Emma Shuparski lit the spark when she told me, “the family of orcas that you see in Desolation Sound has a really interesting history.” That was all it took. Ever since, I have taken a deep-dive into a salty story that is seeped in adventure, tragedy, and triumph, and shrouded in a mystery that has endured for over 55 years… which I now have the honour of sharing with you, this spring, on CBC Radio 1 in BC.
Backstory: For the last dozen years or so, my family, our Desolation Sound neighbours, and countless kayakers, have been lucky enough to spy a pod of orcas swimming through our inlets on a fairly regular basis (this simply did not happen when I was a kid in Desolation Sound, but for my kids, the orcas have become a common sight.)
I didn’t know much of anything about these four or five orcas, except that they always filled us with a sense of awe and delight. One of them was absolutely huge, and another, a smaller one, had a crooked dorsal fin that lagged behind a bit. That intel was enough for my new friend Emma Shuparski, Straitwatch Quadra Coordinator for the CETUS Conservation Society (dedicated to educating boaters on safe practices and distances around whales) to identify them, and send me down the blow hole of their fascinating family history.
The episodes of “Whale Tale” will air each Saturday morning just after the 8am news on CBC Radio 1 in BC throughout the spring, and can be heard anywhere, any time, on demand at CBC Listen starting next week.
Thank you to Garry Henkel of Aboriginal Journeys – Whale & WIldlife Tours for the incredible photo of ‘Tasu’ and to my longtime designer Naomi MacDougall for the graphic. And feel free to get in touch if you can add anything to this story.
Unrelated to the series above, I am also thrilled to announce that I will be taking my Stories and Songs show back on the road / water this spring with my dear and incredibly talented musical friends Joel Plaskett, Ashleigh Ball, Lindi Ortega, and my lovely wife Jill Barber.
I’m sharing a few new stories and a few requested favourites from my books at three unique venues in the communities of Brackendale (SOLD OUT), Errington (on central Vancouver Island, near Coombs, the “Goats on the Roof” place), and Port McNeill (on northern Vancouver Island, gateway to the Broughton Archipelago).
Tickets for all three shows are limited and on sale now! (Please note that while Joel and Lindi are on all three shows, Jill is playing Brackedale and Ashleigh Errington and Port McNeill.)
Speaking of touring, we are once again launching our Discovery Islands-Desolation Sound Stories and Songs tour this July. This is mostly a “boat access only” tour by which we get to each show in our boat, Cliffhanger, with the musicians, instruments, kids, and family dog all thrown in. Last year was a whole lotta fun (see pic above from the Dockside Kitchen in Refuge Cove w/ Ashleigh Ball, Jill Barber, and Sarah Jane Scouten) so Jill and I are doing it again this July with a new musical line up and a few extra dates.
The tickets are not on sale yet, nor are the other musicians announced, but just in case you’d like to plan on being at one of these special shows where a lot of my stories actually take place, you can put these dates in the book!
Mon July 21, Heriot Bay Inn, Quadra Island (accessible by boat or car)
Tue July 22, Dockside Kitchen, Refuge Cove (boat access only)
Wed July 23, La Hacienda, Savary Island (boat access only)
Thu July 24, Community Hall, Whaletown, Cortes Island (car or boat)
Sticking with the spring newsletter theme of ‘shows’, we had an absolutely incredible time at my semi-regular “hometown” Stories and Songs event at the Kay Meek Theatre in West Vancouver on Sat April 12. I went DEEP into West Van legend and lore on this show (including a loving tribute to Harry’s, my childhood corner store.) I was truly honoured to feature a stellar, all-star line up of musicians that included (left to right) my ol’ high school pal Jeanne Tolmie, Neil Osborne (54-40), folk legend Shari Ulrich, Jill Barber, Dave Osborne (54-40), Dawn Pemberton, and Hilary Grist (Jeanne, Hilary, and Shari all play in the Luckies.) Thank you to all who attended this special show!
And one more thing: I’ll be reading a story in the afternoon of the first-ever Chilliwack Book Festival on Saturday May 10! Free!
Happy spring, happy life, and I hope to see you around somewhere soon.
Greetings from Swiftcouver, winter of 2024 edition. Don’t have tickets to Taylor Swift’s final Eras shows in Vancouver this weekend? Shake it off! I’m doing a book signing! Phew. Weekend saved. Details below. But first…
Our payphone got stolen!
For the first time in many decades, change is afoot at the Okeover government wharf, our launching point for Desolation Sound. In coastal country, it doesn’t get any more end-of-the-road than the government wharf, the transient community centre for the ocean-bound. Its towering wooden gateway is the starting and finishing line for sea-going adventures that could last an hour or a lifetime.
As far back as I can remember, when my family rolled down Malaspina Road, Dad would drive our car right up onto the wharf, our tires thump-thump-thumping as they rolled over each plank. We’d burst out of the car, our nostrils filling with the familiar scents of salt air, seaweed, tar and gasoline. We had arrived.
All that is finally changing. The 75-foot pier, along with the tar-and-creosote covered pilings (bad stuff) and red-painting railings, are being torn down and removed for a more environmentally friendly floating drive-on wharf.
Back in March, a removal notice was even dared posted on our beloved old payphone located at the very front end of the pier, which brought up all kinds of feels. Before there was cell service at the wharf (2022), a salty nut mix of neighbours, tourists, oyster farmers and loggers would line up at that phone to reach the outside world. Names and numbers were scrawled and scratched onto every surface. It was on that payphone that Nardwuar suggested to me that we call our band “the Smugglers” back in 1988, and it was on that same phone some 17 years later that I got the news that our band was effectively over. I did countless reports for CBC Radio on that phone. I found out my sister was pregnant with her first child on that phone (Paige is now 26), and that my grandfather had died.
And as I wrote about in “Adventures in Solitude”, the payphone was once even violently assaulted by my friend’s muscle car. I’ll paraphrase: Roger thought his Mercury Montego was in drive when it was actually in reverse. He punched it to take off for the ferry, but the car screamed backward instead, slamming into the then old-school Superman-style phone booth, which smashed right through the red-painted guard rail and into the drink below with a shocking splash… sinking down down down, lying face up on the ocean floor.
(Roger and the car remained on the wharf.) [Handy Candy snapped a great shot of the phone booth at low tide in its watery grave, but we unfortunately can’t find the photo.]
The booth was eventually replaced by a stealth new model of payphone, sans actual booth, and it continued standing sentinel, providing reliable if more and more seldomly-used service. Sometimes, I would pick up the receiver just to check to see if there was still a dial tone. Always was.
But here’s the thing: after some of the locals and wharf employees made a call to Telus to convince them that the wharf payphone was a safety necessity. Telus agreed to allow the Okeover Harbour Authority to keep that working payphone, and have it installed in a new location. Then, at some point during the night of November 25, that beloved old payphone was… STOLEN! Somewhere, somehow, someone has our Okeover wharf payphone… and we want it back! No questions asked and no caller ID! We’re hung up on that phone!
To be continued… I hope. Thanks to old friend Rob Predinchuk for the heads up!
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Winter reading: Shaking It Rough: a prison memoir by Andreas Schroeder
Last summer, I had the honour of taking part in a 50th anniversary panel discussion celebration for my amazing book publisher, Harbour Publishing. The moderator of that panel was an author named Andreas Schroeder, who I was unfamiliar with. His pre-panel emails were well-written, funny, and detail-oriented, which peaked my interest. Who was this guy?
I discovered through a bit of research that Andreas Schroeder is a renowned author of many books, including his shocking debut called “Shaking It Rough: a prison memoir.” I was further honoured when, after the panel, Andreas gifted me with an autographed hard-cover original copy of this 1976 bestseller.
In the early-1970s, Andreas, then a young and somewhat misguided budding journalist / drug dealer hippie-about-Vancouver, was caught and arrested for two pounds of hashish possession for the intent of trafficking. Andreas was sentenced to two years in jail, and was immediately shipped to the notorious Oakalla maximum security prison. There, amongst some of Canada’s most hardened and violent criminals, the slight and bespectacled Schroeder had to very quickly figure out prison jargon, prison rules, and most importantly, prison survival. (“Shaking it rough” was jailhouse slang for someone’s inability to cope with prison life, also known as “doing hard time.”)
From Oakalla, Andreas was transferred to the Haney Correctional Institute and a couple of mostly outdoor prison work camps in the rainforests of BC that were rife with failed escape attempts. Throughout it all, we learn how Andreas tries to avoid “shaking it rough” by finding his people, staying sane, educating inmates (he started a creative writing program that flourished) and focussing hard on getting out. It’s an extremely entertaining, funny, and frightening book, and an invaluable time capsule on life both in and out of prison on BC’s coast some 50 years ago. Highly recommended if you can find it.
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Concert: Green Day
My eleven-year-old son Josh has two big passions: hockey and punk rock. His favourite band is Green Day, so when it looked like the closest Green Day’s “Saviours” tour was coming to Vancouver was a show in Seattle, I decided to take him.
What an experience! Neither of us had ever seen a show that big before, held at the massive T-Mobile Park baseball stadium, home of the Mariners. !!!50,000 people!!! Walking the circular concourse was like wading through the world’s largest punk rock fashion runway, with every possible band shirt you could think of on display on every freak, geek, punker, and punter, all in one huge open air stadium. It was a celebration. It felt that, thanks to Green Day, the outliers had WON.
And to a certain extent, Green Day’s incredible performance, and all that surrounded it, seemed to me like the original American dream come true… Here were three guys from modest lower income backgrounds that came together in Oakland back in the 1980s to form a punk band with a weird name, write a bunch of catchy songs, get signed by Larry Livermore to Lookout Records in nearby Berkeley, and start DIY touring North America in an old used Bookmobile.
Then came the major label signing, the smash hit album “Dookie” (the highest selling punk rock album of all time) and BOOM – Green Day have been famous and incredibly successful for 30 years – doing it their way, with a string of great records and achievements ever since.
Before my son got into them, I never really counted myself as that big of a Green Day fan. Thanks to Josh, I am now.
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Newish-kids book “Adventures in Desolation Sound”
My latest kids picture book came out in the summer and peaked out at number 3 on the BC Bestsellers list – thank you to all who have supported it! It’s been great to receive photos and notes of kids reading it from Newfoundland to the Philippines. The book is based on me and my sister’s real life first trips to Desolation Sound when we were kids. Barf, ferries, and barnacles. I’ll be doing a pre-Xmas live event signing of all my books in North Vancouver… details below.
And if you would like to order any of my books (four adult / two kids) for your loved ones for the holidays, you can do so here.
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Jill Barber
(photo by Olaf Strassner, North Shore News)
Earlier this fall, my lovely wife Jill was able to live out one of her teenage-after-school-MuchMusic-fantasies by joining our good friend Chris Murphy live on stage for a rockin’ rendition of his perennial Sloan hit “Underwhelmed.” Chris’s all-star band the TransCanada Highwaymen played the Kay Meek Theatre’s 20th anniversary party in West Van and invited Jill up… Jill played Chris’s bass, but Chris is right-handed… and Jill a leftie… so Jill also performed with the bass… upside down! See incredible video footage here.
Jill has two brand new Christmas singles out for the season, available in both French and English: “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch”, and “Sleigh Ride.” Get them wherever you get your jingle on! Jill and I will be performing at a huge two-night event together in Victoria in December, and you can catch Jill on tour this spring in Europe and this summer in Japan at the World Expo. Dates below.
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Grant’s Upcoming Events:
Sat Dec 7, BOOK SIGNING! 32 Books and Gallery, Edgemont Village, North Vancouver, 1pm – 3pm w/ illustrator Ginger Ngo (all of Grant’s books will be available for signing)
Sun Dec 15, A Midwinter Concert w/ Sarah Jane Scouten and Friends, St. James Community Hall, Vancouver (w/ Suzie Ungerleider, Mark Kilianski, Q Brooke Bachand)
Wed-Thu Dec 18-19, Daniel Lapp’s Home for Christmas, Royal Theatre, Victoria (w/ Jill Barber, BC Fiddle Orchestra, Folkestra!, Joy of Life Choir, Shiny H’ornaments, Swing’n Shepherds, the Strings of Lights house band)
We are currently booking Stories and Songs shows for 2025 and 2026. If you would like to host an event in your town, or help out by volunteering, please get in touch!
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Jill Barber Tour Dates
Wed-Thu Dec 18-19, Daniel Lapp’s Home for Christmas, Royal Theatre, Victoria
Tue Mar 4, zakk Halle, Dusseldorf, Germany
Wed Mar 5, Poppodium, Hoofddorp, Netherlands
Thur Mar 6, Karlstorbahnhoff-Saal, Heidelberg, Germany
Fri Mar 7, Ampere, Munich, Germany
July 1 – 8, World Expo, Osaka, Japan
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Happy winter, happy holidays, and I hope to see you soon.
All the best from the wintery west,
Grant Lawrence
Clerel, Hannah Georgas, Grant, Matthew Barber, Jill Barber, Miranda Mulholland at the Muskoka, Ontario Stories and Songs show in August 2024. Photo by Brian Campbell.
Grant is taking a well-earned break from his touring Stories and Songs shows, but will be doing a series of guest appearances around Vancouver and Victoria leading up to the holidays. At each event he will be sharing a story or two and signing books. Hope to see you there!
Sat Dec 7, book signing, 32 Books, North Vancouver (1pm – 3pm)
Sun Dec 15, A Midwinter Concert with Sarah Jane Scouten and Friends: A fundraiser for Farm Folk City Folk’s Medicinal Plant and Seed Project, St. James Community Hall, Vancouver w/ special guests Suzie Ungerleider, Grant Lawrence and more
Wed and Thu Dec 18 and 19, Daniel Lapp’s Home for Christmas, Royal Theatre, Victoria
Coming up in 2025:
Sat Apr 12, 2025, Grant Lawrence and Friends: an evening of West Van stories and songs, Kay Meek Theatre, West Vancouver BC
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