Who was this skipper, this mother, this writer? These questions motivated Cathy Converse to re-trace the route of famous Pacific seafarer M. Wylie (Capi) Blanchet, and write a biography in the process. Widowed in 1926, Blanchet cruised the coast with her five children and their dog in a 25-foot boat that had been rescued from the seafloor. The Curve of Time, Blanchet’s resulting book, remains a bestseller and a classic in the annals of nautical literature, but little is known about the rest of her life. In Following the Curve of Time, Converse offers insiders’ recollections of this enigmatic woman, along with updated information about the villages, inlets and islands Capi visited during her many years of travel.
This is an excerpt about one of Capi’s many trips during the 1920s to visit Mike and Phil who live in Desolation Sound, an area nestled against the western edge of the Coast Range. It is about 160 nautical miles up the coast from Capi’s home in Sidney and is accessible only by water or air. If she were to have gone directly from her home it would have taken her 34 hours, travelling non-stop. She didn’t, of course; they were in no hurry.
In Melanie Cove, a jewel of an anchorage and one that Capi particularly enjoyed, there can be as many as 50 boats at one time. More than 10,500 boats visit Desolation Sound during the summer months. However, when Capi anchored in the cove, there was only Mike, whom she liked, a cougar that terrified Pam the dog, and Phil Lavine, an old Frenchman who lived in Laura Cove, less than a kilometre down the path from Mike.
Capi always looked forward to seeing Mike, an old logger from Michigan. His name was really Andrew Shuttler, but no one called him that. When Capi first met him she thought he looked like Honoré Daumier’s portrayal of Don Quixote, with his aquiline nose, pointed forehead and handlebar moustache. But rather than sporting an ancient shield and riding a skinny old horse with a fast greyhound at his side, Mike wore logging clothes and had a lumberjack style about him; his steed was a rowboat and he had no animals, as cougars prowled the area.
Like Don Quixote, he loved books. Capi always made sure that she tucked in some interesting reading material for him when she left home. He particularly liked the classics and enjoyed reading early philosophers, which sparked many lively debates over an evening’s fire.
Mike’s place at the head of the inlet was a small oasis of flowers and fruit. Up the bank, he had built himself a pleasant homestead, and he worked hard clearing the land and keeping the constantly encroaching forest at bay. The hillside was planted with apple trees, grapes, honeysuckle, sweet william and bleeding-hearts, which, when they were in bloom, sent a heady fragrance wafting over the water. His log cabin was surrounded by terraced rows of flowers.
Mike could always tell when the Caprice was due for its annual visit: When the orchard was bursting with apples, Capi and the children would come puttering into the bay and set their anchor. Mike would stand at the head of the cove, his well-worn black felt hat shadowing his face, with his usual greeting of, “Well, well, well! Summer’s here, and here you are again!” Everyone looked forward to their visit with Mike, and the children knew that there would be a delicious apple pie or two to indulge in.
Then one summer, as they rounded the corner and squeezed past the drying ledge that projects from the south shore of Melanie Point, something was not quite right; the anchorage felt empty, devoid of life. Mike was not there to greet them and when they went up to his cabin they found it empty. Worse yet, it had been stripped of all but a rusty stove and a few letters and cards that were scattered about. Mike had taken ill and spent his last days in the hospital in Powell River.
Born in 1858 in Minnesota, he was 73 when he died in 1931. A great sadness overtook the family as they realized that they would see him no more.
“The cove rang like an empty seashell,” Capi wrote. “A great northern raven, which can carry on a conversation with all the intonations of the human voice, blew out from above the cabin, excitedly croaking: ‘Mike’s dead! Mike’s dead.’ ”
Mike’s place is all but gone now, and red alders, ferns and bracken have moved in, covering up the tracks of a man who for 38 years called Melanie Cove his home. In a small section at the end of the cove, the terraced areas that Mike built up, stone by stone, can still be found, and off to the right of the path, near the Parks Department’s biffy, there are a few apple trees left, although they, too, are surrendering to the creeping clamber of lichens.
One other person whom Capi used to visit was Phil Lavine, who was in his 70s when she first met him. He had a homestead in Laura Cove, around the corner from Mike. He and Mike were friends, so, rather than hopping into a boat every time they wanted to see each other, they built a trail to connect the two homesteads.
Phil had a shady past; he was said to have killed a man in Quebec. But on the coast, far from the site of his wrongdoings, he lived modestly on a small old-age pension of $20 a month. He raised chickens and goats, tended his vegetable garden and grew his own tobacco.
Capi used to buy fresh eggs from Phil and always got a yarn into the bargain. Phil could not read a word, but the winter Mike died he carefully shepherded all of his friend’s books to his own place, as a sort of memorial to Mike he built bookshelves around the cabin and proudly displayed the books for all to see. “All dem words, and ’e ad to die like all de rest of us!”
Excerpted from Following the Curve of Time: The Legendary M. Wylie Blanchet, TouchWood Editions, © 2008 Cathy Converse.
