Transportation

Boats were the most important mode of transportation. All types of boats, and we used them in all types of weather. More than once we ran out of fuel, or broke down, and waited for someone to help us. Despite the seeming isolation, the waterways were highways, and there was always some one going back and forth.

Brian's girlfriend Lexy (they later married), Mom and Dad are seen here in our boat. I am standing on the "wharf", and Gary is at the wheel. The "wharf" was a string of pairs of logs lashed together with cables and joined to another section with boom chains, to allow us to moor the boat beyond low tide mark. Brian is taking the picture.

Brian is sawing a log in the foreground. In the background is another view of our boat, with our dog Butch

• Speedboats - along with the one pictured above, we had a smaller one Dad used for salmon fishing and I used for just running around in.
• Seine Boat
• Gillnetters
• Trollers
• Tugboats
• Scows, a generic name for a flat-bottomed boat used by local people of the First Nations, mainly Xwemalhkwu, of which the anglocized version is Homalco
• Rowboats
• Sailboats
• Yachts
• Floats - these were rafts of good floating logs, usually fir, with stringers along each end to tie the whole thing together. Cables looped over and around the stringers and under each log in the raft. Railway spikes were driven in to crimp the cables tight against the logs to hold it all together. These were used for transporting yarders, cats, houses, and anything else larger than would fit in a boat. The picture below shows my grandparents and family sitting on our large float. To move the cat and arch to another "show" ( logging site), Dad would load them onto the float and hire a tugboat to tow the loaded float. We also had a smaller float we would load with empty fuel barrels and tow to Tipton's Store and fuel station to refill the barrels.
  
• Fuel Barges - Tipton's store, later Hopkin's store was the Esso fuel agent. The Esso barge would top up the tanks from time to time
• Ferries This arrived after we left the Island; while we were there we used the BC highways ferry, the Quadra Queen from Quathiasko to Campbell River.
• Coastal Freighters. A freighter by the name of the El Paso came in to Surge Narrows store, to the the government wharf to drop off mail and freight (boom chains and food)
• Sea Kayaking is popular there now.
• More sea kayaking, I have been most places this slide show goes around Surge, Octupus Islands and The Hole in the Wall.

Airplanes also figured prominently in the daily commercial transportation of the islands. The aircraft were always on floats, there were no runways on any of the islands. Healthy loggers, injured loggers, miners, timber cruisers, tourists all routinely travelled by air. We rarely used them, as it was too expensive, but I did get a couple of flights while I lived on Read. When we did fly, Island Air, Campbell River was the charter outfit we used.

DeHaviland Beaver

My favourite aircraft is the Beaver, pictured here. Along with all the Boeing 7x7s, I have flown in most float-equipped Cessnas, a Grumman Goose operated by Queen Charlotte Air, a few Airbus variants, the larger DC-Xs, and the original, the DC-3, and a couple of L10-11s. The Beaver is the best. The Goose and the DC-3 are close seconds. Everything else is fifth.

A Goose is pictured here