“A very terrible day.”

That was how Captain Robert Falcon Scot began his journal entry on this day a hundred years ago. He had just lost the first man of his expedition to the South Pole – the big sailor called Taff Evans. A month earlier, Evans had posed for pictures at the South Pole with Scott and the rest of his polar party: Lawrence Oates, Birdie Bowers and Bill Wilson. Evans was from “the lower deck,” a petty officer in the Royal Navy, and his inclusion in the polar party had been a grand gesture by Scott, a reward for the very hard work of the big, cheerful sailor.

They had reached the Pole on January 18, to find that the Norwegians led by Roald Amundsen had beaten them there by a month, snatching the honor of “first to the Pole.” For the next twenty-nine days they had struggled homeward, pulling their sledge across the polar plateau, then down through the mountains on the Beardmore Glacier. In the last week, Evans had been slowing the others down. Finding reasons to get out of the harness, he had lagged far behind the rest of the party.

At the end of this day, in a tent near the bottom of the glacier, Scott recorded the details of the sailor’s death:

“Evans looked a little better after a good sleep, and declared, as he always did, that he was quite well. He started in his place on the traces, but half an hour later worked his ski shoes adrift, and had to leave the sledge. The surface was awful, the soft recently fallen snow clogging the ski and runners at every step, the sledge groaning, the sky overcast, and the land hazy. We stopped after about one hour, and Evans came up again, but very slowly. Half an hour later he dropped out again on the same plea. He asked Bowers to lend him a piece of string. I cautioned him to come on as quickly as he could, and he answered cheerfully as I thought. We had to push on, and the remainder of us were forced to pull very hard, sweating heavily. Abreast the Monument Rock we stopped, and seeing Evans a long way astern, I camped for lunch. There was no alarm at first, and we prepared tea and our own meal, consuming the latter. After lunch, and Evans still not appearing, we looked out, to see him still afar off. By this time we were alarmed, and all four started back on ski. I was the first to reach the poor man and shocked at his appearance; he was on his knees with clothing disarranged, hands uncovered and frostbitten, and a wild look in his eyes. Asked what was the matter, he replied with a slow speech that he didn’t know, but thought he must have fainted. We got him on his feet, but after two or three steps he sank down again. He showed every sign of complete collapse. Wilson, Bowers and I went back for the sledge, whilst Oates remained with him. When we returned he was practically unconscious, and when we got him into the tent quite comatose. He died quietly at 12:30 a.m.”

Half an hour later, Scott and the others packed up their tent and moved along, leaving the body of Taff Evans behind in the snow. The next day they reached the foot of the glacier and camped at their old Shambles Camp, where they had shot the last of the ponies on their way to the Pole.  Back on the floating ice of the dreadful Barrier,  they celebrated their return to sea level with a meal of pony meat dug up from a frozen cache.

James Pigg – my Winter Pony – was among those shot at Shambles Camp. He may well have provided a part of that meal on February 19, 1911. It would have been his very last gift to men he loved dearly.

At the South Pole. Evans is second from the right.

Petty Officer Edgar “Taff” Evans

These totem poles stood in a Nanaimo park for nearly forty years. They got old and rotten, and people carved initials all over their lower sections. But when I found them lying on the ground one day, I complained to the city, thinking it was shameful to just cut them down and leave them there.

I was told very politely that that wasn’t exactly the case. The poles – no longer safe – had been lowered in a ceremony by the area’s Snuneneymuxw First Nation. According to the wishes of the Snuneymuxw, the poles were laid down nearby, to return by nature to the forest.

The figures  still look rather poignant, though. I cannot go by without stopping to look at them. On some days they seem angry, on others woeful or bewildered. It’s amazing how quickly they’re fading away.

A hundred years ago today, Captain Scott began his trek to the South Pole. With two teams of dogs and a string of ponies pulling sledges, he and his men left the hut where they had spent the winter at the edge of Antarctica. They walked across the sea ice, around the the tip of a glacier, and up to the old, abandoned hut that Shackleton had used.  Scott, of course, would never return. He and four others would die in the frozen wasteland to the south.

But the night before his departure, on the last day of October, Scott sounded hopeful when he wrote in his diary. “The future is in the lap of the gods,” he said. “I can think of nothing left undone to deserve success.”

Though Scott began his last long walk on November 1, his expedition was already underway. Several days earlier, he had sent off his pair of motor sledges. They traveled slowly, and were plagued by mechanical problems, but Scott saw in them the future of polar exploration.

On October 31, he had sent off the first of his ponies – one named Jehu, and another called James Pigg. They were the weakest of his little stable, and the journey to Hut Point was a test, to see if they  were strong enough to go on. They both surprised him. James Pigg would go as far to the south as the biggest and strongest of the ponies. He would outlive live nearly all the others.

For every pony there was a handler, a man who walked at his side all the way, holding onto his bridle. James Pigg was led by Patrick Keohane, an Irish sailor who had spent the long Antarctic winter building a model ship. Like all the handlers, Keohane grew very fond of his animal. When he arrived at Shackleton’s hut, he led James Pigg right inside, to keep him sheltered from the cold. For that night and the next, James Pigg bunked with the men of Scott’s expedition.

It was probably the first time in his life – and definitely the last time – that he had been inside a house.

This is one of many incidents that endeared me to James Pigg. Even Captain Scott refereed to him as “our friend.”  Poor James Pigg was a faithful little pony, and a fitting hero – I think – for an account of Scott’s expedition. I told his story in The Winter Pony, and for the next month or so, I will follow the last few weeks of his life.

Oh, give me a home…

Where the deer and the TURKEYS play???

It’s easy to find deer on Gabriola Island, though they make themselves a bit scarce when hunting season starts. And it’s not that hard to fiind turkeys wandering around in little flocks. But you seldom see the two together.

I found this group mingling at the Horseshoe corner, not far from one of the island’s best restaurants.

James Pigg is on Twitter.  The real-life pony who went to Antarctica with Captain Scott a hundred years ago, and whose adventure is recounted in The Winter Pony, is telling his story one tweet at a time.

https://twitter.com/james_pigg

This is Hadancy, the famous Painting Horse of Gabriola Island.  In her paddock near Malaspina Galleries, she paints pictures that are sold internationally.  The money is used to rescue horses in distress.  She has now at work on two paintings commissioned by a woman in Europe.

When my youngest nieces came to visit from Alberta, I took them to watch Hadancy paint.  With a big dog named Bear, the little horse put on an old-fashioned “dog and pony show.”  Sadly, bear has died since then.

Hadancy inspired me to do my own painting commemorating the visit.  I think it was easier for me, having hands instead of hooves, but hers was the better painting.

I don’t like to think how many years have passed since my family gathered at the tiny old mill town of  Telegraph Cove.  But it’s been a very long time.  The boy and girl in the picture – my niece and nephew –  are now grown up.  The girl is married, but I haven’t met her husband.  We’re still no better at getting together.

I didn’t recognize my older brother when I saw him in Telegraph Cove, it had been so long since the last time.  I had never met his daughter, nor his son who has my name.  They all came out from Ontario that year, collecting our elderly parents along the way.  My younger brother came from Kamloops, my sister from Alberta with her own two daughters.  I sailed down from Prince Rupert in my boat Connection.

We went sailing together, all crowded on Connection, down to famous Robson Bight where the orcas like to go.  But we didn’t see whales until we got up to Blackfish Sound, where a pod of them was hunting.  We put a hydrophone into the water, and listened to their voices creaking through the sea.

My niece and nephew with their catch

Telegraph Cove was a busy place.  People came from all over the world to go whale watching there.  It was a popular sport-fishing base, full of boats of all sizes.  A boardwalk twisted past the old buildings and led to a little dock at the mouth of the bay, where we found just enough room for Connection.   There, my niece and nephew went fishing.

They fished like all children do, dangling a hook over the side, waiting for a tug on the line.  They caught the tiny perch that are known as shiners, so skinny you can nearly see right through them.  And on the second day, they somehow caught a shark.

It was a sand shark, a dogfish, a species hated by fishermen for its habit of sticking itself onto trolling hooks.  Fishermen punish dogfish for that.  Off the west coast of Vancouver Island, on a salmon troller,  I  saw a fishermen stabbing one over and over, only to let it loose in the hope that other dogfish would tear it to shreds.  Something terrible and shameful comes over fishermen when it comes to dogfish.

But my niece and nephew were delighted by their catch.  To them, I’m sure, it was not a small dogfish that came up on their hook, it was a min Great White, and it didn’t matter to them in the least that it was already dead, or even a little bit decomposing.  One of the “sport’” fishermen must have caught it first, and punished it, and tossed it away at the dock.  And there it lay until my niece and nephew snagged it.

They carried it proudly along the boardwalk, past the buildings and the boat docks, past whale watchers and fishermen.  They brought it to the weighing station, where the fishermen recorded their huge salmon and ling cod. And a clerk at the resort was nice to take their picture and pin it to the wall among the other trophies.

Our gathering lasted a week.  Then everyone scattered to their separate homes, and I went down to the dock and started Connection’s engine.  But I shut it down again, went back to the resort, and asked for the picture on the wall.  I wanted to keep it, to remind me of things.  I would always remember our gathering, but I didn’t want to ever forget the simple pleasures of being a child.

Curious about Telegraph Cove?  It’s marked with a pin on the travel map.

In most places, Wild Turkey is  something you drink.  On Gabriola Island, it’s a road hazard.   A small flock of the birds roams the streets in the middle of the island.  Once domesticated, they now run loose like, pecking through gardens, peering through windows.  I’m no expert, but I believe they”re ten to twelve pounders.

Lately, at sunset, the turkeys have been gathering at the baseball diamonds where I take the dog for her evening walk.  I didn’t really know that turkeys could fly until Misty, a herding dog, got them all nicely arranged on the chain link fence.  It’s the outfield boundary, but I call it the fowl line.

on the fence

This week marked the seventy-second birthday of the famous March of Dimes, the campaign that battled polio.  The name was coined by a comedian, as a small pun on the newsreels that played in cinemas of the thirties – the March of Time.  Created by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt in 1938, the March of Dimes, under the Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, helped immensely in the development of a polio vaccine in 1955.

Though the disease was virtually beaten the campaign went on.  Even today the March of Dimes continues, its proceeds being used in many ways to help the very young.

In this old film from the Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, the famous actress Helen Hayes visits Rancho Los Amigos, a polio ward in California.  It was sent to me by Mr. Richard Daggert, who taught me a great deal about polio and its treatment while I was writing |The Giant-Slayer, a story set in a polio ward.  Mr. Daggert was a patient at Rancho Los Amigos when Helen Hayes paid her visit.  He’s not in the movie; he was in a room just down the hall.

As Mr. Daggett told me about his experience with polio, he stressed more than once that Rancho Los Amigos was not a dismal place, that the young patients in their iron lungs were the same as other children, often happy but sometimes sad. He said they were not as lonely as I might have imagined, and that many entertainers – from clowns to magicians to movie stars – went to the hospital to entertain them.
You’ll see a lot of that happiness  in this short film.  There are people in iron lungs and rocking beds. There’s a small boy who paddles himself along the floor on a treatment board like the one used by a character in The Giant-Slayer. There’s even a boy who was born in an iron lung, as well as his mother, still a patient encased in her respirator. Look closely at the youngest patients in the iron lungs and you’ll see how they move very slightly back and forth as the machines do their breathing for them.
For me, these images were worth many thousands of words. It was here that I found the child who became Dickie Espinosa, my favorite of the story’s characters. If you’ve read the novel, you’ll probably have no trouble picking him out.

When Misty was a puppy we took her to obedience school.  Every week there was homework.  After one class we were sent home to teach our dog a trick.  Most of the dogs in the class learned to play dead, “speak” or roll over.  One particularly clever dog was taught to turn on a light switch.  Misty learned a magic trick.

I would like to say that this trick made Misty rich and famous.  But that wouldn’t be exactly true.  She has performed it only once in public, at the annual Islander Days on Gabriola Island.  She won a prize – but so did every other dog.  Still, she seems very proud of her trick, and likes to show it off whenever she can.