As he chuffs up the rise below Breadloaf Hill, he sees about thirty vehicles parked by the community hall. The Save Gwendolyn Society. He thinks he hears Margaret’s voice exhorting action. Yes, there is her aging spaniel, Slappy, listening at the door, ears perked. Arthur hopes no one will see him slip past, he doesn’t want to be dragged in there. He doesn’t even want to think about Gwendolyn Valley. There’s nothing these people can do about saving it.
Todd Clearihue, the boyish ever-smiling developer, speeds by in his Audi convertible, honks, waves. Beside him is the pixie. She waves too. Clearihue is the president of Garibaldi Lands Inc., which has title to Gwendolyn Valley. Margaret calls him a sociopath.
Coming into view, where the road descends to the docks of Hopeless Bay, is the General Store, circa 1904, paint peeling from the boards of its high-windowed false front. A flatbed pulls away, three men in the cab with takeout coffees, and as they pass by, Arthur reads the logo: Gulf Sustainable Logging. They are strangers and do not wave. Maybe they were offended by the notice posted by the door: “Chainsaws must be left in your truck. We are not responsible.”
The store (Abraham Makepeace, proprietor) connects to a warehouse on piles, and groans within of groceries, tools, and the various odds and sods that support civilization on this cranky island. It also serves as post office (Abraham Makepeace, postmaster), coffee lounge, and, ever since the Brig Tavern burned down, illegal source of spirits (Abraham Makepeace, bootlegger).
Staring out the windows of the enclosed porch are several local idlers in their tractor caps, work shirts, and patched jeans. The porch serves as a lounge, chairs in haphazard array around a wood-fired Jotul, coffee in the pot, an honour jar heavy with dollar coins. Arthur exchanges greetings, obligatory remarks on the weather, and steps up to the mail counter.
Makepeace, tall, skeletal, the face of a depressive bloodhound, is slow to hand him the mail, a final possessive inspection of letters and magazines. “Your subscription to this here London Review of Books is due. Bill from the vet. An offer from a phone company, they want to give us the Internet on local calls. They say we can’t live without it.”
“Who says?”
“Well, practically everyone.”
“I have lived sixty-eight years without it.”
Makepeace too has been slow to catch up to the electronic revolution, last year buying his first fax machine, a dollar a page to send or receive. But he’s debt-ridden from tabs unpaid. He is fatalistic about the Gwendolyn development, which will include an efficient store, with chrome and fluorescent lighting and grocery buggies. A beer-and-wine outlet, a restaurant and bar, a real-estate office.
Makepeace pulls the island weekly, The Bleat, from Arthur’s mail slot and folds it open to the letters page. “Guess you want to read Margaret’s latest.” Arthur pats his pockets for his reading glasses, he remembered to bring them.
“‘Pirates,’ she calls them.” This is Baldy Johansson, the terminally unemployed electrician, who has got up for a refill. “That ain’t so bad, but ‘ecological Nazis’-ain’t that carrying it too far? Can’t they charge her for slander, Arthur?”
Arthur must regularly parry such elusive questions of law, has found ways to divert them. “There’s no law against hyperbole.” Arthur can tell no one quite understands that word.
The Bleat, renamed from The Echo as a salute to the island’s many sheep farmers, causes Arthur anxiety when it appears, usually about midweek. Its editor seems not to have heard of the laws of libel, and makes no effort to restrain his most regular correspondent. This latest letter of Margaret’s seems inflammatory to excess, “environmental wrecking crew” being the epithet most softly put. She has already been warned by Garibaldi Lands Inc. (locally known as Garlinc) that “remedial” action might be taken. The horrors of a defamation trial.
“That there wife of yours is pissing in the wind,” says Ernie Priposki, the alcoholic farmhand. “They own the land, they can do what they want with it, ain’t that the law, Arthur?”
“People have rights in this fair and democratic land. Trees do not.”
“Can’t stop progress.”
Arthur pours himself a coffee, turns to the front page, the main story, under the byline of Nelson Forbish, publisher, editor, and entire workforce. “It is rumoured that logging of Gwendolyn Bay is to begin this week, which has caused foment on our beautiful island.”
A smiling photograph of Todd Clearihue (lately seen zooming by with the hitching pixie) in close embrace with Island Trustee Kurt Zoller, who is brandishing a cheque. “Garlinc boss donates $300,000 for new fire truck.”
“You got to look on the good side,” Priposki says. “It means jobs, there’s a lot of guys out of work on this rock. Garlinc ain’t doing a clear-cut, they’re going to leave some trees, people want their lots to be nice. I’ll have another little hit.”
Makepeace brings out a bagged bottle, pours a dollop of rum into Priposki’s coffee. “Not you, Arthur, I suppose.”
“Thank you, no.” He catches a whiff of alcohol and tenses.
“Blame the government,” says Jeff “Gomer” Goulet, the crab fisher. “They could’ve made it a park.”
Garlinc paid $8 million for Gwendolyn Valley, an estate sale, the land sold too quickly, before anyone could object. Margaret organized petitions, besieged Ottawa to add Gwendolyn Valley to the scatter of lands composing the Gulf Islands National Park. All to nought.
“No government’s got no business seizing nobody’s private land.” A heroic triple negative from Baldy Johansson. “We got rights, don’t we, Arthur?”
“I didn’t know you owned land, Baldy.”
“Well, if I did.”
Arthur buys a two-day-old Vancouver Sun, sits down with his coffee, spreads the front page open. Immediately a story catches his eye: “CROWN SEEKS PSYCH HEARING FOR RAPE-MURDER SUSPECT.” Below that, a related article: “FRIENDS MOURN DEATH OF DR. WINTERS.” Her photograph, blond, smiling, attractive. But it’s another photo that holds him, a forlorn face in a police cruiser.
Nick the Owl Faloon. How could this be? Arthur dares not count the times he defended this mannerly rascal, and a deep sadness comes. He doesn’t want to read further, not now, so he quickly finishes his coffee and makes his purchases.
He decides to return home by the Gwendolyn Bluffs, though that means a long detour, at least another hour. But it might be the last time he will see this valley clothed in green. They plan a hundred and fifty lots with, according to the glossy handout, “driveways, power, cable, sewer, and water in.” There will be a resort, shoreline condos. To attract city commuters, a hovercraft service.
Though the trail to Gwendolyn Bay crosses private land, the owners, the Sproules, are well-regarded old-timers who resist the blandishments of the fly-by-night loggers who infest these islands. They allow Garibaldians to use it, but the secret is kept from uncountrified visitors who tend to leave gates open or tramp on the chocolate lilies. The path also provides clandestine entry into upper Gwendolyn Valley, its lovely pond.
Arthur feels winded but in no distress as he climbs from sheep pastures into dense cedar forest, to a mossy mesa with thick-waisted Douglas firs, a swirling ballet of green-leafed arbutus, groves of Garry oaks, twisted and fat of bud. Below, through gaps, can be seen the rocky beach and the strait, and beyond, the perilously close shores of vast, busy Vancouver Island.
As he nears the Garlinc property-ill-protected by rusting fence wire-he hears a distant hammering, and wonders if a crew is already working on the road access. The valley is guarded on either side by high rock faces, and the only opening, known as Gwendolyn Gap, or just the Gap, is too narrow for a road. But the developers have been given a blasting permit. Arthur shudders, recoils from the ugliness of it, of man and his machines and his explosive devices.