rssA tingle of expectation, mixed with fear, crawls up my spine. It is approaching sundown and we are sneaking up on a grizzly. I can see him clearly through my binoculars, sitting at the mouth of the estuary, digging in the mud. The bear isn’t aware of our presence, and we want to keep it that way. About 100 metres from shore, we kill the motors on our twin Zodiacs and glide forward into a backdrop of sheer black citadels. No one speaks. A silence settles over us – almost as thick as the pong of rotting salmon permeating the inlet. Everything feels damp and feral. The grizzly’s immense size and distinctive colouring become apparent as we float nearer. His coat is a blend of dark brown and silver, and he has a massive hump of muscle between his shoulder blades. His body is as big as a moving van.
The day before, when we boarded in Bella Bella, our captain Kevin Smith asked what sort of wildlife we hoped to see on our nine-day expedition aboard his 92-foot, two-masted wooden schooner, the Maple Leaf. This tall ship journey, timed to coincide with the salmon spawning season, would take us into the steep-sided fjords of the Great Bear Rainforest, a chunk of untamed terrain that extends 500 kilometres up the British Columbia coast, from Knight Inlet to the Alaskan panhandle. Covering an area greater than Switzerland and including more than 80 rivers, the Great Bear comprises one quarter of the planet’s last remaining ancient temperate rainforest. Sheltering some 230 bird species and 68 different mammals, it is large enough to entertain anyone’s dreams.
Each of the nine guests voiced a preference: whales, wolves, dolphins. Several hoped to see a spirit bear, or Kermode, the Great Bear Rainforest’s most unique and elusive inhabitant, a creamy white subspecies of black bear found only in this part of the world. But Smith promised nothing. This wasn’t the kind of journey where he could make things happen. “The objective,” he stressed, “is simply to put ourselves in the path of the magic.” Today we have succeeded: 300 hairy kilograms of it sit dead ahead. When we are 30 metres away, a squawking flock of gulls takes flight and the bear swivels in our direction. He shoots us a stare, then swaggers forward, staking his claim to the beach. How fast, I wonder, can a grizzly swim? We stop. After deciding that we pose no threat, the beast slowly ambles into the higher grass and out of sight.
Back on board the Maple Leaf we gather in high spirits around platters of braised tuna and aromatic stir-fried greens, as the waves gently rock us in their liquid embrace. The dinner music is soft jazz and the boat is keeping time. The grizzly’s cameo has capped a day of spectacular sights, including one not found in the Maple Leaf’s glossy brochure. Earlier we had come upon a huge waterfall. Smith asked for volunteers to climb out on the bowsprit with plastic glasses and gather water as he inched the ship into the curtain of mist. It was a “ritual,” he explained. We performed the stunt twice and, on the second run, two of the women shed their clothes and slithered out on the five-and-a-half-metre wooden spar, naked, save for rubber boots. As they reached forward into the icy spray, a rainbow arched over their bodies.
Like many of the places we will visit during the trip, the waterfall has no name. After a few glasses of Chardonnay, we propose some possibilities: Sea-Nymph Falls, Full-Monty Falls, Double-Breasted Falls. The disrobing has been an icebreaker. Complete strangers only a day before, we are getting to know one another fast. There is Richard Carmody, a lawyer from Alabama, and his wife, Alison, an Anglican preacher; Wayne Johnson, a financial consultant from Massachusetts, and his wife, Nancy Brooks, a nurse; Penny Bax and Gerry Furseth, two Vancouverites in the software computer business; Ray Pillman, a retired engineer from West Vancouver; Maureen Gordon, an aspiring writer and musician from Victoria; and myself. Also on board are author Alison Watt, our naturalist guide, plus the crew: skipper Smith, navigator Russell Gaudin, first mate Spence Partlo and chef Jan Kobbero.
Several of the passengers have experience with boats, but no one has put to sea in anything like the Maple Leaf – B.C.’s oldest tall ship still in operation. With its gleaming white exterior, Douglas fir decking, mahogany trim and more than a thousand metres of sail, the ship is not only beautiful, it has a remarkable past. Built in 1904 as a private yacht for lumber baron Alexander Maclaren, the Maple Leaf became the jewel of the Vancouver marine scene. For years, society columns listed the names of British Columbia “royalty” lucky enough to sail on her. The vessel’s next incarnation was as a halibut longliner on the Bering Sea, where she outfished every other boat in the fleet. Her third life began in 1986 after an award-winning restoration by Brian Falconer transformed her into an eco-tourism charter craft. Smith, who purchased the Maple Leaf and the company from Falconer in 2001, harbours tender feelings for his century-old mistress: “She has stolen my heart,” he says.
The next morning, we encounter weather. Not, thankfully, the kind that causes sailors to kiss their St. Christophers – but still, a pelting rain that makes us glad we’re not hauling braces and halyards out on the poop deck. The wild weather only heightens the visual drama. As we head for shore in the Zodiacs, the briny air is alive with whirling, shrieking seabirds, so many that when they pass over us, the order goes out: “Heads down!” Bald eagles launch themselves off the towering cliffs and soar above like black apparitions. Water sluices down the granite aprons, creating dozens of waterfalls. We disembark, shaky on our sea legs, and wend our way through the woods, clambering over tangled roots and velvety moss. The forest is a hobgoblin realm of strange plants: glowing yellow mushrooms, menacing thorn-lined stalks of devil’s club and giant-leafed skunk cabbage. Wispy lichens known as witches’ hair and Methuselah’s beard hang from the trees like green cobwebs.
The stench of dead salmon assails our nostrils. Their carcasses are strewn along the riverbed, piled in the eelgrass and draped over the sides of fallen logs like Dali’s melting clocks. Some have had eyes pecked out by birds or bellies ripped open for their roe; others are missing their brains. Amid such bounty, bears are selective, consuming only the most protein-rich parts of each fish. Watt, our ever-vigilant naturalist, points out a few white strips lying on a rock. “Salmon testes,” she says. “Bears hate them.” But all this death is the stuff of life: The salmon also feed other wildlife, and the decaying bodies of the fish, dragged into the forest by the bears, provide valuable nutrients for the soil. The interconnectedness of the world, the idea of cycles within cycles, is something everyone has heard of, but out here it is tangible.
day later, the salmon are hopping out of the water like jack-in-the-boxes as we sail into Klemtu, a village accessible only by boat or plane, 219 km north of Port Hardy. Aside from the salmon, the harbour is calm. So far, we have encountered only one serious patch of swells, but the rocking of the ship is constant and we have to keep this in mind as we climb the ladder to the deck or risk missing a rung. The motion forces our bodies to expend energy: Our leg and stomach muscles reflexively work to retain balance. But it is not a discomfort.
Some 400 souls live in Klemtu, about half of them named Robinson and virtually all of them members of two tribes: the Kitasoo and the XaisXais. Francis Robinson, an elderly man with a soft voice, offers to show us the community’s new longhouse. Built of red cedar and decorated with the village’s clan emblems (raven, eagle, wolf and killer whale), it may be the most impressive longhouse on the coast. The structure is used for important cultural events such as the naming of children, the giving of gifts and ceremonies to honour the dead. “Only 10 of the people in the village still speak our language,” admits Robinson. “We built the longhouse to help preserve our culture, to keep alive our singing and dancing.” Soon after it was completed, a spirit bear swam across the river and came ashore near its doors: a very good omen. “It hung around for a couple days,” says Robinson. “People would get on the telephone and say, ‘It’s over by Harvey’s place now.’ ”
The money for the longhouse came from the proceeds of fish farming, an industry the Kitasoo and XaisXais have embraced to ease Klemtu’s chronic unemployment problem. It’s a controversial decision, one opposed by environmentalists and the other coastal tribes, who believe fish farms will destroy the wild stocks of salmon through disease and pollution and permanently damage the area’s ecology, erasing what is a traditional livelihood for aboriginal communities.
In a place so vast and so ancient, it is difficult to imagine any of this wilderness ever changing. Yet until very recently the Great Bear Rainforest was threatened by clear-cut logging. However, in February 2006, following a decade of bitter dispute, an innovative new accord was reached between B.C.’s First Nations, environmentalists and the lumber industry that will protect 6.4 million hectares of the forest from the saw and guarantee the right of indigenous peoples to manage their traditional territories. According to the deal, 1.76 million hectares of critical habitat in the Great Bear are to be preserved outright as parkland with another 4.64 million hectares slated to be run under an ecosystem management plan, one that will ensure sustainable forestry with minimal environmental impact dawn breaks over another anchorage: Khutze Inlet, one of the pristine treasures saved by an initial accord in 2001, which permanently protected 20 river valleys and placed a two-year logging moratorium on another 68. I find myself alone on deck, serenaded by the creaking of the masts in the morning breeze and the piercing cry of the gulls.
The rain has stopped and sunlight glitters on the last of the cliffside waterfalls, lighting them up like shimmering diamonds. The reflection of the mountains in the black, still water creates a mirror image of reality: up becomes down. Mist moves around me with startling speed, swirling into fantastic shapes. With disbelieving eyes, I watch a frothy slab of white surge across the bay like the prow of a ghost ship. It is a breathtaking scene and it inspires contrary emotions: humility and pride. Never have I felt so small in the grand scheme of things, nor so privileged. At this moment in time I am the only human in the world with this ethereal vista.
At midday we reach Whale Channel. It lives up to its name: two humpbacks surface off the ship’s port side. The 30-tonne leviathans rise and blow, then dive again, flipping their tail flukes as we sail slowly alongside at a respectful distance. The water at the point of their descent is eerily calm, a phenomenon known as a “humpback’s footprint.” The measured rhythm of the feeding whales is soothing and hypnotic, and a profound stillness falls over the ship. “To hear a creature breathing, it feels really personal,” says Bax, and that’s about all anyone says for the next five minutes. By the time we exit the channel, we have seen 20 humpbacks. Keeping score of the wildlife we encounter has become a game; Watt jots the sightings in her notebook and sketches those that strike her fancy.
Later, we weigh anchor off Princess Royal Island, home of the fabled Kermode, and trek into the woods, eventually settling beside a rushing creek while Smith scouts ahead. The white bears, which are not albinos but rather the products of a recessive gene, are named after Francis Kermode, a zoologist with the Royal B.C. Museum who, in the early 1900s, conducted the first studies into the bear’s origins. But the natives have known about the spirit bear for thousands of years. According to Tsimshian legend, the creator turned every 10th bear white to serve as a reminder of the time when glaciers covered the land. We spot plenty of bear tracks, but the spirit bear never materializes.
As usual, dinner is delicious and dessert even better. Although you would never guess it from his appearance, our unshaven and casually dressed cook is actually an executive chef at Victoria’s Harbour Towers hotel. Kobbero has signed on for three expeditions with the Maple Leaf because he loves the outdoors. Admittedly, when Kobbero first glimpsed the cramped dimensions of the galley, he had second thoughts. “I said to myself, ‘Christ, what have I gotten myself into? I can’t do this.’ But you adjust.”
Meals take on added importance aboard a ship. With nine people sitting cheek-to-cheek around a table, the dining is both entertaining and self-revealing. Carmody loves jazz; Johnson and Brooks are rollerblade addicts; Furseth and Bax belong to a sailing club and won their trip on board the Maple Leaf in a raffle at the Vancouver International Boat Show. Pillman is a 78-year-old fitness buff, part-time poet and full-time joke-teller. When he retired, at age 60, he sold his sailboat and bought a kayak because “I wasn’t getting enough exercise.” Six years ago, at 72, he and a few pals completed a 22-day, 240-nautical-mile kayak trip through these parts. “It rained 17 of those days,” Pillman recalls.
The sun is out in force the next day and the sails are raised as we head south past the primordial contours of Princess Royal Island. Freed of mechanical locomotion, the Maple Leaf surges forward like a living thing, cutting over the waves, its four canvas wings snapping like whip cracks. The creak of the timbers, the schooner’s swaying and the wind’s steady caress send my imagination spinning back two centuries to the days of North America’s early explorers. In 1792, Captain George Vancouver plied these waters in a vessel not so dissimilar to ours, albeit without the comfort of computers, global positioning devices, Gore-Tex and a four-star chef. But Vancouver found the coast a “dreary and uninteresting place,” and more than a little spooky. While riding out one violent squall, he wrote that the surroundings presented “as gloomy and dismal an aspect as nature could be supposed to exhibit.” And Vancouver was here in mid-summer.
The day only improves when the captain urges me to take the helm. He points to a distant peak, my focus point, and I try to maintain a straight line toward it. The wheel moves easily in my hands, but to make a course change I have to crank it over hard and then wait several seconds for the adjustment to take effect. It is like wrestling with an unseen foe, and it gives me new appreciation of the stamina needed to pilot a boat of this size all day long. The wind is behind us, which makes for tricky sailing, but I soon grasp what’s required. Gradually, we pick up speed. Furseth checks the wheelhouse GPS. “We’re up to 4.3 knots,” he announces. Minutes later he shouts out, “He’s got it up to 5.2.” A half-hour later, when I surrender the helm, we’ve hit 5.9 knots. Furseth calls me a “natural” and says I should get a sailboat. But I’ve relinquished the wheel just in time. A half-hour later, the wind picks up and the task becomes more complicated. Heading directly into the current, Furseth swings the helm over a little too strongly, and the jib swings wildly to starboard, sending the crew scrambling to regain control. During the struggle, a section of the mainsail tears and Smith has to start the engine and turn the boat around into the wind to take down the sails. It takes 20 minutes of hard hauling and tying before order is restored. The sea abruptly seems more powerful, more alive and endlessly deep.
“That’s the first time we’ve ever ripped a sail,” Smith says as he sets course for our evening’s anchorage off Swindle Island. The mishap hasn’t blunted his nerve. “It will be deserted,” Smith predicts. “The bay is surrounded by reefs, so most boats won’t go near there.”
“But we are?” I ask.
We’re not most boats,” he says, grinning. “Hey, I didn’t say it was Maple Leaf Safe Adventures.” He’s joking, of course. The Maple Leaf has a stellar record at sea, and Smith is a meticulous captain. We have no doubts that we are in the hands of our own master and commander.a mixture of modern technology and sea smarts gets us safely through. At age 32, Smith, who worked for nine years as a backcountry ranger for B.C. Parks, and as a training officer and coxswain of small rescue vessels with the Canadian Coast Guard Auxilliary, is a seasoned vet. It’s out here in what the rest of us regard as alien territory that he feels most complete. Born on Salt Spring Island, Smith has always lived close to nature, though within the last five years he has been increasingly involved in environmental issues. Protecting the Great Bear Rainforest has been near the top of his agenda.
After dinner, we ponder how sailors have been guided home for centuries with only the heavens for a compass. The night sky is ablaze with shooting stars and twinkling constellations: the Pleiades, Pegasus, Cassiopeia and the familiar Big and Little Dippers, known to the Greeks as Ursa Major and Ursa Minor: Big Bear and Little Bear. According to west coast native legend, the bowl of the dipper is a giant bear and the stars of the handle are three warriors chasing it. Here we are in the Great Bear, staring up at the Great Bear – bookended by infinity.
Next day’s cruise to the Goose Island Group takes us through Hecate Strait, the body of water separating the Mainland from the Queen Charlotte Islands. The ship does some rolling, but Smith calls this mild. “Hecate is known as one of the roughest passages in North America. It’s the calmest today that you’ll ever see it.” A dragonfly zooms by, and we wonder aloud if it’s a stowaway or has made the marathon flight from shore. Cormorants power past, moving as if late for an important date, and glaucous-winged gulls hover above the mast. Far ahead, a line of turreted castles adorns the horizon. It’s a Fata Morgana, a rare type of mirage that occurs when light rays are deflected downward rather than upward. What we are really seeing are multiple images of the shoreline from below the horizon reflected in the mist.
Five hours of sun and wind and salt air nicely iron out the kinks in your mind. We arrive feeling godsmacked and all too aware that the expedition is drawing rapidly to a close. In the glow of sunset, we circle one of the isles in our Zodiacs, adding new entries to our Audubon catalogue: a peregrine falcon, red-necked grebes, surf scoters, rhinoceros auklets, oystercatchers, sea lions and sea otters. As we pass, harbour seals bob in the water and stare, eyelashes batting in puzzlement.
At that night’s farewell meal, Alison, the Alabama preacher, sums up the week in her soft southern drawl: “I just wanted to say that I can’t believe I’m having such a great time needing a bath, wearing the same clothes day after day, having a bad hair week and never looking worse – and doing all this with a group of total strangers.” She has a point. Everyone has enjoyed the camaraderie. The ship, which initially seemed so unfamiliar and intimidating, has become a cozy home. And during the journey we have all been stretched in some way, psychologically and physically, learning something new about ourselves and the world. From naked nymphs in rainbows to phantom castles in the haze, it has been an enchanting week.
Yet perhaps the most surprising discovery comes on our last night aboard, as we all arrive at the same understanding. The hardest part of a journey such as this one is not the rough seas or stinging rain, the scaling of slippery ledges or the adjusting to confined quarters, but simply having to say good-bye. Adrift at the edge of nowhere, we raise glasses of brandy in the sailor’s tradition (no clinking), and amid much cheer and laughter, drink one last toast to the Great Bear.
