Read Online Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist by Patrick Moore - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Patrick Moore
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http://archive.southcoasttoday.com/daily/08-05/08-21-05/kennedy.htm
[3] . BBC News, “Greenpeace Opposes Wind Farm Plan,” April 6, 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/4415787.stm
[4] . Michael Crichton, “Remarks to the Commonwealth Club,” San Francisco, September 15, 2003, http://www.monsanto.co.uk/news/ukshowlib.phtml?uid=7662
[5] . “The Current Mass Extinction,” http://www.well.com/~davidu/extinction.html
[6] . Robert Kennedy Jr., April 27, 2005, http://climatequotes.com/celebrities/robert-f-kennedy-jr/
Chapter 3 -
Beginnings
My life began in the tiny fishing and logging village of Winter Harbour on the northwest tip of Vancouver Island, in the rain forest by the Pacific. My mother and father were the children of true pioneers, who had come to this remote place and learned to make a living from a tough wilderness. I grew up thinking 150 inches of rain a year was normal and that the ultimate freedom was a 12-foot wooden skiff with a two-horsepower outboard motor. There was no road to—or even in—Winter Harbour. I commuted with a few other children on my dad’s small wooden tugboat to a one-room schoolhouse two miles away. It was a peaceful childhood, playing on the tide flats by the salmon-spawning streams in the rain forest.
The original Kwakiutl inhabitants of Winter Harbour called their village Cliena. They had survived by the beach for thousands of years on the abundant salmon, clams, and berries, and built their houses of cedar planks taken from the forest behind them. Over the years the people of Cliena were decimated by measles, smallpox, and other diseases introduced by early European settlers. (Many other aboriginal communities met a similar fate.) The village site had long been abandoned by the time my grandfather established his float camp in Winter Harbour in 1936, the few native survivors having relocated to the nearby community of Quatsino. I was born into this far-flung floating village on June 15, 1947.
The floating logging camp I was born into in Winter Harbour had about 50 residents. The family houses are on the right and the single men’s cabins are on the left. This photo was taken in 1951.
The logging camp where I grew up was on floats made of old-growth trees cut along the shoreline. There were a dozen bunkhouses for the single men, a cookhouse, blacksmith shop, office, movie hall, and a half-dozen family houses. The fishing was best behind the cookhouse, where the flunky (the cook’s assistant) threw the food scraps into the ocean (the “salt chuck” to us). Mothers worried their children would fall into the salt chuck and drown. A bulky kapok life jacket was mandatory dress outside the house. My first brush with death came at age four when I fell between two float-logs and became stuck facedown in the water between them. Luckily one of the loggers found me before I drowned.
There were no frills in the life of a West Coast logger in those early years. Four men bunked in each 12-by-24-foot shack, one to a corner, with a 45-gallon oil drum woodstove in the center, where rain soaked clothes were hung to dry. They worked six or seven days a week, getting up in the dark, working in the rain and wrestling in the mud to fix broken machinery. It was hard, relentless work, falling the huge trees, winching them down the mountain to the sea, where they could be boomed to the mill, all the while staying alert to avoid being slashed by a snapping cable or crushed by a runaway log. When the loggers were not working, there was nothing much to do back at the bunkhouse but play cards or listen to the radio. It was a lonely and sometimes miserable existence.
The float camp was moved ashore in 1954. This white house by the large spruce tree was my home until I was 14.
The early float camp era was ending during my boyhood. As the merchantable trees along the water’s edge had all been harvested, myfather, Bill Moore, obtained a lease in 1954 from the Kwakiutl to establish
[3] . BBC News, “Greenpeace Opposes Wind Farm Plan,” April 6, 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/4415787.stm
[4] . Michael Crichton, “Remarks to the Commonwealth Club,” San Francisco, September 15, 2003, http://www.monsanto.co.uk/news/ukshowlib.phtml?uid=7662
[5] . “The Current Mass Extinction,” http://www.well.com/~davidu/extinction.html
[6] . Robert Kennedy Jr., April 27, 2005, http://climatequotes.com/celebrities/robert-f-kennedy-jr/
Chapter 3 -
Beginnings
My life began in the tiny fishing and logging village of Winter Harbour on the northwest tip of Vancouver Island, in the rain forest by the Pacific. My mother and father were the children of true pioneers, who had come to this remote place and learned to make a living from a tough wilderness. I grew up thinking 150 inches of rain a year was normal and that the ultimate freedom was a 12-foot wooden skiff with a two-horsepower outboard motor. There was no road to—or even in—Winter Harbour. I commuted with a few other children on my dad’s small wooden tugboat to a one-room schoolhouse two miles away. It was a peaceful childhood, playing on the tide flats by the salmon-spawning streams in the rain forest.
The original Kwakiutl inhabitants of Winter Harbour called their village Cliena. They had survived by the beach for thousands of years on the abundant salmon, clams, and berries, and built their houses of cedar planks taken from the forest behind them. Over the years the people of Cliena were decimated by measles, smallpox, and other diseases introduced by early European settlers. (Many other aboriginal communities met a similar fate.) The village site had long been abandoned by the time my grandfather established his float camp in Winter Harbour in 1936, the few native survivors having relocated to the nearby community of Quatsino. I was born into this far-flung floating village on June 15, 1947.
The floating logging camp I was born into in Winter Harbour had about 50 residents. The family houses are on the right and the single men’s cabins are on the left. This photo was taken in 1951.
The logging camp where I grew up was on floats made of old-growth trees cut along the shoreline. There were a dozen bunkhouses for the single men, a cookhouse, blacksmith shop, office, movie hall, and a half-dozen family houses. The fishing was best behind the cookhouse, where the flunky (the cook’s assistant) threw the food scraps into the ocean (the “salt chuck” to us). Mothers worried their children would fall into the salt chuck and drown. A bulky kapok life jacket was mandatory dress outside the house. My first brush with death came at age four when I fell between two float-logs and became stuck facedown in the water between them. Luckily one of the loggers found me before I drowned.
There were no frills in the life of a West Coast logger in those early years. Four men bunked in each 12-by-24-foot shack, one to a corner, with a 45-gallon oil drum woodstove in the center, where rain soaked clothes were hung to dry. They worked six or seven days a week, getting up in the dark, working in the rain and wrestling in the mud to fix broken machinery. It was hard, relentless work, falling the huge trees, winching them down the mountain to the sea, where they could be boomed to the mill, all the while staying alert to avoid being slashed by a snapping cable or crushed by a runaway log. When the loggers were not working, there was nothing much to do back at the bunkhouse but play cards or listen to the radio. It was a lonely and sometimes miserable existence.
The float camp was moved ashore in 1954. This white house by the large spruce tree was my home until I was 14.
The early float camp era was ending during my boyhood. As the merchantable trees along the water’s edge had all been harvested, myfather, Bill Moore, obtained a lease in 1954 from the Kwakiutl to establish
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