20 — Friday. February 5, 1999 ~ North Shore News jaterwor B Westcoasters (Bonts that built B.C.) by Tom Henry (Harbour Publishing, 160 pp, 120 b&w photos, $34.95). John Goodman This Week: Editor jolng@nsnews.com IN Westcoasters author Tom Henry examines 14 boats that influenced the course of British Columbia's maritime history. George Vancouver's ship the Discorery and the Bill Reid-designed Haida dugout canoe the Looraas bookend the study which als includes the remarkable story of the Beatrice, on the water for more than a century, and the mothership of all rumrunners che Malahat. Several boats will be of interest to North Shore readers: the Bowen Island ferry Lady Alexandra and the experimental sub Pisees i particalar. The chapter on the the latter is clas- sic storytelling and would make the basis for a great movie. The News spoke to Henry recently about his work, JG: Did anything surprise you while you were researching the book? TH: The greatest surprise was the role of mi formed audacity in the success of B.C. maritime endeavors. For example — Gordon Gibson buys the laid-up rumrunner the Malahat, hacks the deck open and creates the world’s first sel ing self&dumping, self-propelled barge v changes everything on the coast. Tt meant we could take timber from the west . coase of Vancouver Island, the central coast, the Queen Charlottes, all three of which are exposed areas. A nightmare to try and tow log booms in. They couldn’t log those areas successfully until they could figure out a reliable way of getting the wood from the inlets to the mills on the Fraser River. The same thing with the Pisces story. Two Vancouver hardhat divers and a hippy inventor from Scattle get together and if they had known what they were doing —- if they had been educated in engineering at university — they would never even thought of doing it. They went ahead and built a submersible and it became hugely suc and led to the big underwater research industry that we see in the Lower Mainland and southern Vancouver Island which put Canada on the world map in underwater research. Tom Henry JG: You mention the Titanic salvage operation in the piece on Pisces. TH: The Russians had agreed to buy a couple of extremely advanced ver- sions of Pisces called the Taxrus. A Russian, Tolen Saolavatch, came over and lived in Vancouver for 2 couple of years. (He later became involved on the Titanic project). One of Pisces showcase workplaces was the maritime experimental range at Nanoose Bay on Vancouver Island where the Americans often tested new torpedoes. Pisces had a contract te retrieve the torpedoes that sank. They took Saclavatch down with them to the site. If the Americans had ever found out they would have had a hemorrhage. JG: The Malahat looks like it would have cost a lot of money to keep in operation as 2 rumrunner. TH: Most of its rumrunning was pretty sedate in that it steamed up from San Francisce and threw out the anchor and sat there off the international limits. Sure it was an expensive boat to maintain but don't forget: A) it wasn’t using up a lot of fuel, and b) rumrunning was hugely profitable. Just incred- ible amounts of money. : ’ Although it’s a small chapter in B.C. history it is importance in that it kept a lot of seamen and shipyards busy when the economy was truly bust. You had guys running the high speedboats out of Victoria and Vancouver Westcoasters: Boats that Sullt 8.C. CAPTAIN Billy Yates stands on the bridge of the Lady Alexandra while passengers enjoy an outing to Bowen !siand. down into Puger Sound and they were regularly ranning into deadheads at night. They did all their work at night. I’m not speaking specifically of the Malahat, just the general business. JG: The era of the Lady Alexandra travelling to Bowen Island seems like it was from a different world. TH: There’s a funny thing about ships — we often remember the journey to somewhere more than the actual experience when we get there. That’s very much the case with the Lady Alex and Bowen. The Lady Alex during the ’30s and ’40s was the ticket to their pleasure during an era when there wasn’t that much pleasure. You could leave your house ip Kerrisdale, get on a trolley car, ride down to the foot of Carroll St., get off the troficy car onto the steamer, steam to Bowen Island, have a lovely day there, and then steam back with music being played and a buffet. It was just a lovely experience. No automobiles involved. The steamships were quiet, quict, quiet. A very elegant little craft. The Lady Alex really insinuated itself into the heart of the people of Vancouver. The Lady Alex’s captain is a favourite of mine. Billy Yates" family remem- ber him as a church-goer, a tea-totaller and a very clean-mouthed man. The people who worked with him remember him as a man who really liked his drink, who could be foul-mouthed when occasion demanded. A real charac- ter, JG: Were there any boats that didn’t make it into che Westcoasters? TH: To qualify for the book the buats had to really be important. They had to shape, form, speak to something about the coast. They couldn’t just be a great story. All of the boats that are in there couldn’t be taken out. If you pull them out there is a hole in the story where other ones would have added to the story but are not critical. @ Gates of Eden by Ethan Coen (Rob Weisbach Books, William Morrow and Company, New York, 261 pages, $32.00). IMAGINE an early episode of the Twilight Zone, where a stranger walks into a smoky bar, orders a drink, then is drawn into some bizarre tale. blurring of realiry, The stories tell of struggles both past and present, of justice and vengeance. You'll meet a would-be boxer whose lack of's es hint to consider advertising himself as “foe Carmody- Blows Absorbed”. After another beating he accepts a jab and is pulled into the war bernween two small tinte mobsters. From a bad beginning his prospects slide downhill Bst. Ethan and Joel Coen’s films have delighted audiences with their qui and strange sto! Simple, Barton Fink, along with their other films have all taken viewers on a roller coaster ride of emotions, sometimes disturbing, some- times hilarious, but always entertaining, The fourteen stories that make up Gates of Eden cach have a unique ovist. Some read like radio dramas, others like screenplays, and still oth- ers like novels. Coen’s ability to draw you quickly into the heart of the story makes you wish each one was longer. By the end of the book you'll feel like starting at the beginning again so you can go through and spend more time with this strange cast of char- acters. — Terry Peters (To win a copy of Gates of Eden see page 23). Capilano: ~ ‘College: