sand where traction was not so good. . I swear I felt her hot breath on my neck. Later that day I’d find her and her cubs eating the seal. Trusting she was preoccupied with dinner and the kids I got up close and took the greatest wildlife picture of my life. 

The other was a beluga whale.  I got that up close from a dinghy at high speed in the Arctic Ocean. The other was a bull moose I’d chased through the marsh on our trip to Yellowstone Park.  He’d stood 10 feet from me and I’d got the picture. I’d escaped one charge before to get that picture. 

“They don’t belong in the house. You can put them in the basement. I don’t like all the wildness.”

I remember calling my dad up after that. Her tone of voice, superior, judgemental and dismissive got in my craw. I mostly just did as she told me. Best not to argue with her.  My Dad had invited me hunting with him. 

“Adell doesn’t let Ron come hunting since she had the babies. She’s quite the little mother that one.” He’d say. 

He was still duck hunting and wanted me to come along. Mom was glad I’d finally agreed to go because he’d be safer and we’d really have the time of our lives. I also figured if Maureen was going to object to pictures of wildlife I might as well get back to killing. There was no compromise with her. I decided then to draw a line in the sand. Granddad hunted, Dad hunted. Ron had hunted. We were all birdwatchers and loved wildlife. But if pictures of wildlife offended her suddenly I was not giving any more ground. 

I felt that my wife was becoming impossible. Everything was a matter of ‘give an inch and then she’d take a mile.’ There was no compromise. She was just inexorably moving me to the basement.  I was always wrong. She was always right. She would only know set backs but she never changed her mind. I know today that’s classic alcoholic family business but then it was just royally annoying. Impossible to live with.  

I liked that we’d have dinner parties and people would ask about the pictures and I’d get to share ‘my stories’ about the north.  After we bought the house with the money I made working as a general practitioner and flying each week to the north while she was doing a residency I’d like to talk about those northern trips.  I was writing stories for the Medical Post about being a fly in doctor in Northern Manitoba and Northern Ontario. 

“My mother calls you a throw back.  No one wants to hear about polar bears coming into in hospitals or you going down white water rivers with a bunch of stupid doctors.  Grow up. People want to talk about the theatre.  My friends don’t want to hear about what you’re doing . We like to discuss  food and fashion. You’re a bore.  Everything you do is so juvenile.  I don’t want those wild pictures of bear in my sight. It upsets me and it upsets my friends.”

The only one who was ever upset was her mother. 

Dad and I borrowed my brothers Irish setter Tartan. He’d a couple of rug rats who ‘d grow up to be my great nephews. At the time they were in diapers doing that high speed crab routine across the floor to attack the dogs. Tartan loved being a baby body guard but when Dad and I showed up to take him hunting he was in dog heaven.

So we all drove to the marsh with Dad’s truck. He laughed at me because I shot a mallard and Tartan thought the water too cold. So I undressed to my skivvies and swam out to retreive the duck with Tartan swimming beside me and my Dad laughing on the shore hands on his need hardly able to get a breath.  I swam back and Tartan accompanied me. He thought this was a great sport but when it came to him fetching the birds on his own he would always look to me wanting  ‘us’ to do the fetching together.  I’ve fetched birds a couple of times to get the dog going but it’s not my main duty. Fall marshes and rivers are freezing. 

When we had a half dozen ducks each we came home. Tartan who had endless energy was surprisingly mellow. He’d had the day of his life and would love his future breaks from baby sitting duty. He loved the nephews but days off with Dad and me were the best. Rainy the female setter was just as happy to stay home with her hairless puppies.

I brought the ducks in and deposited them on the table my friend Gord had made and I’d bought.  

“Get them out of the house.” She screamed. It was overly dramatic to deposit them on the dining room table. We’d always pluck them outside before bringing them in. I was making a statement. 

“I shot them.” I said. 

“I don’t care if you shot them. They don’t belong in a civilized home.”

“I’m going to pluck them and eat them.” 

“I’m not.” 

So I plucked them in the back yard. I had my friends over for roast duck and I was the ‘hit’ and she was angry, slow simmering angry.  Meanwhile my friends had never had wild duck and being connoseiurs truly loved the experience.  They laughed too when I told them about Tartan, my father laughing and me swimming with Tartan to fetch the duck.  

I’d love making salads, soups and stews  and anything that required chopping in the day. Gord had made us a great kitchen with opening to the dining room. I loved our cabinets .I loved the counter . I loved cooking.  Maureen liked to make the entre. She loved the praise. The girls competed with their dinners.  She had a French recipe book and we’d have sole in white wine and other dishes . I’d do the turkeys and roasts. The wine cabinet came and went. Dinners were ribald affairs with lots of wine and liqueurs and great story tellers. Paul my ex brother in law was a great artist. I had his photographs on the wall. His black and white of the opening of Rocky Horror Picture show would become iconoclastic.  Frank would tell of the politics of the day. His family had escaped Checkoslovakia and he really knew his politics. Things he said thirty years ago have all told true.

“The communists just want control of the world. They’re into power and dominance. They’re a dictatorship really. A gang mentality. They were so angry when the ‘workers unite’ didn’t work. They actually thought all the workers of the world would rise up and want them to lead.  IT was a major disappointment . So now they’re into saving the planet. They’re trying to re tool to be environmentalists and say ‘planet lovers unite’ so they can get control and have all the power and money and be the dictators.  I don’t think they’re going to get people to buy into their save the spotted owl and the planet’s dying spiel but that’s their plan. They’re do anything for power and greed. The left is all about dictatorship but they never tell you that. You learn when you live under rule.“. 

I remember Frank telling us that back in the early 80’s .  The Latvians and White Russians had told me about the left killing hundreds of millions. It was Frank who told me the communists were retooling as environmentalists promoting fear so people would accept dictatorship. 

We sure laughed a lot though. The girls at those parties were always dressed well as we guys put on sports jackets. Genteel affairs.  Discussions of movies and books. Talk of medicine and rotations. 

I’d begun flying to Churchill.  I’d be up there a week or two at a time. The routine I’d eventually mainly be in was to fly Island Air to Island Lake and then from Island Lake take a bush plane to St. Theresa Point and Wasagamach. The bush planes were my taxi. Mostly I’d fly in the Cezna, single prop and sometimes the lovely Twin Otter. My favourite was the Dehavilland Beaver.   I’d eventually fly to a dozen other reserves and locations in the next couple of years. When I stopped flying north full time after one to two years I’d continue to make week long trips every month or two as a consultant.(  Later as a psychiatrist in BC and the Yukon I’d fly consults to Northern BC and the Indian Reserves upthere. Even later when I worked in the Northern Marianas Islands I’d fly consult trips to the little polynesisan islands.)

I delivered twins in Churchill. It was an Inuit lady. I delivered her 11th and 12th baby. We didn’t know about the 12th.  She was smiling through the delivery mostly.  She’d touch me ‘to reassure me’.  After the first baby was born I was acting like it was over but she smiled and wagged her finger at me and sure enough she delivered a second one. Then she smiled contented ly.  But despite the placenta being full out without any missing bits and the oxytocin going full out she was continuing to hemorrhage. She motioned me to come to her side then she took my hand and pushed it down on her belly motioning me to kneed her uterus in slow circular motions.  I was stimulating the uterus to close by expelling blood clots. She smiled after that and glowed when she had her two new babies on her chest. 

One day I was dog with a bone down his gullet. I was doing the veterinary work in the north suturing dogs after fights with wolves and now this bone.  My colleague , the anesthetist and I , decided the sigmoidoscope was the answer. We sigmoidoscoped the dog under anesthetic.  I operated the scope and my friend passed the gas. I never saw a bone but we must have dislodged it. The dog recovered but the hospital administrator didn’t.

He went  ballistic.

“You can’t used a human sigmoidoscope on a dog.” 

“Do you know what the sigmoidoscope is? “ My anesthetist colleague asked.  “It’s for the asshole. if anyone should complain it’s the dog!”

We d autoclave it so was good as new ffor human asshole.

I was dealing with major medical and surgical issues and administration was always up to it’s old tricks looking for irrelevancies and turning them into major issues. They always wanted to be the Center of attention and wanted to move the patients doctors and nurses right out to make the hospitals a perfect place for the cleaning staff  and themselves. They liked the x ray machine dusted and thought that was more important than the cardio pulmonary resuscitations we were doing a lot of . Diabetes was a big deal in this populations. I was being flown out to little reserves and once over to the Inuit on the islands in the bay of Churchill.

I’d write a lot about this in the Medical Post and other journals. I’d have time free in the evening and enjoy writing about the experiences.  It was a great time.  I’d come back home to Maureen and her mother and all the problems in her family, the older brother’s drunken divorce, the depressed communist intellectual brother in the mother’s basement not getting a job, her concerns about academics.  IT was okay but the north was exciting and home was not so. I had a lot of academic work in the city too formal community medicine courses and lots of reading. Maureen was doing the same. We weren’t going to the library but studying in the homestretch Gord’s table or in the second room we’d made into a library. 

I’d eventually build a small consultation therapy room in the basement and see patients there. Maureen was always worried about money. She didn’t do anything herself but complain and I worked three jobs making us rich by others standards.

I’d be attacked by dock workers in Churchill  and almost be killed .  6 of them. A little East Indian Internist who came up to the waist  of one would try to stop him kicking me.  Because I had martial arts experience and being a gymnast I actually ‘kipped’ to my feet and was upright ready to fight. The drunken thugs attacked the doctors and nurses in the north.They broke up the bars and lounges. But the judge would do nothing. He fined these guys who 6 on one tried to kill me.  

The nurses had taken me for a drink to thank me for all the good medicine I’d been doing, They really appreciated competence and I certainly was getting a reputation for that. The dockworkers told the judge ‘this guy had all these babes to himself and we figured if we got rid of him we’d get all the girls. ‘. The biggest guy  rabbit punched me. He’d sat down at the next table with his mates and were insulting the nurses so we just got up to go. No one had even spoken with them. I was standing to go and his well planned rabbit punch caught me completely unaware, lifting me, flying, like in cowboy movie, over the length of the 6 foot table, land ing on my back on the bar room floor. Then the six cowards swarmed me,  surrounding me, putting the boots to me. That’s when I saw the Lilliputian Indian internist jump on the back of the big guy to be swatted away like a fly. They were trying to kick me in the head but I was swivelling and taking the kicks in the kidneys. Probably the source of my later kidney bleeding episode. I’d protected my head but I was on my feet with a kip that shocked them especially as I came up with my fist dduking it out.  Seeing that little East Indian internist on the shoulders of this big bruiser was worth the flight through air. 

The police were outside and rushed in When I tried to hold one guy the police pulled me off, ‘we’re trying to help. If you touched him he could charge you with assault. Here these guys had tried to kill me or at least leave me a fork with a head injury and my touching one guy could get me charged with assault. Everyone in the town apologised to me but the judge seemed in league with the criminals.

My back sure hurt from kicks but I was glad I’d saved my head.  6 on 1 , these sociopaths had done this before and would do it again.  In another world I’d hoped I’d have hunted them down one one one and beat the shit out of them in the dark alone not letting them know who I was and giving them no warning.  I like karma and have volunteered for service in the great chain of karma in my time. 

This time I left it with the judge who took their excuse that they needed to let off steam saying they went out to ‘fuck or fight’ and only made them pay for my broken glasses., they’d ground under their boots. He also said doctors and nurses shouldn’t leave the hospital . 

 Most of the judges I’d work with would have some smarts but in the north it was evident they themselves were terrified. The RCMP were few and far between and frankly I just figured the judge was a coward who gave into the bullies to protect himself. Also he was jealous of doctors and nurses , the hospital being absolutely necessary while he was a pretty much an  accessory. Churchill was a Wild West town. The law happened then and there .Judges were always talking about distant yesterdays .  The dead piled up regardless of them.  Their presence was only a reminder there was this other world outside the community.  The natives and everyone else would pay back the dock workers.  That’s the way it worked. I knew you didn’t attack doctors 6 on 1 and hit nurses and get away with it. Inuit don’t like that. Cree don’t like that. I’d be surprised if the ring leader lived to finish that year. And maybe the judge knew that too. 

Judges are canny guys so while I was pissed at only having my glasses paid for and getting assaulted with no compensation, Churchill was a pretty great town with lots of great people and it grew so the law was doing a good job or that would n’t be true. The thing about the judges is that they had a more birds eye view of what was happening and generally did a good job with the extra insight. I was really for the RCMP especially in the north where they were the greatest allies. We knew the law was an ass but everyone worked together to maintain civilization in the wilderness.  I’d lived.  Maureen was angry and it would continue to be hard for the Northern Medical Unit to recruit people to the north because doctors and nurses other than me had suffered from the low life. 

It was dangerous back but decades later a young female doctor would go north and write about her experiences, it sure sounded a lot tamer and suburban, She didn’t get the RCMP riding the moose down the street having tried to cut its throat only to have it stand up with him then shooting himself in the thigh itch his revolver before shooting the moose really dead. Civilization just keeps spreading.

Indeed they’d not been able to recruit a Canadian doctor to the north despite 2 years of advertisements and major incentives.  Churchill befcause it was a hospital centre could get locums but not the nursing stations. Finally Jack got an Irish doctor and an English doctor to join me.  

We’d all do northern wilderness training making Igloos and Quincies and being stalked by polar bears. Thanks to my Irish colleague I’d drink a bottle of Bushmills Irish Whisky in an Igloo we’d made ourselves,with him and others singing Irish revolutionary songs in the arctic.  He’d go onto marry a beautiful Native princess.  I smile as I remember this time and those days. We were so young and it was so crazy.

I’d be in a couple of plane crashes too. The DC 3 flipped on its side landing crushing it’s wing.  I’d hang from my seat belt sideways in the plane till the ordeal ended. .

I’d be stalked and chased by polar bear more than once. Our skidoo would go through the ice on a mercy run. I’d write these stories up and see them published time and again. They really helped Jacks recruiting efforts. He asked me to make an album of pictures they’d use for recruitment. I’d do interviews like the television one I did for recruiting doctors to the country for CBC. 

The joke was that me walking along with stethescope and whit lab coat became favoured CBC stock footage so I’d hear from my parents who always watched the news that I’d been shown time and again where the doctor story was positive or negative. The trouble with being photogenic with an acting background. 

I’d have Indians try to kill me several times. “Kill the whitey. Kill the whitey” That’s a cry that sends chills through me especially if they’re shooting guns at me or chasing me with knives.   Running through reserves with drunken mobs chasing the doctor and the sober Indians trying to rescue me.  Drunks love their entertainment. 

Maureen didn’t like any of that.  We were growing more and more apart.

I had also arranged with Dr. Hildes that my years up north would be coupled with a Community Medicine Residency with Dr. French. So I’d be studying and taking classes when I wasn’t flying up north. I’d complete two years of Community Medicine as it was.  Thanks to that I studied all the Canadian health care acts and all the laws and all the statistics and did epidemiology, public health and social policy. Id’ complete a year of anthropology of aboriginal North America too.

 In Churchill I did two clinics and saw a hundred patietns a week. There were three of us doctors there. On the reserves though Jack wanted me to be solely a consultant. He said I must never see a patient without a nurse present because my role was to teach the nurses not do their work. HE was adamant about that because they’d be there alone without me around when I flew back to the city. Some reserves would only have a doctor once a month for a few days leaving the nurses alone the rest of the time . 

Some of the nurses didn’t like that because they wanted us doctors to do the clinics letting them have more holiday time. I showed them I could see fifty people in a morning and when they accompanied me to a remote reserve I’d see a hundred or more in the hours of daylight the planes could fly in but if they didn’t want to use me as a consultant I just sat studying community medicine texts while they did the well baby stuff. Teaching is always harder and slower. I’m a good enough teacher. Not terribly patient. Maureen was a great teacher, one of the best I’d ever know, We’d been blessed to have the best of teachers. But I only really liked to teach the keen. On my own I got things done efficiently and the way I liked them done.

I ‘d be on 24 hour call 7 days a week to radio phone.  I’d get these calls in the middle of the night and advise on emergencies.  It was all very exciting. The medicine and emergency decisions and calls were all very easy by now. I’d just become very experienced in a very short time. We used to say that a year of country medicine was like 5 years of city medicine. None of my urban colleagues had even done a spinal tap. I’d done literally dozens and dozens.  I’d diagnosed TB and syphilis and all manner of rare things plus the garden variety stuff. I was the only doctors thousands of people saw for years.  It was an immense responsibility but an incredible training experience. The best part was that Jack had such a great relationship with the university that everyone I called for advise took it as an honor to be helping the Northern Medical Unit. We were world reknowned. I was personally well known and well liked. I don’t think Maureen liked that. 

Maureen was always competing with me. I found women doing this and I didn’t compete with women.  It was always a no win game for men. But I didn’t compete so much as compete against myself and increasingly clinically just want to get the job done and save a life. I was way out of the academic political scene and she was in it big time, Her family were that way and my family wasn’t. At the university hospital everyone was still comparing and competing. 

I had this high status simply because I was working with Jack HIldes and the Northern Medical Unit. I was publishing my stories across the country and was known. Maureen was being a good pediatrican and academic. I was on tv and in the public eye and she was doing what she said she wanted to do work in the hospital. I was a shining light. She was a star.  I was never ‘jealous’ of her but she would make these weird comparisons. She’d always knock what I was doing. I never put her work down. I always celebrated her achievements but she was always negating anything I did.  Constant back stabbing belittling and comparison. It was painful.  Always low key and always insinuating. 

 She was never interested in sex anymore. Claimed she was always tired. But never too tired for listening to her mothers ad infinity calls. She was always so depressed after that. The woman could have sucked the soul out of Mary. Maureen was depressed a lot with her father drinking heavily and her parents physically fighting and her mother always emotionally extorting Maureen,

I’d be between her legs for years before she’d let me mount and then she’d get upset she was ‘messy’.  Sperm was ‘messy’. And she’d not talk about having children. She even suggested adopting but ‘why adopt’.  “I’d like us to have kids”.  Her sister and her husband were Christians and family was more important. She was into feminism and always angry. Before her mother and Pediatrics she’d been this wonderfully happy wild person who loved sex. Now it was work except when we’d get away from her mother spend some time holidaying together then the marriage would come back, the chronically demanding depressed angry mother wouldn’t be there and we have love and sex and laughter. I so envied her sister and her husband getting away from the drunken angry home with all the drama. 

I loved the north. I loved being ‘necessary’. I loved ‘service’. I loved the adventure.  I’d go through the ice on a ski doo and walked 10 miles wet and frozen with polar bear stalking us and my ski doo driver saying. 

“I don’t like the look of that brute but don’t run or they’ll be on us.” 

“I cant’ run. My clothes are frozen from the water.”  He laughed at that. 

We laughed and sure were glad to get the village when the polar bears veered off and left us. I saved the life of a child there. An old man had had a stroke and I could take care of him too. It was so fulfilling to know that feeling of being ‘necessary’.  In the north it wasn’t about being the very best doctor, I was good, but it was about being there. They just needed people who cared about them. No one did. It was terrifying at time.  The drunken Indian chasing me about the emergency with an axe.  These aren’t the things that make people want to be a northern doctor. But we all cared. There was this amazing young woman doctor  who was brilliant and she just loved the ‘medicine’. “Where else can I see al the stages of tuberculosis.  I can’t work in the south. It’s too boring. Here I’m seeing everything. Here I’m right in the centre of medicine. “ She was the old 19th century doctor who loved to diagnose and treat and she was amazing. I loved working with her. After Churchill she went even further north to work with the Inuit. 

It was great times. I was early days. Lots of people would follow.  Jack Hildes opened the door. Now there’s lots going north but it was 2 years before they could get me and they had to take an Irish and an English doctor before years later they’d get more Canadians willing to go north.  

I loved it. I’d always jump to serve ‘where the greatest need was’. There’s so much fulfillment and the other people working there are there because like you they’re a bit ‘touched’.

Autumn Hunting with Gilbert

Autumn is the most colourful time of the year. The evergreens as their name implies stay green all year. The deciduous change colour, their leaves green,  gold, orange red and brown.  The leaves fall and trails become carpeted with the crinkling cracking old leaves.  It’s a cycle, a message of nature.
I left Vancouver after the Friday morning clinic.  I had to first drop my Harley Davidson Motorcycle at Trev Deely for winter storage.  They feed him oil toddies through the winter, play Doobie brothers, Third Day, Steppenwolf and Led Zeppelin in the night, have girls dressed in leather bikinis wash and shine him, then give him back to me in spring ready to ride. After that I loaded the white Ford F350 pick up truck.  I thought about brining the KLM 690 enduro but white the weather was supposed to be sunny I feared frost and snow.  Also as the hunting season progresses I tend to strip down to basics.
I only had my Ruger 30:06, Ruger 223 semi auto and over under 20 gauge.  The 223 was as much for target practice as a back up rifle. I always have a back up rifle since the gunsmith I only used once gave me my Browning 30:06 back firing when I put it on safety.  Thankfully I had tested it out in the woods before the morning hunt so didn’t shoot any of the fellows I was with. I had another rifle and that served. I did give the gunsmith a piece of my mind and didn’t go back to him again.  That was on the Island.  Reliable Guns here in Vancouver have only done praiseworthy and Reliable work.
I enjoyed the drive up with Gilbert, beating the regular traffic jam at Langley.  I had a William Johnstone Western Audio book and enjoyed the tale of good guys and bad guys, good women and fallen women. I stopped at the Villager having phoned ahead for a room. That’s the motel I had in my mind when I booked it but they had no reservation and I didn’t remember which other motel it could be. I checked out the Villager in the summer, finding it pet friendly and really well run. Fortunately they had a room.   7 pm and I  was already unloading.  The pub next door had a great burger and an extra paddy of meat for Gilbert. We watched tv in the room and enjoyed dinner before an early night.
I was up at 530 and at the A&W which opened at 6 to get my thermos of coffee, an egger and sausage sandwich and hash browns.  I’d forgotten Gilbert’s sweater, having had him groomed at Dogtopia that week. It was frosty and cold with a light wind.   I wrapped him in a blanket and carried the blind old guy with me to the side of a cut, upwind.  Sitting in ambush in the woods I watched the sun came up.  Not a sign of game.  After an hour with Gilbert shivering I decided to walk up the trail.  It really was serene and beautiful. I had Gilbert’s leash tied to my belt. He followed right along behind trusting, with that endearing high wide stepping walk he’s developed.
I read a fellow saying he didn’t like the term ‘hiking’ for his time in the woods preferring  ‘saunter’ as it was more sacred word. I wasn’t ‘stalking’ .  That required more effort, a kind of tai chi stopping and starting slow motion movement in the woods.   I wasn’t hiking either.    Slowly sauntering, seemed to describe it. I was stopping for Gilbert to maneuver any obstacles as we moved through the forest. It was a lovely time. The colours so divine, the scents of earth and forest so rich.  I was warming up too so I  stripped off an over coat leaving it hanging on a tree for  pick up on the way back.  I’d seen a grouse but didn’t shoot it for fear of frightening other bigger game.
Later in the day I saw another grouse. I stopped the truck then, reached for the 20 gauge shot gun,  stepping out of the truck  and loaded the gun as I went.  Just as I was raising it to my shoulder the bird flew off leaving me only a tail on shot, least likely to succeed, especially at that distance. I then let Gilbert out. He was so excited.  Despite his blindness he ranged out through the underbrush and woods sniffing up a storm and trying to find another bird to raise.  That’s been our pattern. Usually I shoot the one I see then he raises several more.  Today there was only that one but I was so moved by the intrepid little fellow plowing blindly through the bush in search of game..
No more birds and no big game. I shot some targets.  It was so warm in the afternoon I was able to go shirtless.  I’d taken Gilbert for a walk using the clicker that my nephew Graeme gave me for the blind dog. Gilbert responded well to the clicker and following behind me and whenever he got off track, listening for the clicks and correcting his course.  It was a long grassy trail through a pasture.
 Eventually we headed back into town.   I was able to find Gilbert a black and red sweater coat hoodie at Everything Pets. I had a delicious meat pie at Thomasinas where the delightful owner is running for Council.   I stopped by at the hunting store for more targets and couldn’t resist buying a little knife made locally.  I hardly had time for a half hour nap  before it was time to head back out for the night hunt.
It was 5 pm.  Aunset is about 630 pm. Hunting is over about a half hour after official sunset because of darkness.  All the hunting spots around Princeton are about 20 minutes drive.  I was loving my Cabelas lined moccasins but made the effort to put my Romanian hiking books back on. Night hunts are more serious affairs.  Still bending and lacing boots gets harder every year.
I drove around the woods passing a regular convention of other hunters doing just the same thing. We’d wave at each other, sometimes stop and chat. No one was seeing any bucks. Lots of doe but no bucks.  With the bright moon and the sunny hot days the bucks tend to stay up high and not come out till after dark. The views were wonderful though. I loved the dusk with the moon coming up and the sun setting.  I saw a couple of really fast rabbits at end of light disappearing a second after their shy appearance.
Back at the motel my neighbour had a buck in the back of his truck. A handsome young man with beautiful blond wife and what looked like a younger brother. All us old guys had been talking about there being no bucks. Here was evidence to the contrary.  A dedicated hunter who was going to feed his family in style that winter.  There were a half dozen does on the lawns in the town too, spies, taking note of the hunters and their trucks to pass on the information to their male colleagues. So much for old guys saying they’re not catching fish or shooting game because of Climate Change:)
Next morning I planned to head back to the city on the  back woods logging roads as opposed to the highway.  I packed everything in the truck and checked the room one last time before driving to A&W to fill my Thermos and get another egger and sausage and hash browns to go. I finished the Johnstone audio book and now had begun a Bill Brooks Audio Western.   I iistened as  I drove on the highway to the logging road.  That’s when the hunt began and I had to turn off the gunfighting and give my undivided attention to looking for game and avoiding driving over a cliff.  The sun was beautiful coming over the mountains.   At the top I was surprised by two does crossing the road. I was out of the truck loading the rifle in case a buck was falling. No such luck.
Then a bear crossed the road running full out down hill.  Another black bear going the same speed crossed the road going up hill. Neither left the woods and bush except to cross the road and by their speed I guessed that someone had already shot at them this season.  I expect they were ‘prejudiced’  against us and objected to sound of the truck.  They would need to have some sensitivity training before either would embrace ‘diversity’ after this season’s experience with the strangers in their midst.
Another lovely autumn morning.  When I finally come out on the freeway I enjoyed the ride home with the audio book and a thermos of coffee .  I was back before noon.  As yet no big game for the butcher or freezer.  But definitely Gilbert and I had a good hunting weekend in the autumn woods.

Sunday at Beaverdam, Clinton

I hunted with the Torino electric bicycle in the morning. Great machine. Wonderful quiet time cycling with power assist.

Getting back to the Palomino Maverick camper I was having another coffee with Laura when a doe walked by the camper.  No doubt a spy for her buck friends.  

I made up steak and eggs with toast and we had a feast.  Gilbert had so many bits from both Laura and I that he had to lay down and sleep after his meal. I ran the Honda 2000 generator charging the Camper battery, the electric bicycle battery, our iPhones and my iPad.  I then added  5 gallons of water from the blue jug  to the camper.  

After all that activity we had a Sunday afternoon nap.  

5pm I loaded up the KTM 690 and took my Winchester Model 70 Coyote Light 300 win mag short rifle.  I petted Gilbert who doesn’t seem too disturbed to be left behind. I’d let him walk about the fields with me in the after noon which he’d done blind. He’s such a brave little boy. I think being blind and walking about, even following me, is pretty challenging.  He’s glad to stay at home and protect Laura.  He may be blind but he can bark and bite if need be. He loves Laura so much and wouldn’t let anyone hurt her. 

I love the KTM 690 for it’s willingness to putt along at a perfect hunting speed 15 to 20 km/hr.  I stop every now and then to scan with my binoculars.   On the relatively smooth rock and gravel roads going slow I could still scan the forest and fields around me.  I was looking for bear.  Black bear rifle hunting season opens Sept 1 while only bow hunting for deer opens that early.  Rifle for deer opens on Sept. 10.  I like the bow hunting weekend mostly because the weather each year has been so grand.  It’s also a time to get all the systems checked out and be ready for the usually more productive rifle season.  It’s been quite a few years since I shot a deer with a bow but I truly love this first bow hunting weekend.  

Grouse season does’t open till the 10th but in the past I’ve shot grouse with my bow.  With the number of arrows I’ve lost missing each grouse I shot cost $20 or more a bird.  Ptarmigan is open now but it’s a Wiley bird and I’ve never got close enough to shoot one with the bow. I’ve shot them with my 22 long rifle in the past but they really are a lot smarter than the grouse.

I love the smell of birch, pine and hemlock as I ride along.  Lots of cows in the field. No bear.  I did see a herd of horses too.  They’re lovely in the field by themselves, ranging wild.  I did see a dog moving the cattle. I thought it might be a wolf at first but looked at it in the binoculars and saw that it was actually working the cow herd.  

I rode up Dog Creek road, RR6 noticing that a fellow has a lovely cabin to rent out there.  Bill Mewhort and I had stayed in the Circle H Ranch nearly 25 years ago when we first came up.  There’s a famous dude ranch in the valley but more and more there are  these rental cabins, a bit like country Air BnB.  

I’d  not been this way in a long time but loved the terrain and all the little water ways and marsh ponds.  I remembered coming up here with  Tom one time and having a flock of ptarmigan make fools of us as we tried to sneak up on them from several different ways but each time they flew off a little ways when we were still out of gun range.

It was chilly and overcast and a little sprinkle began. I was wearing my jean jacket with a flannel shirt but stopped to put on the fleece I brought back from my IDAA conference in Reno this summer.  Cozy, and I figured good luck too. We say good luck is God acting anonymously.  

When the rain began in earnest I left off hunting and began to hurry back. I was going at 65 km/hour on the country road when I hit some loose gravel and had to keep the motorcycle on the road swerving back and forth while easing on the back brake. After that and imagining lying in the ditch with a busted pelvis trying to reach my iPhone to call Laura to get an ambulance, I kept below 50 which is a safer speed for motorcycles on the logging mains and country roads. I didn’t realize how far I’d gone and was getting colder by the km as the temperature dropped and the rain continued.  There’s nothing like being chilled on a motorcycle.  

I sure was happy to find our camp though getting off the motorcycle I was cold and stiff.  In the camper I cranked on the furnace while Laura told me about the herd of cows that had come over and walked around the camper and picnic table.  She figured they were wondering if they knew who’d we’d barbecued. 

A cup of tea with honey helped but what was magnificent was the Stag chilli Laura made up.  Now that really hit the spot.  The perfect ending for a perfect day. Now we’ve been reading with a candle burning.  I’m reading Judd’s Journey, an excellent western.  Laura is reading a Vanity Fair magazine.  Gilbert is already asleep in his bed.  

Bed sure will be welcome tonight. Bed Glorious Bed. I love my bed.  What a great day in the country. Thank you Jesus. Amen.

Opening Rifle Hunting Season, Pemberton, BC and Bear Scare.

The wildfires have really affected this year’s hunting season. All the areas where I normally liked to hunt these days were closed to ATV’s.  Pemberton had a ‘senior hunter’ tease saying we could hunt doe but as it turned out in the fine print only on a postage stamp owned by the local government officials. Still I could save my new truck and use my Honda Pioneer 500 ATV in the Coastal Hunting region.
I wanted to camp one last time while the weather was still good. I had this Napier truck tent which we’d used in the spring.
The trouble is the rains we all wanted arrived Friday.  I just couldn’t bring myself after clinic to load the truck in the downpour.  I had so much organizing to do with the recent move too so Laura, Gilbert and I planned to leave first thing Saturday morning. Friday turned out to be a marvellous day of rest with bits of tidying and a whole lot of cozy cough reading.  We also watched the incredibly fun Robin Williams “RV” movie on DVD. When the rains let up we walked Gilbert meeting up with Dave and Emory doing the same rounds.  Great night of soft cozy king size bed with room for Laura and Gilbert.
Morning came. More rain.  I made coffee and enjoyed my new built in radiant fire heater.  The idea from yesterday had been to leave early so we wouldn’t be setting up in the dark and wet.  As the day progressed with more rain and more cozy book reading I felt increasingly guilty about not making Recovery Day in New Westminster. I was following it on Facebook but also packing for hunting and not really wanting to go outside or see anyone because I was on vacation. Vacation for me is getting away from work and people and even friends.  I tolerate Laura and the dog.  I just loved being on the couch reading.  I always think others get to do this but I never get enough of it.  So many I know are retired so ‘time’ is their’s.   Laura and I are constantly on the clock at the beck and call of beurocrats, colleagues, patients, lawyers, taxmen and countless ‘officious’ and increasingly angry people.  It was so sweet to be in the safety of my oh so comfortable and enjoyable home.  Why not stay home?
It was still too ugly outside to hunt, though of course when it’s ugly and raining is when the game are moving about and the fish are biting.  I loved another night in my own comfortable bed with Laura and Gilbert.
Sunday, we loaded the truck. It was thinking about Gilbert and that tipped the scale. Hunting is a dog’s dream.  He’s free to run and pee and poop anywhere. There’s so much to sniff. He’s with his favourite pack. And we’re doing a dog thing.  Hunting.
Having stopped at the gun storage locker I was armed but then all that was needed was the ATV.
Well that was a surprise. When I drove up on the ramp the ramp simply exploded out from under me leaving the rear wheels hanging. I’d done nothing different than I had a hundred times before. While others often don’t attach their ramps I had mine tied below to the chain hooks.  In future I am anchoring the ramps above and below with two straps.  If I’d been in the woods I’d have just backed the truck to a hill and drove the ATV off but in Vancouver I called BCAA.  BCAA is truly one of the greatest organizations in the world. I love their roadside assistance.
“I’m just learning to use the lift. This is great,” the young man said when he arrived and saw my dilemma. The older more senior guy guided the young one in the delicate lifting of the back end of my ATV till it was free with not damage to tailgate. I drove the ATV forward the rest of the way into the box, thanking the BCAA guys profusely.
I’d already loaded the camping gear before loading ATV Charles so with Charles tied down we headed north.
Squamish is our now favourite stop with the Canadian Tire, Starbucks, Escape North, Independent Grocers, Burger King all in one place with several gas stations to choose from.  Outfitted with dog food, and more mosquito repellant from from Canadian Tire, a new outdoor camping dress from Escape North for Laura, ground espresso coffee and Americano for me, and a thermos full of groceries and Whopper burgers for us all we headed north.   It was a beautiful day to be driving up the Sea to Sky Highway.  Lovely views of snow capped mountains and deep blue ocean. Traffic was better too, it being Sunday.
At Pemberton we filled up one last time with fuel. I believe in going backwoods with my fuel tanks full.  One never knows.  Then a final quick stop at Spud Valley Hunting and Sports Store right in town where the brothers supply all the very best in back country camping fishing and hunting gear.  I just needed more 20 gauge grouse load having remembered the shot gun but forgot to bring the box with ammo. I had my stainless steel Ruger break down 22 long rifle, Ruger Mini 14 .223 caliber back up deer gun and my all time favourite, Ruger Stainless Steel 30:06 rifle, “Sexcaliber”.
When I’m on the ATV I just have a grouse gun and the main big game hunting rifle. I love my 30;06 which I load with the 180 grain Federal Nosler Partition bullet. My old friend Bill Mewhort introduced me to the Nosler partition.  With the 180 grain it’s a good load for deer, moose, elk and bear.  I’ve shot 30:06 in 150 to 220 grain loads but have settled in the 180 grain because it’s sufficiently powerful enough for bear which can always interrupt a hunt but good for all other game as well. I don’t have to change the sites which I would have to do if I was changing the loads from 180.  Whenever I think of powerful calibers and the bigger and better rifles I remember the story of grandad shooting a bear up close in the head with a 22 LR.
I love Pemberton. It’s a great little town I’ve been coming to for 30 year.  I remember staying in the horrid little old rooms in the Pemberton Hote. The bar back then  was just full of drunks like something out of a cowboy dime novel. It’s always been a farming and  rodeo town and a railway town.  It remains those. The last decade though has seen it make the transformation to tourist town.  Now it’s the ultimate  hiking, white water canoeing, cyclist,  river and lake fishing, destination. It’s always full of beautiful young people dressed in the latest outdoor gear.  Duffy Lake Road since being paved is one of the great motorcycle routes.  Then there are hunters like me.  The valley still produces the potatoes the remain the best on the planet, outside of Ireland.  Hence the name Spud Valley.
It was another half hour of driving on a main logging road gravel with hardly a pot hole, to get to the wilderness campsite. I remembered picnic tables but there weren’t any, just one outhouse and a dozen or more sites by the river, but a ways back, because of flooding concerns.  With all the inland hunting closures I’d worried that this campsite would be full but when we arrived there was only a couple of  other hunters with a couple of ATV’s.  I’d come across a half dozen other hunters at another site the next day but really the place was empty compared to other times I’ve been there. Pemberton has always been a late season hunt because at this time of the year only the local resident deer population are bout. When the snow comes hundreds more deer migrate through. The heat this year and the flies have pushed the deer high up by the glaciers.  In the past I've climbed the mountains up to the glaciers.  Also I’ve horseback hunted  high up there all years ago.
I’m the lowest of hunters now. A road hunter. It’s not because I can’t climb. I’m not as sure footed and really do worry about twisting an ankle or breaking a leg these days.  I don’t have the balance for leaping from rock to rock and have learned this by painful falls. That’s humbling.  I used to run up and down mountainsides and carry deer out of the woods on my back.  I’ve carried  quarters of moose out of the woods a mile or so on my back.  I now have to hunt close to road only so I can get the game out. Ever since I quartered that last elk I shot early morning and had to spend all day hauling the thousand pounds up out of the valley, I’ve been very much aware that I’m not the world class athlete I once was. That dead elk almost killed me. It doesn’t help that I’m more a desk jockey these days and love my couch, Netflix and Hagen daz ice cream.
“The sign said there were grizzly bears,” Laura said as we drove along.
“Mostly black bear, grizzly bear are rare.”  I said, having learned from past experience that Laura’s not a big fan of bears.
“The sign said the bears are ‘aggressive’. “ she continued.
“That’s only because vegetarians have been feeding them.It’s only by the hot springs.” I countered. ‘They shouldn’t let vegetarians out in the wilderness because they don’t know how to behave around wild animals.” I joked.
She wasn’t looking happy.
She wasn’t happy either when there was only one other site at the campground with a couple of hunters.
“I’m scared of bears,” she said.  I didn’t think it needed repeating.
“That’s why I have the truck tent. “  I said.
“ On Facebook, I saw where a grizzly bear went through the side of an RV and where bears broke into a truck.” she said. “Catherine and her husband don’t tent anymore in the north because of bears.”
“That’s because people left open food in their camp or their vehicle.  They shouldn’t let people like that out in the woods. Around here there are only black bear. The grizzly bear are further north. I’ve got a whole lot of fire power and a bear tag as well. If a bear comes to the camp I’ll shoot it. It will save me hunting for it.  Besides bears hate dogs and Gilbert’s a vicious bear dog. You should have seen him chase the big bear we came across last year. ” I told her. The truth is I’d seen grizzly about a few miles north of here up by the hot springs.  I’d only seen black bear scat in the region. I’d expected other hunters around or I”d not have planned on this place. I leave Laura alone when I go off hunting and like to know she has others to call on if she needed help.
Having campers around is a mixed blessing. Vegetarians and other city folk who aren’t aware of animals or their behaviour are a real hazard in the country where their stupid behaviours  attract animal violence.  They don’t know carnivores from herbivores.   Undersocialized and  being leftists they ‘blame’ the animals which then get the animals killed by forest rangers. Then because these immature adults can’t take care of themselves we get all manner of funding for more and more police to protect them from the wilderness.  It’s never their fault or their behaviour that needs to change.  The next thing we’re not only living in a police state without freedom in the city but the wilderness is full of police to protect campers from the wilderness.   I loved when Sarah Palin said ‘We consider it child abuse to take children camping in Alaska without a gun.’  The fact is that animals are almost always scared of humans and almost always run from loud noises, except those bears that have been fantasized as potential lovers by Canadian feminists. Canadian feminists having regulated all  real men to the point of castration then write novels about sex with bears.  These folk ruin the outdoors as much as the young people who bring the ghetto blasters and drugs and turn bits of God’s country into the DTES.
I don’t want to shoot a grizzly.  I don’t have a tag. As my friend Dianne says, “No one is concerned about an endangered reptile and snake , but they sure get excited about creatures that have furry cute babies.” I’m just out hunting in hope of shooting a deer so I can add to the barbecue and  eat venison stew through the cold winter. I like my own cooking and I love coming home to frozen stews and curries I just need to microwave for a nutritious meal at the end of a long hard day of work.
I also like camping, the outdoors, that my dog can run free in wilderness campgrounds. I love my truck. I love quadding. I love shooting.  This weekend I shot a lovely three shot pattern with a bull’s eye with Sexcaliber, my Ruger 30:06.  I didn’t need to shoot more. Last weekend I’d shot off a whole lot of cheaper 22 LR rounds and .223 target practicing.  This weekend Laura did some target practicing with the 22 Rifle.
At the campsite I unloaded the Honda Pioneer Side by Side  with some trepidation hoping the extra tie down strap would stabilize the ramp.  Backing up is always scarier than riding up onto the truck.  Laura is helpful as a second set of eyes.
Once ATV Charles was off the truck I could settle into setting up the Napier truck tent. I was a little concerned as I’d only done it a couple of times in the spring and found I’d lost the instructions.  There was some colour coding to the poles so it really wasn’t that difficult.  In no time I had it up and only had trouble getting the fly over the top which I did with the help of the broom. It was evening by the time we had the tent up and Cabelas air mattresses and MEC Sleeping bags in. There’d been a moment of drizzle but it let up. I considered going out on an evening hunt but thought Laura would appreciate the company since it was rather ominous.  Increasingly I don’t like evening hunts which have never been as productive as morning hunts.I really don’t like gutting and cleaning game by flashlight, especially if I’m in grizzly bear country.  When I’ve had to it’s been a race against time with a flashlight in my mouth, ears open and a loaded rifle close at hand. I’ve loved having my dog with me when I’ve shot game in the evening.
So instead I got the Coleman stove set up and boiled some white potatoes with the water I’d brought in in the 5 gallon blue container.  We have got into using paper plates on the the aluminum camp plates to reduce clean up.  I fried up pork chops I’d had in the cooler with ice in it.  Virgin olive oil works wonders for cooking.  I’d brought the Honda 2000 generator and had a safety lamp hung from a tree on a screw driver to use as hook. I’d pounded it into the tree with my hatchet to use as a hook. I’d have preferred a nail if I had one.   A lovely halo of light and happy sound of the generator in the background kept Grizzly Bear thoughts  away.  While Laura had been sitting in the Orange Canadian tire lawn chairs worrying about bears Gilbert and I had systematically been marking our territory around the outskirts of the camp.  Men do that.
“Why wouldn’t the other hunters come this weekend? Do you think the Grizzly Bears are that bad that they’d scare away the hunters?” she asked as we were enjoying pork chops and potatoes with butter and little fat cherry tomatoes.
“No. I thought there’d be a lot of hunters but it was on Vancouver Island that opening season was the biggest event. Here hunters come out later because the animals are up so high. I don’t think hunters are bothered by grizzly bear.” I said that. It’s a fact, thought, thata lot of hunters don’t like hunting where grizzly bear are common. It’s an unspoken reason why most moose hunts are done as a group, not just because of the size of the game but because there’s comfort in numbers, moose and grizzly sharing the same habitat.  Most hunters aren’t bothered by black bear who many hunt. One fellow I love hunts them annually with bow and arrow but I doubt he’d take on a grizzly so willingly.  He uses a tree stand and wounded grizzly have been known to tear out  trees and  maul the hunter in revenge.  Personally I’d hunt cows if farmers would let me.  Though I’ve shot charging bear and charging moose and been stalked by a wolf pack it’s never been my plan. I’m a comfortable hunter especially as I get older. The fact is, I was glad that Laura was with me and I was saved from the evening hunt.  We were in bed early then, all the garbage and food inside the truck.
I’d bought Laura a new bear banger, showed her how to use it and made sure Gilbert went with her when she made the short trek to the outhouse in the dark.
My principle animal deterrent now is the truck key fob which allows me from bed to flash lights and make loud honking sounds. I sleep with a rifle at my side but no ammunition in the barrel and a hatchet and a knife. I’ve punched a bear in the nose that was trying to get in my tent years past but really prefer not to have company other than Laura and Gilbert. Gilbert is a major source of alarm.  Little dogs are the best alarms even if they do disrupt the sleep, overreacting to squirrels and raccoons and such. The beauty of the tent is it’s high off the ground, and you can stand up in it and it’s dry.  Getting up in the night though to pee is a challenge. I had to lift Gilbert up and down. I couldn’t find my leather mocassins.  So barefoot I’m out with Gilbert enjoying the night. Alone and naked out for a pee,, I’ve often enjoyed the night and moonlight and actually danced.  Not this night.   The sky was cloudy. Great air and sounds and yet, I couldn’t help but consider I didn’t have a key fob, a knife or a rifle and here I was in t shirt and shorts some ways from ‘home’, i.e. the safety of my truck.  Man’s advantage in nature is ‘tools’.  I was glad to get back into the tent with Gilbert and lie down in my Dako sleeping bag beside the beautiful blond.
In the morning the chimes of my iPhone alarm went off at 6 am.  I ignored them and buried the phone hearing the next campers heading out in their ATV’s.  I got up a half hour or so later early dawn, the light just coming up.  I hadn’t slept well. I’m not comfortable on air mattresses. I miss my bed.  I’d been worried about bears.  I had felt the responsibility of Laura and Gilbert upon me. Now I wasn’t keen to leave Laura in the dark.  So I made coffee. I love coffee, especially, Starbuck’s Expresso made in stovetop expresso machine over a Coleman Stove.  I made a press coffee too for the thermos.  Laura got up and joined me as the sun’s light was coming over the top of the snow capped mountain in front of us.  Part of the problem was Fen Shui. I’d allowed my head to face south rather than north.  So now we were aligned right watching the sun come up sitting in lawn chairs in God’s country.
“This is the grizzly bear’s home. We’re only visitor’s”  Laura said,  sipping her coffee with cream and honey.  I had had bacon sliced up at the butcher and was now cooking this up in the frying pan.. The smell was exquisite.  In my mind, I heard the Eagles singing, “sun’s coming up and I’m riding with lady luck’.  Laura really liked the bacon sandwiches on the fresh bakery grain bread.  It was a glorious morning.  Gilbert doesn’t like pork or bacon so just like last night I got him some of the sliced roast beef I had for sandwiches later to day.  He really likes sliced roast beef.  We were all happy campers then.
I loaded the gear on ATV Charles. I’d forgotten the grab bag I usually had for knives and shells so made do with pockets on the ATV and in my clothes.
I left Laura with the bear banger and Ruger 22 LR Rifle. She has a her firearms permit and has been deadly accurate with the 22 rifle.  “Remember my grand father killed a bear with a 22 rifle.”  I said.
“I’m not leaving the truck till you get back.” she said. She had her magazines and a truck full of treats and really, where else in the world is more luxurious than the cowboy cadillac 2017 Ford F350 Lariat edition Truck.  I knew she’d be safe and set out with Gilbert as my side kick.  He stands or sits in the passenger seat taking his duty as a hunting dog very seriously.
We headed up the rocky back woods trails and then along the hydro trails.  Finally I drove 10 km further to the main that heads through the mountains.  This was where two large groups of a half dozen hunters each were located. Normally seeing other hunters isn’t a positive experience for me but seeing these guys tenting was reassuring. There really were very few of us in this huge region though so perhaps it was all the wild fires and the ban through out the province on open fires and various other regulations as a consequence of the wild fires and the hot weather that had put other hunters off.
“It’s too hot to hunter this early this year. I’m waiting till later,” Rick had told me back in the city. They hunt from a cabin up north which the fires almost destroyed.
I did enjoy the quadding. I hoped mostly to see a grouse for Gilbert. I had the 20 gauge shotgun and was ready to make his day. Gilbert stands up beside me and me watches everything on the road ahead with his one remaining eye.  We got up really high, to the very end of where the loggers had gone. Everywhere there was old black bear scat.  One area there was some new day old stuff but only one area high up where old deer droppings were too. I met another young hunter with is very excited chocolate lab.
“My dog flushed a deer and a couple of grouse back in there. I didn’t have a 22 with me.” he said. The dog climbing out of the passenger window to looked over the roof at Gilbert who was sitting upright beside me.  Gilbert looked like  a general waiting for his driver to finishing conversing so we could get back to the hunt.  This was dog world.  Gilbert was in heaven.
“I’ve got a 20 gauge shot gun along just for grouse. In fact, the truth be known I’m grouse hunting for the dog and have the rifle along for bear and deer only if I’m forced to shoot them.”  we laughed and he headed up hill to the area where I’d chosen not to explore further. I headed down hill taking the branch roads and exploring each. This was great country for hunting especially on a quad and many places one could ambush deer going up or down at dawn or dusk. Yet nothing was here.
It was afternoon by the time I got down off the mountain meeting a off road motorcyclist on a big Triumph Tiger. I loved the way he was outfitted. He had a shot gun along and was looking for grouse, out on a day trip from Vancouver.
“I have to work tomorrow or I’d stay. Are there any grouse around here?” he asked.
“I’ve not seen any but I just talked to a guy who flushed a couple with his dog. I’ve not been up here a couple of years but it used to be great grouse country. Last weekend bow hunting  by Duffly Lake I saw a few ptarmigan but missed them with the bow. Nice rig you have.I’ve a Harley but I don’t take it off road. I used to take a Honda 250 backwoods before I got the Pioneer.   Have you read Ted Simon’s travel’s around the world on his Tiger 500? It's an incredible read. “
“No I’ve not but it’s now on my list. Thanks."
A typical back roads brief encounter.  Most hunters are friendly but only socialize at camp.
Gilbert was happy to be back on the road. He’s a serious hunter.  What he didn’t know was I was just heading home.  He actually might have known that too since he just loves Laura and loves getting back to camp to protect her.
Laura was in the truck unmauled when we got back to camp.
“Didn’t see a thing.  Only old black bear scat high up. Nothing fresh. No grizzly sign.  Animals all must be high up. Not even one grouse for Gilbert.”
“Ah, poor Gilbert, “ she said.
I’d drunk the thermos coffee at the top of the mountain where the logging road ended and eaten a chocolate bar but had been thinking about the roast beef after that.
I made up a couple of roast beef sandwiches with mustard and shared a few slices with Gilbert. He doesn’t like the bread or mustard, prefers his roast beef straight up.
Laura and  I sat looking at the river and mountainside.
“The hunters left.  I felt safe when they came back and were packing up. I sat out here and enjoyed the camp but when they left I got in the truck again.”
“I saw them passing on the road leaving.”I told her.
“You know I don’t feel like there’s any deer here. I could shoot a bear but I’m not particularly interested in bear. There don’t seem to be a lot of grouse and frankly I don’t like the dust and dirt and could just pack up and head back. We’re be hunting again Thanksgiving from a motel or resort.  It’s a really dirty dusty dry year even with the recent rain.   I’ve come to like showering or having a swim after hunting.  Gilbert’s had a great time but if you don’t mind I could go back to town and enjoy being in the trailer.'
“I don’t mind at all,” she said, trying to conceal her enthusiasm.
“I really didn’t mind leaving you with other hunters around but I don’t like the idea of going out and leaving you alone in grizzly bear territory. I didn’t tell you before, but I’ve seen grizzly bear just miles north of here when I used to to go up to the hot springs."
“I’d stay.I’m okay in the truck but  I didn’t sleep last night.” she shared.
“It’s settled then.  If I thought there was more chance of seeing game, maybe. I also missed the campfires at night.  Especially in bear country.  I felt safe in the truck tent but don’t like leaving you this far out in the wilderness. Alone I feel safe tenting with Gilbert but worry about you.   If we were back where the other campers were or the guys next door had stayed maybe, but as it is, I’m game for going home.”
Laura didn’t put up a whole lot of resistance to that idea, despite being a regular trooper.
So we packed up.
The tent came down, the gear was loaded. I put out the ramps with double straps and gingerly loaded the ATV. Then everything was tied down, one last check, then we headed back. It was a short drive back to the main road. I felt good returning early.  Having moved with lots of disorganization still I looked forward to a day of puttering.  I also needed to take the truck in to get the plastic gate cover reattached. The truck was due for a check up too and I had to get Burnaby Hitch to install a fifth wheel hitch as well.

The irony was that driving out of the campground we actually saw a 2 year old black bear on the road. Later driving out of Pemberton I saw another young black bear in the ditch.
It was a great drive down the Sea to Sky with beautiful views.  I was thankful the storage lockers were open. Their offices closed but the lockers were there to allow me to unload all the gear and leave the ATV.  Back home we unloaded the food and cooler and dirty dusty clothes.
Then I was in the shower.  I love the shower. It was glorious. Thank you God for hot water soap and  showers.
When I was finished my quick shower Laura moved in for a lifetime of luxurious bathing.   I made us chicken noodle soup and we sat on the couch reading that evening. I fed Gilbert tidbits of left over roast beef.   He was up on the couch between as happy to be home as we were.  It was another great hunt concluded.
I was rather glad to not have to shoot a grizzly bear mauling my girlfriend and risk hitting Gilbert because you know he’d attack anything that threatened Laura.











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