Imagining British Columbia

Anvil Press Publishers Inc.    2008

Vancouver, B.C.

ISBN  978-1-895636-90-1

The stories from the twenty contemporary writers featured in this anthology were selected from over one hundred entries. Their essays and memoirs have been inspired by, or are in some ways affected by, the particular “sense of place” that sets that left-hand corner of the country apart from the other provinces.

Excerpt from Deanna Kawatski's

The Ghost Wharf

…As a kid I paid little attention to family history and wanted only to frolic endlessly with my twin sister, Donna, and on rare occasions when we were invited, with our brother Tom. He was three years older and I don’t know if he ever got over the travesty of having to accept not only one younger sister but two at once. Each summer we lived with our grandmother. I’ll never forget the slam of nanny’s screen door, hundreds of times each day, as two sun-drunk lake-logged girls scampered in and out; chasing the cat, carting in wood, grabbing a snack, lugging our towels and treasures back to the beach, back to the beach, back to the beach.

“Don’t forget your hats, girls!” nanny would holler as we burst forth into the new blue day. Frowning, we’d park them on our heads, our grandmother’s southern-belle-style upbringing at odds with our primitive ways. Then white-footed we’d flee down the dirt road to where the grey wharf sprawled out into the bay, as lazy and reliable as a chair-bound uncle. In my child’s mind the structure was massive and smelled of the tar that was used to seal the pilings. Escaping the burning sand of the beach, we’d scamper across the broad smooth beams, detouring around the inevitable rotting squawfish abandoned there by bratty farm boys. Always the lake lured us on…