Passage Island Retreat

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Working alone on the island was a great pleasure. I have always enjoyed my solitude, and life was enhanced by watching each day as the spring weather began dressing skeletons of deciduous trees in fresh, lush greens.

No two days were the same, either in the forest or at the edge of the sea. And there was also the tremendous satisfaction of working creatively with my hands. It had been a long time.

Those were the good days-largely carefree. Still, I was totally responsible for my safety on that deserted island. Whether working on scaffolding or surveying a cliff, I had always to be aware that a slip, resulting in a broken bone, could be very serious. Life on a tiny British Columbia island can be enchanting but unforgiving.

One morning, a man in his 40s arrived in a small boat. His face was familiar, but he had to introduce himself before I realized he was Roy's father. The family resemblance was what I had seen.

With a face clouded by worry, he told me that Roy had been missing for two days. We agreed that this was cause for concern. It wasn't like Roy to take of without letting his father know what he was up to. Roy had once said he might come over to the island in the spring to capture a young crow, in hopes of teaching it to talk. If he'd come over without my knowing and had had an accident, no one would have found him. My thoughts about my own safety working alone on the island came back to me.

We scoured the tiny island for three hours without finding a trace of Roy. A greatly disturbed father got back in his boat to continue the lonely search on other islands. Tragically, a couple of days later, Roy was found near Bowyer Island (about five nautical miles up Howe sound from Passage Island) floating face down. No one ever found out what caused his untimely death.

The weeks were rushing by and, without Roy's help, the work was progressing at too slow a pace. Though the slab was poured and finished, falsework had to be constructed for the stone masons to build against. The outside walls would consist of eight inches of stone and two inches of polystyrene foam. The insulation had to be mounted on the outside of the falsework, so the stone masons could use a wet mix at the back of their work to bond the insulation to the masonry. Windows and doors would also be mounted on the falsework and the rock laid up around them. Julie and I wanted to move in the first day of September, so it was time to hire more help.

Since I was quite accomplished by now at temporary wooden frames, the falsework went up quickly, and six husky Canadians of Italian descent came to build the stone walls. They were a delight to work with, and Frank, the boss, was a master craftsman. The schedule was beginning to look achievable.

Then, on the masons' third day, disaster struck!

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