Passage Island Retreat

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They had each been promised $5 per hour to mix 10 cubic yards of cement and carry it, in five-gallon buckets, to the roof-a la Mexico. Roy was in charge of the peons while I did the cement finishing. At the end of that 12-hour day, an exhausted bunch of boys received their $60 and sat, very still and very quiet, in the boat on the way home.

The next day the weather turned cold, and that night there was a snowstorm. The concrete was safe from freezing because we had used salt water in the mix, so I was able to forget work on the island for a short while and enjoy Christmas with my friend Julie.

After the snow melted, I was eager to get back. Roy was going to take a couple more weeks off, so I decided to strip the formwork alone. First, I removed every second post. Then, carefully, I pulled out more and more, until only one post remained in the center of the house. That 4 X 4 appeared to be the sole support for all the formwork; once removed, all the plywood, joists and beams would come crashing down. Not wanting all this to land on my head, I tied a rope to the bottom of the post, led the other end clear of the building and gave it a mighty yank. The post came flying out, but the formwork didn't budge an inch! It just stood there without any visible signs of support.

But of course! With the joists and beams maintaining the shape of double curvature, the formwork was being supported in exactly the same way as the roof itself: by the rock cliff at one corner and the reinforced concrete pedestal at the other. A dramatic demonstration of the hyperbolic paraboloid's inherent strength.

Working gingerly, I found that it was even possible to remove the beams one by one, so that only the joists and plywood held the shape. But, finally, it happened. I was removing joists, still mesmerized by the form's ability to defy gravity, when, suddenly, there was the sound of splintering wood. I was in the middle of the house at that moment and promptly established a new world record for the 10-yard dash as boards and plywood came crashing down behind me.

After the mess was cleaned up, Roy came back to help with the perimeter foundation and cistern. Again, it was an interesting departure from conventional construction to place a foundation after the roof was in place. In fact, our only real constraint for the floor's shape was that there be some way to close the gap between the foundation and roof with a nonstructural wall. I decided to hire professional cement workers to pour and finish the slab, while I would do the under-floor wiring, plumbing and gas fitting myself. So, Roy was soon out of a job once more.

During construction, I was living in Vancouver's West End with my friend Julie and had a 23-foot boat moored a short walk from our apartment. Twenty-five minutes after leaving Coal Harbor, I would be on Passage Island, refreshed by my "commute." One morning I came out under the Lion's Gate Bridge to be met by well-spaced eight-foot swells. They generated a most pleasant roller coaster ride to work. After a while, though, my pleasure was diminished by the thought that if I came over a crest to find a log in my path, there would be little I could do to avoid a collision. No sooner had I considered this possibility than I saw a killer whale heading straight for my bow. I braced for a crash, but the whale must have been as startled as I was. He sounded, allowing the boat to pass safely over him.

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