wordsfromanneli

Thoughts, ideas, photos, and stories.

Category Archives: Canada


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The Royston Wrecks

In the late 1930s, in Comox Bay on Vancouver Island, near the town of Royston, it seems that a breakwater was needed to help prevent rough waters from breaking up  log booms before they could be towed to market.

 

About  fourteen decommissioned boats of various kinds were scuttled in a line to form a breakwater to protect the shoreline from the worst of the sloshing waves.

Now, about 100 years later, pieces of a few of the wrecks still remain.

But it is only a matter of time before the saltwater and southeast winds will rust and break up the last of the wrecks.

Meanwhile, they are a bit of a landmark (or seamark), fondly called:

 

“The Royston Wrecks”

 

We were not always carcasses of rust,

But fine in form, yet seaworthy, robust;

Our time had come, our breakup loomed ahead,

They dragged us to the beach to rot instead.

At least our strength allowed us to reclaim

Some semblance of our pride and long-term fame.

Though battered by the sea from time to time,

Our rusting hulls and decks beset by slime,

We rested firmly on the bar to break

The might of stormy waves that tried to shake

Us loose from settling on the rocky floor,

Where we regained our usefulness once more.

A hundred years, we sheltered yonder beach

And proudly kept the onslaught out of reach.


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Coffee and Good Pie

Back in 1953 when my family came to Canada from Germany, my dad had a job in a stationery store where they also sold and repaired typewriters. Remember those?

You can see the stationery store front in this photo (which happened to be taken on the day of the Fall Fair parade).

My dad was very good at fixing typewriters and small office machines. He worked hard at his job, and the company he worked for encouraged him to go to night classes to learn English, which he did. He was doing his best to learn the new language.

One day, his co-worker suggested that they go to the New Palace Hotel and Cafe for their coffee break. It was just at the end of the block where they worked, and would be quick.

In this old photo, also taken on the day of the Fall Fair parade, you can see the New Palace, the lighter building on the left.

I just noticed the people on top of the hotel building. They’re there to watch the parade.

“They make the best pies,” he said.

“Yes, but mein English…. I not know vaht to say.” My dad’s face scrunched up with worry.

“No problem,” said his buddy. “You just say, ‘Coffee and good pie’.”

“Okay.” My dad nodded. All the way to the coffee shop he practiced. “Kaffee and kood pie. Kaffee and kood pie. Kaffee and kood pie.” He was already imagining how good it would be.

In the New Palace Cafe, they sat in a booth, and when the waitress came over, my dad said, “Kaffee … and kood pie.”

A few moments later, she came back with the cup of coffee. She slammed it down on the table, and stuck her nose in the air as she spun around and flounced away.

My dad sat there, stunned. “Vaht heppen?” he asked.

His co-worker winced. “I think she thought you said, ‘Coffee! And goodbye!'”

 

 

 


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Unwilling Players

When Ruby (our springer spaniel) was still alive, she and Emma (our English field cocker spaniel) loved to go to the beach with us. There was always something to see.

“Hey, Ruby! Look at these ducks. We could play with them.”

“Come back! We just want to play tag with you!”

“Aw! C’mon, ducks! See how we can run and play with you? That would be so much fun.

They don’t seem to want to play, Ruby. I tried to get them to come closer, but they just swam away. Not very friendly!”

“Oh, I’ll go talk to them. Maybe they thought you were just a bit too rambunctious.”

“Nope! They don’t want to play with us. They just kept on swimming farther away. Hah!”

 

“Water’s damn cold too.”

“We were just trying to be friendly and have some fun. Go figure!”

 

 


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A Bright New Morning

No soul in sight

It’s getting light,

The air is crisp,

Beneath the wisp

Of clouds that let

The sunshine get

To shine on me

Before I ski.

 

Okay, so I made that up; I’m not going to ski, but I can imagine and dream a little.

 

But those who stand there on this hill,

Are feeling anything but chill.

Filling  lungs with crisp, clean air,

Joyful and without a care.

Oxygen revives their brains,

As the plaque inside them drains.

O-k-a-y…

I must stop this silly rhyming,

As I’m losing all my timing.

***** 

Have a happy 2025.

Thank you, Pat, for the photos.

 


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Make the Best of it

I know I’ve been moaning and groaning about the snow and how hard it is for the tiny hummingbirds and other little creatures who have to try to survive in the snow and cold.

But for those of you who can shut that dilemma out of your head, you may want to make the best of this snowy weather.

If you have access to a ski hill, you can do that (if you’re still young enough to take advantage of this vigorous pastime).

 

At the top of the chairlift, have a look around and enjoy the crisp air. Take in the vastness of the valley below. Do you feel small?

 

Forget about birds that want to land on a branch. They are gone from this frozen place, leaving it all to you.

 

Pure and clean! And now for an exhilarating ride to the bottom of the hill.  Swish! … Don’t fall.

Photos by Pat Gerrie

British Columbia


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Book Bargains

In the month before Christmas I have marked my novels down to US $.99. This way you can load up your e-reader with five novels to keep you turning pages for about $5.00 total. Hours of entertainment for very little cost.

What will you get for 99 cents each?

Orion’s Gift

When Sylvia receives devastating news, she knows she has to leave her California home. While hiding away in the Baja Peninsula, living in a camper van, she meets a man with a similar dilemma. Both must avoid the spouses pursuing them, or be forced to return to the intolerable misery of their past. Will the sparks they feel for each other help see them through or only make their problems worse?

Baja camping is not without its dangers and both runaways must learn to trust and mistrust at the right times.

*****

The Wind Weeps

Andrea leaves big-city boredom in Ontario to search for love and a new life on B.C.’s rugged coast. The love of two men and a woman leads her into the world of commercial fishing. But soon, her adventure becomes a nightmare. The beauty of her surroundings is at odds with the terror that she lives every day. Trapped in an isolated cabin on the coast, she will need to test her newly acquired wilderness skills if she ever hopes to escape. Be sure to follow up with the sequel, Reckoning Tide.

*****

 

Reckoning Tide

 

*****

 

Marlie

Unlucky in love, Marlie flees a bad relationship. She accepts a teaching job in the remote Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii). The beauty of the islands and the rugged challenge of northern living enthrall her. A good-looking artist has his eye on her. The perfect gentleman. Or is he? And what about that handsome fisherman? Is he just a bit too real for her with his hunting and fishing? Just as Marlie hopes that her life has made a turn for the better, disaster strikes. She is shocked to see her life spiraling downwards yet again. How could she have made such an error in judgement—an error that sets more bad luck in motion?
Not willing to lose control, Marlie takes a deep breath and sets out to get her life back on track. But can she do it alone?
Set in the remote islands of coastal British Columbia, Marlie is a heartfelt romance of love and loss and love again.
Experience the fears and joys of northern island living and delight in a second chance at true love.

 

Julia’s Violinist

Julia’s Violinist takes us to postwar Europe for an unbiased story of a love triangle.  Julia is widowed with two children at the end of WWll. She remarries and hopes to pick up the pieces to put her broken life back together. It isn’t going well. A letter arrives from her first love from twenty years ago. After all these years, he is alive and wants her to join him in a new life. She struggles with morality and a chance for happiness. Life’s decisions are not always easy and they can come at a huge price.

*****

To find out more about these novels, you can visit my website:

www.anneli-purchase.com

You can also click on the book cover images at the side of this post to go to amazon. If you don’t have a Kindle, you can go to smashwords.com to get these e-books for all types of e-reader formats.


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Moving Day

Usually we think of moving day as a marathon of packing up boxes and then calling muscular friends or a moving company to throw all the furniture and other belongings into a truck to take it all to the new house. But what if you found a real bargain of a “fixer-upper” and you had a small piece of land to put it on, but that place was farther up the coast from where you lived? Or maybe you wanted to turn the “fixer-upper” into a house to rent out.

These houses appear for sale now and then, parked on wooden blocks to hold up the house on each corner, on a loading area near our town. The houses are sold and then brought in by tug and barge to be taken away to another location, often another coastal area.

A truck with a long low platform drives under the raised up house which is then lowered onto the lowbed and driven onto a barge to be towed by the tug to its new location. The low bed is unhooked from the tractor and can be reconnected to another one for unloading at the destination. I can barely make out the wheels of the trailer under the house at the front of the barge.

This (above) was the scene looking out from my house one day, but I found an article in the Times-Colonist that showed pictures of other houses being moved by this method. The houses are not necessarily  all “fixer-uppers.” The circumstances could be quite different.

 

So if you like your house, but it’s not in the right location, you can now move the house instead of your belongings.  Or you can find a  house and have it moved up the coast to your property. For that matter, if you’re stranded on a desert island, you can just use your smart phone and order  a house to be brought in.

And maybe, if you have Amazon Prime you might save yourself the shipping charges. Ya think?