Up in Ontario

Thanksgiving Chum

Here's the weekend summary: the fishing was fine, the weather was lousy, the people were great.

We spent this past Thankgiving weekend on Vancouver Island. On Friday, I walked out of the office at 3:30. Past the surprised looks of co-workers I carried the cases of my fly rods. The ferries ran late and the Duck and I arrived around 8pm in Victoria. We joined my brother, his roommate John Klassen, and my Dad at their local just as they had finished up their meals, right before the serious drinking was set to begin. In a new town at 21 years old, the twinkle in John's eye was not for the scenery. Good times were at hand.

We set off at the crack of nine the next morning for Campbell River, me, the Duck, my Dad and my brother. My Dad ordered a double-double at the Starbucks and I finessed the translation to the barista. We arrived at the Haig-Brown House by late afternoon, having taken the seaside route from Courtney-Comox, past the sweep of breakers rolling over the water, crashing on the rocks and exhausting themselves up on the gravel beaches. All along our route the weather was a presence. The sun became a dim remembrance of summers past. A simple trip from car to shop or house to car became a duck and dash, everyone bundled against the rain and the wind. Brave walkers out with their dogs held their hands to the hoods of their jackets to see straight. Gusts of wind caused trucks to sway and swerve in their lanes, clumps of leaves littered the road along the coastline.

One interesting thing we noticed was that there were pumpkins everywhere: piles of pumpkins and stands of pumpkins and fields of pumpkins flanked the highway at almost every town. The bright orange orbs littered the fields and farmers' markets like scattered lanterns. Surely even Charlie Brown could have found his great pumpkin among these multitudes.

When we arrived at the Haig-Brown House, Mary Lapierre sat silhoutted in the lit kitchen window. With her was a pretty friend, whose name I don't recall, but who my brother immediately took noticed, as a bird dog catches a scent, and engaged in conversation. I can say with certainty that he remembers her name.

Mary showed us where to place our wet shoes and led us to our rooms. After making arrangements for the evening, we split up. The Duck went exploring the town while by brother and my Dad and I made our fishing arrangements. I had the only pair of waders amongst us and didn't want to get into them for the one hour of light left of the day. So we walked along the shore of the Campbell and watched coho spawning in the side channels. I piggybacked my brother across the flooded sections of the trail, since my boots remained waterproof. Grouse lit from the path along Kingfisher Creek and black-tailed deer tracks crisscrossed the trail. We visited the River Sportman outdoors shop and bought the appropriate licenses and tags. We asked about guides and picked some promising business cards from the rack. After a few calls, I made arrangements to meet up with a fishing guide named Ray the next morning on Dock D, Finger 19 of the Campbell River main docks. I took detailed notes on how to locate the place.

By the time we set out for Dock D, Finger 19 the next morning, our party of three had become a party of four. The Duck hated to be left out of anything. Ray was the only person on the docks and his boat was the only one running. The light had just begun to reveal the day in all its greyness. We gassed up Ray's boat, the Duck bought a license, and we set out through the curtain of rain for Plumper Bay.

Over the next 4 hours, we hooked 3 chum and landed 2 of them, a 9 pounder and a 16. At one point, my Dad, impatient with the slowness of the bite, wished aloud for some action. "I could stand a little chaos," he said. The next fish hooked on our lines was my Dad's and he seized the dancing rod from the holder, setting the hook with a full-bodied heave and reeling with vigour. The fish came in fairly easily until it saw the boat. Then it flashed its silver side at us and made a powerful run at the surface, fouling the line in our downriggers. By the time Ray had unravelled the line the fish had thrown the hook. A boat beside us also fouled a fish in our downriggers, though they managed to somehow keep the fish on their line and land it after an elaborate process of untangling and maneuvering. Gale-force winds and driving rain continued at intermittent cycles. We looked up and the clouds were racing past right above our heads.

We arrived back on shore around 2pm and had to be back to Victoria for Thanksgiving dinner that evening. We also had to cook Thanksgiving dinner back in Victoria that evening. A 15-pound turkey waited in the fridge. The math didn't work for us unless we planned on eating at midnight. We called ahead and spoke to John; John, who had just moved out from his mother's house and who ate cereal for dinner so he didn't have to cook. I explained how to cook a turkey to him and could hear the scratching of a pencil in the background as he copied down everything. We reassured John that this was a big step forward for him, that women would be very impressed. We called my stepmother Linda in as reinforcements. She was on her way back to meet us in Victoria from a visit to Port Angeles, Washington. She was still on the ferry when we called and left our plaintive message. We needed help to pull it off and we needed her to calm John. We grabbed some food for the car and rallied back to Victoria as quick as we could.

In the end the meal turned out wonderfully. We arrived to find Linda into a second bottle of wine. She kept telling John about her wonderful niece Becky who just couldn't find any decent guys in Winnipeg. She showed John pictures she had with her. He was a nice boy; why didn't he and Becky get together? John had not used soap to clean out the turkey, as the we feared he might. The stuffing was StoveTop, and the pies were from Safeway, and we didn't eat until 8pm, but by then everyone was so hungry we could have eaten anything. Linda had bought a can of pressurized whip cream and Scott went around the table and gave any who wanted one a hit of it straight in the mouth. All six of us slept in Scott and John's two-bedroom apartment that night with the windows open to cool the place off and the sound of the rain hitting the leaves outside.