One of the net repair floats was located near a huge floating out door bath room , with logs and old loose planks near its edges , you could not miss it ! it had low ars level railings all around it and some joker put “Mens and Womens Only” at each of the ends ! On the big flood tides the Inlet current ran through the marine pit toilet and cleaned every thing out !

The ravens were always watching for some one to leave his net and also leave behind his open net repair box unattended ! They would immediately swoop down and steal the net repair needles and balls of twine and fly off to their nest ! We kind of fooled the Raiding Ravens , we had a wooden ladder up to the nest and brought all our gear back and they took it from us again, it was a game that we all learned to play!

The cannery had notice boards that gave fisher people news from the big city to the south and lots of warnings about falling in to the monster outdoor toilet, especially after a night of drinking and card playing at the camp managers house ! The Rivers Inlet Sockeye over time kind of got fished to death and canneries like Good Hope , Goose Bay Wadhams and many others, closed and the old cannery places were left for the ravens to look after by themselves again !

The Wadhams fishermens notice boards and the glory hole toilet gave in to the tides and new returning forests ! The little white camp managers house crumbled down to the forest floor and behind one wall was a old glass covered notice board with the beginnings of a song written on it ! It went like this :

Now some of us think of the future
While others have things to forget
But most of us sit here and think of a school of sockeye salmon , just hitting and splashing in our net .

Terry” A Story From Rivers Inlet B. C. “

2011-2012 Board of Directors

He came most mornings in the cold weather, as soon as it broke light and we had to have the feeder out, before our dog went out. As soon as the day time weather warmed enough for insects, including spiders, to be active, he was busy hunting for them ! Our grand-son asked ” where does he sleep at night grandpa? well thank goodness for old Dunbar houses that leak heat from under the eaves , outside of one of those secret houses, yes under the eaves, that where he finds the best place to sleep the night away ! By about 6.00 P. M. the little bird, snuggled under the eves, slips into a Torpor , “a strange death like sleep that lasts all night long” until he is awakened by the first rays of morning light ! All his energy has now slipped away, gone by his deep sleep and now he has to rush to the nearest feeder, that hopefully is not frozen, to renew his energy, with long drinks of early morning sugar water ! He must also find protein and that is the spiders that are still found alive under the eves of numerous old heat leaking houses !

He stayed all winter and then disappeared in the spring and summer of 2011 , well we all thought he has just got fed up with a Vancouver Winter and like the old Maizy, Lazy Bird in the children’s story book , he must have just headed back down south to his desert home . His vacation in the great North was probably over !

Not so , this year in the fall , sightings of him started to come in again from Dunbar , near Camosun Street , he was feeding from feeders again near our house ! Wow he is still here, amazing news to us all , but will he remember our winter back yard feeder from one year ago , well two cold weeks ago on a very frosty morning,, we grabbed for our binoculars, yes , yes our Greenhouse Costa had returned !

Its 6.30 am in the morning , have you put out the humming bird feeder yet ? ? ? ?

Terry

It was about 2 weeks before the Christmas of 1950, when the rain storms started and they never stopped , the snow melted and the big tides and southeast winds rocked our float house ,. Jack and Alf managed to get more ropes to tie the houses and shore catwalks to trees on the shore line under the cliff ! We had a good supply of cut firewood for our stoves, they made it warm and cosy and it was kind of nice listening to the wind and rain, as we were sleeping next to the warm stove ! We opened our Christmas presents from England a week early and I was really happy to get a Tiddly Winks game and a Boys Own book ! Valerie opened her present to find a Snakes and Ladders game , boy that was great we all enjoyed tossing the dice and moving up the ladder and passing by the snakes ! Just a few days to go to Christmas and the rains came down harder and harder and dad and mom could hear trees cracking on the top of the Cliff ! The tap water from the cliff springs got muddier and muddier and then it clogged up the hose pipe , dad said he would fix it in the morning and we all went to bed, with rain water coming off the roof in sheets,it was like sleeping under a waterfall !

The crashing of trees continued long into the night and then there was a roaring noise , it was the steep bank of mud and shrubs crashing down on top of our float house , the trees missed Franks and Jacks float house and scored a direct hit on the roof of ours !

One large fir tree caved in the roof of our house , just missing us in bed and dad yelled get out , but the deep mud was all around the float house and dad got mired in up to his waist in it ! Jack and Frank came to lend a hand in the pitch black dark and helped us get to a safer place, away from the falling trees ! It was morning and the tide was coming up and flooded out the float house, for it was stuck in the land slide mud and trees and mom just looked and cried and cried ! We had lost every thing that was so precious to us , all our “Christmas Presents” , clothing and food was covered in mud ! It took Dad , Frank and Jack all day to dig the float house free of the mud and thank goodness it floated on the next high tide ! We all pitched in and cleaned up the float house , fixed the roof and got the wood stove going again all in time for Christmas ! Val and I glued up the coloured paper chains to decorate the inside of the repaired roof and I cut off the top of a Hemlock tree that missed our house, it made a lovely well earned Christmas tree ! About 5 days later we celebrated Christmas, next to our old but warm stove and we all played the Tiddly Winks Game long into the night ! This was a never to forget Christmas at the Booming Grounds . I still go down the cliff trail today to see the slide that nearly killed us all and remember that Christmas of 1951 !

Terry

This Fraser River sockeye salmon celebration or fishermens season ending “Christmas Sockeye Social ” , was a party time at all of the Fishermens docks along the lower Fraser River . In places like False Creek ,Steveston ,Annieville and here in Dunbar Southlands the party place was Celtic Shipyard and the old Goat Ranch building at the south foot of Blenheim Street !

DRA Civic Candidates’ Meeting

St. Philip’s Church Hall
(3737 West 27th Avenue)

Monday, November 14th

to follow the AGM at 7:00 p.m.

Please note that two candidates were invited from COPE, NSV, NPA, and Vision

Mayoral candidates Suzanne Anton (NPA) and Randy Helton (NSV) will be in attendance, along with councillor candidates Adriane Carr (Green), Ken Charko (NPA), Raymond Louie (Vision),Tim Louis (COPE), Elizabeth Murphy (NSV), and Ellen Woodsworth (COPE).

There will be an opportunity to hear the candidates answer questions, both written and from the floor.
Questions for 2011 Civic Candidates’ Meeting

Please note the following invitation to help in welcoming the new residents to our neighbourhood:

The Dunbar Apartments at the corner of 16th and Dunbar are about ready and residents will move in in the next couple of months. At the last Dunbar Community Advisory Committee meeting, it was discussed that donations towards basic start-up supplies for residents (kitchen supplies, towels, toiletries, sheets, cleaning supplies, etc.) would be welcomed. See 16th and Dunbar Starter Set for suggestions.

 If you would like to make a donation please send a cheque payable to Coast Mental Health, indicating “Dunbar start-up supplies” in the memo line. You can send the cheque to: Coast Mental Health Foundation, 293 East 11th Ave, Vancouver BC V5T 2C4 (www.coastmentalhealth.com for information).

If you have questions you can send an e-mail to Coast Mental Health Program Coordinator Whitney Koehle (whitneyk@coastmentalhealth.com ) or phone at 604 488-4904.

Alternatively, if you wish to donate supplies as opposed to money you can also contact the Anglican Outreach program of the Neighbourhood Ministry, who are organizing a donation drive. Contact neighbourhoodministry@gmail.com attn. Jessica Bean. See also their link: http://neighbourhoodministry.wordpress.com/

For more information regarding the operation of the residence, please see Operations Management Report Dunbar Apartments. Questions may be addressed to Robert Westendorp, Vice-President of the DRA and committee member of the Dunbar Vision Implementation Committee (robert@westendorp.com).

An Open House is planned for later this month.

Susan Chapman

DRA

As kids living on Iona Island in the 1950ies, we all ways ran from our floating scow house and watched in wonder as a big flocks swooped down on a foggy evening, to settle on the tidal marshes of Sea and Iona Islands ! The Geese hunters with their camoflaged Duck Punts and strings of decoys were waiting , just as it got dark . My cousin and I always held our ears when the gun barrels and camoflaged hats popped up out of the duck punts and the shooting started ! The hunters Black Labrador retrievers always got very excited when the shooting started and jumped in the” chuck” and paddled around looking for instructions to a downed bird . The hunters called the dogs with a whistle and we thought that was real funny as we blew on our whistle also and that confused the dogs no end, the dogs went splashing kind of round and round and the hunters got real mad . Many of the hunters set up camoflaged blinds on the beach made out of driftwood and cattails, we always ripped them down when they left .

Next morning we got up early and the the Iona kids hunt was on for the spent shot gun shells and pop bottles that we collected and took back to Mr. Piats Confectionary in Lower Dunbar! We got the the 2 cent deposit if we lugged them in our row boat back to Dunbar . Now Terry, Mr Piat would say , I told you before, there is no refund on those Spent Shotgun Shells, but there should be ,Yep Mr Piate was one of the first historic Lower Dunbar recycler,s ! He was nice and always took our muddy pop bottles, but no beer bottles .

I thumped down the 2 cases of Pop Bottles on his pride and joy Black Marble counter ! He pointed to his Candy Display Case, now how many jaw breakers do you want for them Orange Crush ones ? We left his store with two bags of spent shotgun shells and a big bag of Jaw Breakers ! We walked 3 miles, along S. W. Marine drive , down the hill to the Booming Grounds and rowed home to Iona Island sucking on our last Jaw Breaker !

Terry

The rising sun now that seems to be sliding slowly up from behind the West Vancouver mountains and bursting gold off the many windows in the pink apartment over in West Van. is a sign of a great day coming on ! The night stars and the full moon that have been above the beach all night and have been lighting up the corks of my gillnet, they now have all slipped away in the first morning light . !

The gulls above my little gillnetter are calling and looking down trying to see what the night tide might have provided for them ! The big ebbing tide coming out of the harbour now and grabs my gillnet and pushes my boat south across the shallow sand bars off the North Arm of the Fraser River and on to the green light on the end of North Arm Jetty ! The nets wooden corks are down indicating a big catch and the Early Stuart Sockeye are still trying desperatly trying to pass by the net and enter the river ! A early morning cool Westerly Point Grey Wind picks up as I fill the hatch with sockeye !

I watch seaward as other fishboats turn off their “stern pickup lights” and finish picking up their nets ! I see a man on one boat close to me, reach down and lift up the net end light and blow out the sputtering wick inside the hurricane lantern . The night of fishing for Fraser River Sockeye off Wreck Beach is over, yes I am tired its been a long but lovely night under the stars and full moon waiting patiently for the Sockeye !

I watch as other boats near the Point Grey Bell Bouy and Green Light, crank up their night iddling engines and their exaust pipe puffs out grey smoke , yes the night of gillnetting for Stuart Lake Sockeye between the”Wreck Beach Search Light Towers and the North Arm Jetty is over , Yes we are all very tired and at last on our way home !

Its just one of my fishing stories from the past and I always enjoy telling it with my 4 year old grandchild on my knee !

Terry