Our community recently said its goodbyes to Doug Roy, who was much loved and well respected.
He was an environmentalist, an elder statesman, "King of Roberts Creek," a qualified surveyor, a professional engineer and so many things to so many people.
His passing allowed me to reflect on the extraordinary ties that bind people together.
At his celebration of life, it was clear how strong those ties were throughout the length of the Roberts Creek Legion Hall. Appropriately, I was standing at the back of the room, and even though I had known him for more than 25 years, mine were surely the most tenuous and undoubtedly the furthest of ties.
Our ties began in South Africa. One of our relations in Ontario, on hearing of our plans to emigrate here, sent us abook to introduce us to Canadian culture, I Heard the Owl Call My Name, by Margaret Craven. This book was about a priest who, being gravely ill, was sent to minister in the First Nation community in Kingcome Inlet. He subsequently passed away when, according to local folklore, he heard the owl call his name.
Subsequently, I joined a consulting engineering firm in Vancouver. To my utter disbelief, my very first assignment was Kingcome Inlet. It's so remote, you needed to take a float plane from Port McNeill and land after an hour-long flight at the mouth of the Kingcome River. The drop off point was a rickety dock of chained logs topped with rough-hewn planking. I still remember the plane leaving me, gripped by a terrible sense of foreboding, completely alone and surrounded by towering snow-capped peaks with a fast-flowing river roaring at my feet.
It was raining, and it was miserable. And yes, it suddenly occurred to me that there were grizzly bears about. My hour-long panic attack only subsided when a Band member finally arrived in a dug-out canoe and took me to the village three kilometres upstream.
While there, I researched the Band's legal plans of their reserve. Guess who had signed them off? Yes, it was none other than Doug Roy, some 20 years earlier. How can you not respect that, knowing what he must have experienced?
Somewhere, I like to think he noticed the rustle of leaves in the trees close by, and that he, too, heard the owl call his name.
