| We leave Dodge Cove as carefully as we entered, with all eyes on the range markers. Out in the channel between Rupert and Digby, in waters that Malcolm navigated countless times in Chilco and earlier boats, I scatter the last of his ashes; it feels like the last goodbye. I miss the old man sorely; he knew so much, there was so much more I could have learned from him. (He would have reminded me to use more salt when canning salmon, so the fish would be firmer; it came out too soft for eating and was useful only for soups and spreads.) On our way south again we see the new face of the north coast: a plug-ugly, useless, hyperconsuming kindergarten of a cruise ship, larger than an office building, dominating the landscape. It might as well be an alien spaceship in its sheer bloody irrelevance. |
