| Recreation
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1. Hiking on Langara Island2. My rowboat on Langara Island3. Alaska king crab4. Eagles Bathing5. Kids and boats |
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1. Hiking on Langara Island 
On another occasion, my dad and I decided to leave mom in charge on the lightstation, and hike to Egeria Bay. We got part way there, but the bush was so high we couldn’t get through. So we hiked instead to Fury Bay and Hazardous Cove. The bush was nearly as bad, being over our heads at times. But once we broke through to the beach, it was beautiful. The beach was black sand, and there was a herd of deer on it. We hiked along the coast for a couple of hours, it was fabulous beach combing. We found fossils, glass balls, even a "dollar bottle"! We had left about 9 am. Now, in hiking back home, we had to scale a cliff, then find our way home through muskeg and forest. We hiked, and hiked, and hiked. At one point I said to my dad, "I think we have been here before!" He said, "Oh, you noticed too, huh? I was just testing you.". (that was "Dad-talk" for - don’t know where the heck we are, but we’ll keep walking!) We were walking in circles. It was getting dark when we finally made it home after hiking all day. I have never been so tired! I didn’t even eat, just fell into bed. But it had been a wonderful day. - Jeannie (Hartt) Nielsen (daughter of Ed Hartt, Senior Keeper on Langara 1957 - 1963) |
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2. My Rowboat on Langara Island
My dad built me a 8 foot plywood rowboat on Langara. It was my pride and joy. I often rowed it in the "cut". This was a sheltered cove where the supply workboat brought our groceries and fuel, and hooked slings onto the skyhook to bring the goods onshore. Often the cut would become choked with kelp, fouling the workboats prop. I would take a machete, throw my boat in, and spend the warm summer days leaning over the side of the boat and chopping the heads off the kelp. They would then sink to the bottom, leaving the area clean. I would become lost in another world, watching the rock cod and crabs on the bottom. Other times I would use a fishing line as an excuse to be out - just rowing in the gentle ocean swells. (I really didn’t want to catch fish, as I felt sorry for them!) Any fish I caught was purely by accident, not design. I loved the ocean then, and still do. But I also have a great respect for it’s ferocity and unpredictable nature. Sometimes I would poke into coves, pulling my boat ashore and exploring. One day I had done so, pulling my boat high above high tide mark, and securing it’s bow line to a log for good measure. I hiked for a couple of hours. When I returned, I was horrified to see my little skiff adrift in the bay - still tied to the log, being buffeted by large waves, and half full of water. Fortunately, the water was only waist high. I rushed out to it, and tried to untie the bow line. But the boat was bucking wildly in the waves, hitting the log it was tied to. It was impossible, trying to hold the boat from being holed, hold the log off, and keep my balance in the swells. I finally was able to grab the knife I kept stuck into the side gunnel of the boat, and slash the bow line. I dragged myself into the half submerged boat, rowed it out of the breaking waves, and commenced bailing. I was pretty shaken. Once I stopped shaking and thought about it, I realized what had happened. There were a group of large fishing trollers running out to the fishing grounds. The tide had come in, and with the large bow waves coming off one boat after another, the water had come much higher than I had anticipated. I guess the good thing is that I had tied the boat to the log, or else it might have been long gone. I was also grateful for the knife I always kept with me, and the bailing bucket! I felt like a "modern" day Tom Sawyer. - Jeannie (Hartt) Nielsen (daughter of Ed Hartt, Senior Keeper on Langara 1957 - 1963) |
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 Cooked Alaska King Crab |
3. Alaska King Crab While on Pine Island , Al [Bartle] and Ralph [Emerich] put down a crab trap off the highline and put chicken scraps in the trap. The next morning they pulled up the trap and had an Alaska King Crab. Great eating! They did not know that the King crabs came this far south.
- Jean (Bartle) Konkle (Daughter of Albert Bartle, Relief Keeper) |
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 Eagles bathing |
4. Eagles Bathing While on Scarlett Point , Vivian Hunt, a First Nations person that lived on the island about ½ mile down from the lighthouse took us for a hike up the mountain on a trail that he had hand cut with a machete, to a small lake. While there we witnessed over 50 Eagles having a bath in the fresh water after feeding in salt water. That island [Scarlett] is a gorgeous site. Al [Bartle] caught a 20 lb. red snapper right off the rocks in front of the lighthouse.
- Jean (Bartle) Konkle (Daughter of Albert Bartle, Relief Keeper on Scarlett Point c. 1973) |
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5. Kids and Boats I was allowed a lot of freedom there [Sisters Island ]. I would find a broad flat chunk of log and sit on it and explore the coast of the whole island. Mum worried but Dad seemed to trust us not to do anything really stupid.
I must say that when we had been there only a few months, Stan (my brother) and I did do something really stupid. Our only rowboat stayed in the boathouse all the time when not in use. There was an inclined set of rails leading down to the water and a hand cranked windlass with which to winch it up and down. The heavy boat sat in a wheeled cradle and the whole set up was heavy. We figured it was not too hard to get it down the slipway so we opened the door and very quietly and slowly, we both hung onto the large iron handle as it rotated and down went the whole rig until the boat floated. So far, so good. We loosened the painter and off we were sailing. Mum and Dad ran out to see their sons and heirs go drifting past with the tide! We were not too worried until something in Dad's voice told us we might be in trouble. As we fitted one oar in an oar lock, we drifted quickly past the big rock and by the time we had the second oar in action, we were a quarter mile away. We were not very big and the oars seemed clumsy and heavy but we had to get back! We made it back to the main rocks and Dad took over as soon as he could reach the boat. I do not think we got any corporal punishment but we both realized how serious it might have turned out. And, besides, Mum was crying! Very seldom saw that and it affected Stan and me. - Ted Smithman (Son of Henry Herbert Smithman who was Senior Keeper at Sisters Island 1927 - 1929) ********************************** I recall another incident with the boat. The hand cranked windlass had no brake on it. One day when the boat was being let down the small railway (which was on a pretty steep incline) someone's hand slipped off the large iron handle and away went the boat down the hill. (You could not grab the handle when it was spinning round or it would break your wrist.) Unfortunately, the boat had not been tied to the wheeled cradle and away it floated. Disaster! Our only link to the rest of the world (apart from the fog horn in an extreme emergency) was drifting away. Stored in the boat house, above the windless, was an old leaky doubled ended row boat. No time was lost in cutting it down and launching it. While Ted bailed, Dad rowed after our good boat. Fortunately they caught up with it before the boat they were in filled up. After that the boats painter was always tied to the wheeled cradle. - Lloyd Smithman (Son of Henry Herbert Smithman who was Senior Keeper at Sisters Island 1927 - 1929) |
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| John Coldwell (retired BC lighthouse keeper) Galvanistrasse 8 A-4040 Linz, Austria Tel: +43 (732) 750515  |