As a member of the Gibsons Paddle Club one of my happiest times is to be out in their Voyageur canoe and paddling on the ocean. Our club has outrigger canoes like one would see in Hawaii, we’ve got dragon boats and we have the Voyageur. More traditional to Canada, the Voyageur style of canoe speaks of our very history. It is a part of our Canadian heritage.
In 2007 we stored our Voyageur on the northern shore of Porpoise Bay in Sechelt. From there the canoe would ply the waters of Sechelt Inlet pretty well twelve months of the year. We actually stored our canoe at a small marina owned and operated by the people of that surrounding community. It’s called the Shores Community Marina. As a token of our appreciation for allowing the canoe to be stored there, we’d agreed to come to their community picnic each year to take people for canoe rides. Most folks have never been in such a large canoe so it’s a real joy to take up to 10 paddlers at a time out for a bit of a paddle.
We take a very short journey; certainly a lot shorter than we experienced paddlers are used to. We leave the marina and paddle out and around a small island there in the Bay. It’s called Poise Island. We’re gone for all of 10 to 15 minutes.
It was in September of 2007 that I was steering such a group around the island when the painting came into focus. As I steered the canoe around the island, the calm water and the vibrant greens demanded all my attention. It was low tide so there were even greens and yellows on the rocks. The tide line on the rocks looked like it had been etched using a ruler to make it as straight as possible. And of course it was the arbutus tree that completed the paint box composition. I had the paddlers stop and relax just long enough for me to take but one photograph and we were off again. That pause though was just long enough to secure the image that would become my painting, the painting that will forever speak of the beauty and tranquility of POISE ISLAND.
