Without flying over it, traveling along it by boat, actually seeing it, it’s hard to comprehend the extent of the west coast of Canada. Seven thousand kilometers of shoreline meanders in and out of numerous inlets on the mainland side over a linear distance of nine hundred kilometers.
We were, as some are today, the log salvors of Canada’s west coast. There have seldom been more than a couple of hundred of us at any given time. We are unique in the world, I believe, known popularly if superficially and confusingly as beachcombers; our image spread around the world by a widely popular CBC television program which, whatever its perceived virtues, did little to tell the real story.