Editor:
A sad goodbye to Harry Paul, who briefly touched my life one day this past year. He is gone now, under sombre circumstances.
I passed him struggling down School Road one day with his worldly goods over his shoulder. When asked where he wanted to go, he replied, with a grin, “Hawaii!” But in reality he was heading for his “lodgings” beneath the Gibsons dock. When I turned down his suggestion that we go for a coffee, he insisted that he would draw me a picture.
After gleaning a sheet of foolscap from the wharfinger’s office, he set to rummaging through every-which pocket and produced bits and pieces of pencil and crayons, and declared that he took them everywhere. Then he handed me the finished product, a totem pole complete with eagle’s head, bear, frog and salmon! In exchange I pressed a bill into his palm and said, “Thanks Harry.” Now I cherish it more than before, and he, who went by the name Soaring Eagle, is home now.
June Imanse, Gibsons
