River City Rip

Sarah and I live in a place called Campbell River, in British Columbia, Canada. A river of the same name flows through the northern reaches of Campbell River. The river is believed named for the ship surgeon of the HMS Plumper, cartographing in 1859. The community took the name with the construction of its post office in 1907. Tla'mataxw is the aboriginal name for the original Wiwekam settlement at the river's mouth; the First Nations band resides there still, under the designation Indian Reserve #11.

Campbell River, our first fixed location since Garak-Dong, Seoul, is a city. But Campbell River isn't a Seoul, for which I'm glad. A city in name, but by feel a town; in British Columbia, a community can be incorporated as a city if its population exceeds 5,000. Despite its city status, the town of Campbell River, population 30,000 or thereabouts, attracts those looking for a slower life. Retirees from Alberta, so I hear, and citizens of the US and BC Lower Mainlanders also. These outsiders are fuelling a transformation in the River City, a gradual shift from industry town to something less single-minded, more broadly cultural, artistic and active. A creeping transformation making its way up Vancouver Island - transmitted from Vancouver and Victoria, a dash of West Coast culture coupling with healthy doses of Island mentality - and flowing through the east coast urban centres. Campbell River is within the tidal zone of this wave, not yet subsumed.

The River City is a logging town first. Trucks and pick-ups dominate the roads; highway logging trucks, loaded with fresh cut forest behemoths or smaller pulp grade logs, plough through town. Tugs towing timber rafts or ships carrying logs ply the Discovery Passage, the channel between Quadra Island and Campbell River, heading south. When the wind blows from the north the captivating scent of the pulp mill up the coast wafts over the town. Other extractive industries are prominent. Mining - zinc, copper, lead, gold, silver, coal - plays a role in the region, as does commercial fishing. Campbell River serves as the operations base for several salmon farm companies, and sport fishing attracts the tourists. Even as fewer salmon run the rivers of BC, not least due to the operations of those fish farms, Campbell River trumpets the slogan, "Salmon Capital of the World."

This kind of dichotomy is apparent throughout Campbell River. The beautiful surroundings of coastal British Columbia - the waters of the Strait of Georgia; the mountains of the mainland to our east and Vancouver Island's backbone to our west; the layers of forest covering this coast, the myriad tree species, the bountiful berry bushes, the ferns that recall New Zealand; the fauna of the land that do not, mammals unfarmed, undomesticated. And the ugliness of the town centre - strip malls and branded big box stores and glorious acres of asphalted parking. A place where I can find shiitake mushrooms, kimchi ramyeon, and sashimi prepared by knife wielding Japanese - as well as Samson's Janitorial World: no Delilah, no mop bucket roller-coaster rides (sorry kids), but bristled brooms and advice on septic tanks. Streets where I pick berries beside the footpath - huckleberries, salmonberries, thimbleberries, native trailing blackberries, with exotic blackberries coming on line later this summer - while heroin junkies float on by.

Today I took my bike out, pedalled for five or ten minutes through a buffeting wind and was surrounded by the trees of the Beaver Lodge forest lands - a combination of Douglas-fir, western redcedar, Sitka spruce, grand fir, big leaf maple and red alder. I rode trails edged by sword ferns for a couple of hours, encountering other bikers and people walking dogs. Later, I found a perch by the beaver pond for a breather. Dense forest surrounded the water. A mallard duck called greeting to a companion dropping in from the sky. Seven female mallards drifted to my end of the pond, and frolicked in the trickling rapids flowing past. One stood sentry on a rock, a leg tucked away, keeping half an eye on me. Above the wind whistled by, but within the forest all was calm. I breathed the air, clean and fresh. Seoul, this is not.