I made a trip to Vancouver recently, and while it wasn’t quite October — the season for all things spooky — I couldn’t help but feel the presence of ghosts.
Not literal ghosts, I hasten to add: I didn’t see any mysterious wraiths or unexplained phenomena, didn’t pick up any phantom hitchhikers who vanished before we reached our destination. But I’ve been travelling the Fraser and Thompson canyons since 1971, and have spent a lot of time poring over old photographs of the region, and those memories and images keep me company during my travels.
Thus I could “see” a freight wagon coming at me through the split rock at Kingsway Corner, the old rodeo grounds in Spences Bridge, sightseers in 1944 stopped south of China Bar tunnel to admire the view of Hell’s Gate, steam trains galore, a sternwheeler moored at Yale. Siska Lodge south of Lytton is gone but its ghost remains, visible in the mind’s eye if nowhere else for those who know where to look.
At Oregon Jack Road south of Ashcroft I saw, in my mind’s eye, a 1972 Gran Torino station wagon bumping its way up the road to the cabin where I spent many happy weekends, and there it was again at Lake of the Woods near Hope on a hot summer’s day, as we enjoyed sandwiches and my brother and I cooled off in the lake while our parents watched.
While in Vancouver I was able to catch a performance of the award-winning musical Come From Away at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, and there were a few ghosts there as well, of performances witnessed long ago. They range from the sublime (The Marriage of Figaro) to the ridiculous (Blue’s Clues Live), and I would put Come From Away near the sublime end of that scale.
For those who don’t know it, the musical — written by two Canadians — is about what happened in Gander, Newfoundland in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when American airspace was shut down and dozens of planes with thousands of passengers were diverted to Gander, nearly doubling the population of the town for almost a week. Twelve actors — six men and six women — each play multiple parts, all of them based on real people, from Gander residents dealing with the logistics of feeding and housing everyone to bewildered airline passengers wondering where on Earth they are and what has happened to the world while they were oblivious at 30,000 feet.
It was funny and heartbreaking and bittersweet and joyous, an ode to resiliency and determination and acceptance and people pulling together to try to make sense of the senseless. Big city audiences from Toronto to New York to London have embraced it, but I suspect it speaks most loudly to those of us from small towns, who know that when the chips are down there’s nowhere better to be.
I always enjoy going to Vancouver — I grew up near there — but have never been one for big crowds and noise, and it was something of a relief to be done. Once the long slog through the Fraser Valley was done, and Chilliwack was in the rear-view mirror and the mountains began to close in, I felt that I could breathe again. There was another ghost — the long-gone “Gateway to Holidayland” sign at Hope — and yet another when I stopped at Skihist to stretch my legs.
I was the only person in the parking lot, but I shared the space with the memory of a long-ago picnic lunch, my mother and mother-in-law and husband and I eating fried chicken from Lytton and mum, visiting Canada for the first time, admiring the view. It was largely unchanged from what she saw 30 years ago, beautiful in the late afternoon sun and blessedly quiet, and I was well content to share the space with the ghosts of time and memory, an hour from home and headed, at long last, in the right direction.
