Island … “a land mass … surrounded by water … anything like an island in position or isolation”. Such is an official definition of the word; we all know that this is not the only kind of island. Islands have always figured largely in my own life as landforms; as personal islands surrounded by joy and satisfaction, by grief or loneliness, or as blessed islands in the midst of silence far from the madding crowd.
I expect reading, and writing for Island Woman will bring more interest, exploration, and understanding to my current personal island.
My first island figures in my very first memories – a small, one-acre, tree-covered piece of the Laurentian Shield rising out of Lake Temagami. Here in a green cabin, forty car and boat miles from the Northern Ontario silver-mining town of Cobalt where I grew up, I spent summer weekends and holidays, met my husband, and lived with my own family until moving to the west cost in 1960.
In a 1947 Pontiac, towing the trailer we had built and barged from that first island, we set out for Vancouver Island with our three children under three. Our plan to move in each of the previous three years had succumbed to a mother-in-law’s admonition, “My dear, you can’t possibly travel out there in that condition”! A diaper pail stored in the back of the trailer eased our way through Customs when we landed in Sidney on the Anacortes ferry.
On the Island we first settled in Sooke. I taught primary grades in Victoria and took summer and correspondence courses at U-Vic. Our fourth child was born and we left our island for some years in Terrace, eventually returned to Ladysmith, and found the next significant island in our lives.
For two years we became lighthouse keepers on Entrance Island – more rock, some grass and shrubs, but no trees. As our principal lightkeeper told us on arrival, “Entrance Island is about two and a half acres … at low tide.” The light sat atop our house, requiring vigorous winding of its weighted cable to keep it turning; each week we traded 12-hour shifts with the other lightkeeper. I taught the children at home in a porch my husband converted to a schoolroom.
In Canada’s Centennial Year we moved to Oceanside (then known as District 69), built a house, and managed a fishing camp in Deep Bay. I taught at various schools. I remarried; my children married and have given me two grandchildren. Our romance with islands continued and we scouted for homesteads on Cortes and Denman Islands – one was taken off the market, and we were beaten to the draw on the other.
In 1989 I retired and started to write for local newspapers and small magazines with one lucky query to Canadian Geographic. We travelled with truck and trailer or camper to the tip of Baja, across Alaska, and up the Dempster Highway to Inuvik, my husband taking photographs while I scribbled in my notebooks.
And now I’ve discovered Island Woman!
Nancy Whelan
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