My canoe, the one that I sat and worked in for the entire journey, was Skookum Kalitan. It is the canoe owned by the RCMP. No matter what my emotions, as I waded into the waters to enter the canoe each morning, it washed those emotions away and brought me back to a constant. The canoe is such a special place, particularly when it takes you so far and experiences so much with you. The constant that I always returned to was one of a calm reassurance, a sense of being in the proper place at the proper time. Skookum Kalitan had a sense of “home” to it. It had a personality. We had long been told by the native people that a canoe represents community and that is truly how it felt. No matter what the task at hand, no matter what issues or problems we were leaving on the shore, or were awaiting us at the next beach, Skookum Kalitan provided the warm, comfortable feeling of community. So real and intense was the feeling in that canoe, I can only look with eager anticipation to the next time I will pull it to some distant shore. To this day I cannot watch videos of that canoe, see photographs of the summer of ’97 or talk of the events of that month, without stirring intense emotions within me.
Throughout the journey of the summer of ’97 I kept a journal about the experience. In it I recalled my last day of the trip when everyone else had left save a few of us to clean up. For the first time in 5 months of training, preparation and travel, the canoe was finished its job. It had been lifted from the waters of Victoria harbour and was awaiting its trailer ride back to Vancouver. I awoke early that morning and stepped from my tent to see the canoe on the grass of our campsite. These words are found in my journal dated Day 37, August 4, 1997.
“It lay there listing to one side. I could see that there was virtually nothing inside it. There were no water bottles awaiting today’s pull. No paddles rested over the seats. No life vests sat waiting for the day. It was empty and lifeless. That friend that had been so alive and vital for five months now was lifeless. It was an inanimate “thing”, not a place of peace and happiness. I turned my head to an empty parking lot and then looked back at the canoe. IT HIT! IT HIT HARD!”
The image I have painted is in memory and recognition of that “friend”. It is recognition of a historic time but most of all it is truly my emotions on paper. I will forever remember the summer of 1997, the summer of dreams, but most of all I will never forget my friend “Skookum Kalitan”.
