Wednesday, December 4, 1991 - North Shore News - 25

NORTH VANCOUVER'S Michael Poole has written a personal ac-
count of his extraordinary cenoa trip cown one of tha most con-
fusing stretches of coastline on the North Pacific — the Inside

7Oastial reve

RAVELLING SHOULD educate. But after paddling

1,000 kilometres through the maze of waterways and

inlets that make up B.C.’s Inside Passage, Michael
Poole has learned that ‘‘only iools have adventures.”’

Only a fool would travel this
fonely stretch of Pacific coastline
and only a foo) would do it alone
in a 17-foot fibreglass canoe. But
Poole now enthusiasticall
subscribes to that maxim Naving
spent three months riding over
rapids, furabling his way through
heavy fog and at one point, com-
ing close to losing his life.

The trip began as a personal
challenge and fas resulted in the
publication of his first book, Ragg-
ed Islands (Douglas and Mcintyre,
1991).

An award-winning documentary
film-maker and North Vancouver
resident, Poole had beer longing
to make the sea odyssey and, after
it looked like the documentary
film business was at a standstill, he
grabbed his grub-box, camera,
bedding, rain gear and enough tins
of tuna and salmon to last three
months, and loaded it into his
canoe.

Apart from the test of travelling
alone, Poole wanted to know why
the 8.C. coast, once home to a

Evelyn Jacob
SPOTLIGHT FEATURE

relatively large population, is vir-
tually uninhabited today save for a
few scattered settlements.

“The reasons given for why
people left the coast after the First
World War were usually ccanom-
ic,’ says the New Brunswick-born
Poole, pointing to the closure of
loca! canneries, the withdrawal of
steamships and the concentration
of timber in the hands of a few
large companies which drove
dozens of small logging companies
into bankruptcy.

He discovered that economics

Passage.

CORES gE:

NEWS photo Stuart Davis

lations

was Only part of the explanation
for the exodus; it was the ferbid-
ding coastal lifestyle — the harsh
winters, oppressive rainforest and
intense isolation — that drove
people away.

Most of the settlers were landed
English gentry who hoped to make
their fortune as agricultural land
owners. In order to sell B.C. as a
lost Eden, the British government
resorted to distorting the truth
about the amount of available ag-
ricultural land, says Poole.

“Thousands of people went up
coast 10 homestead. There were
here to replicate the English pasto-
ral image, not to live like natives.
They soon found themselves in
conflict with the rainforest, the
long distances, the lack of roads. It
became a disastrous experience
for many.”

Poole says he too experienced
that profound sense of oppression:
“tfeit the forest was forever
crowding me into the sea.”

Today the rainforest has remov-
ed nearly all trace of those settle-
ments — Poole says it is possible
to travel the coast and believe that
no one ever lived there.

He made a point of seeking out

See Canoe page 30

CANADA!
FOR MAKING

na

Canadian Distillers (ACD)
1991 Period 8 Report

ry ITLED AND AGED BY DISTULERY STAEA hon
BOUTERLLES ET ViEILLN PA DISTILLERIEST RE:

AS

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