By Brian Lee
By the time you read this I’m guessing it’s the BC Day long weekend and — with any luck — the weather has improved. Hopefully, by now, folks’ biggest concern is how they will keep their yard looking green while abiding local sprinkling restrictions.
I say "hopefully" because as I write this, the rain hasn’t stopped for more than five minutes in days. It’s approaching the end of July yet the lakes are still chilly and the waterfall coming off the Caren Range looks downright Niagran. (When you can make it out through the low-lying cloud, that is.)
Maybe more than most places, we hold an expectation that weather will co-operate after June. We expect to go to bed without concern about whether the barbeque is covered or if the car windows are rolled up. It may come from enduring life in a rainforest for 10 months of the year but when our BC summer gets washed out, we feel cheated.
Even angry. It’s as if a contract has been violated. But summer weather like the July we’ve just had causes more than mere discomfort. Consider this story from Kleindale last month:
Tim (not his real name) says he and his wife have lived here for about five years. The fishing has been pretty good this spring and Tim has made a habit of heading out every Saturday morning to drag a lure.
His wife gets seasick so he goes alone and every Saturday for the past three months he got up at 5 a.m., made his lunch and drove to his boat. He usually zips down to Thormanby or over to Texada and more often than not, he’s returned with his limit. Last Saturday morning it was pretty ugly out but he still got up and made his weekly trek down to the boat.
But even before he’d untied, the little bilge pump in his Boston Whaler was barely keeping pace with the flood of rainwater. As he ran through the Harbour, the rain started coming down in torrential sheets but it wasn’t until he saw the 4-foot chop outside that he lost interest for the first time this year. Ten minutes later, he was back in his truck listening to the weather report predicting more of the same. There would be no fishing today.
So, Tim drove home, quietly undressed and slipped back into bed. He says by this time he’d hatched a new plan for his Saturday morning activity and as he cuddled up to his wife’s back, he whispered,
"The weather out there is terrible."
To which she sleepily replied,
"Can you believe my stupid husband is out fishing in that shit?"