HARRISON GOLD
I’ve known the beautiful Harrison River for over 20 years. I first paddled its course from Harrison Lake to the Fraser River in 1997 when I was training for the VisionQuest Canoe Journey. Since then I’ve paddled the river a few times with the PULLING TOGETHER canoe journey as well.
But, perhaps the most memorable journeys have been over the past 6 years when I’ve organized a group from the Gibsons Paddle Club to spend a few days at the Harrison Hot Springs Spa and Resort. There’s usually about 20 of us and each year we go up to Harrison in October. We take with us the Dolphin Spirit, the Club’s 35 foot Voyageur style canoe, and we paddle the Harrison from the lake to Kilby twice over the 3 days we’re in Harrison. It’s an annual holiday getaway that we all anticipate each year. This year, as I steered the canoe down the river, I got to thinking that I’d probably seen the expanse of this waterway about 15 times.
As an artist, I’ve always had my eyes and heart open to finding a painting on the Harriosn. The Harrison River trip is a gorgeous, colourful and exhilarating adventure each and every time. But, in spite of that, I’ve never found “the painting”, and up until this year I’ve never attempted one.
Then, in October of 2018, I found my painting. It was Sunday afternoon when we shoved off from the beach in front of the Harrison Resort. Cloudy, breezy and with rain threatening, it mattered not, we’d challenge the river knowing that soothing hot pools awaited us an hour after we’d get off the water at Kilby. But, as we paddled past the familiar pilings half way down the river, we found ourselves in the middle of a torrential rain and wind event. So severe was the wind that to stop paddling meant that the canoe was actually pushed back upstream, against the river’s flow. The paddlers couldn’t even look up to pull the canoe. The wind and driving rain wouldn’t permit it. The storm last perhaps 20 minutes.
And then it was gone, to the east. The wind calmed and the water relaxed to its normal flow. And as the storm clouds tumbled up the valley to our port side, the sun peaking through the valley to the west lit the fall trees on the shore. “Someone take a picture. There’s my painting!” I called to the crew. Tom Heirck got the shots that would become the inspiration for my painting. For those of us who were in the canoe that day, this image tells the story. It’s a day and a paddle we’ll never forget.
For me, both the day on the water with friends, and the image I found as we fought our way through that storm are something I considered in naming this painting – “HARRISON GOLD”.
