Return to Solitude by Grant Lawrence

Author:Grant Lawrence [Lawrence, Grant]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Grant Lawrence, Radio broadcasters, British Columbia, Biography, Rock musicians, Desolation Sound, Anecdotes, Autobiographies, memoir
ISBN: 9781550179729
Publisher: Harbour
Published: 2022-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

Last Call

“He’s dead.”

Those were the words that pinged on the screen when I logged in to my Facebook page on Monday, July 8, 2019, from the remote Homfray Lodge, north of Desolation Sound.

I had just said goodbye to a friendly gaggle of guests from across Europe, the United States, Australia and Canada who had taken part in an Adventures in Solitude cruise that had departed from Lund a few days earlier. When a company called Pacific Coastal Cruises and Tours first broached the idea of my leading a boutique-style tour on their forty-foot cruise ship, I was highly skeptical. Who would purchase a ticket for such a trip? The owners seemed confident, but I remained doubtful.

Then they told me that the tour would include a day in Toba Inlet. Ever since Russell had described the inlet’s rugged majesty to me as a kid, I had dreamed of seeing it with my own eyes. I hadn’t yet had the opportunity, since our own boat was too small to go that far. The owners added that their boat, the Pacific Bear, was fully loaded with complimentary beer. I said yes.

The cruises turned out to be a lot of fun, and I met many incredible people. The three places the guests wanted to see most were the Cougar Lady’s cabin, the exact location of “the nude potluck” I’d written about in Adventures in Solitude and Russell Cove. But the good vibes left over from the most recent tour evaporated as I read those words on my screen again. I stared at the message for a moment, then typed a reply.

“Excuse me?”

A return answer came back, repeating the phrase: “He’s dead.” The messages were from Tatiana Letawsky, Russell’s estranged daughter. My throat went dry.

“Are you telling me,” I typed, “that your father has died?”

“Yes. That’s what I’m saying,” she typed back.

I sat frozen in my chair. My family had met Russell along the roadside just a few weeks earlier. I had visited him throughout the spring, chatting with and interviewing him for hours on end in the sun in his yard. He and I were planning to visit the cove together that summer.

Whenever Russell needed water at his rented cabin, he had to start up his uninsured bucket-of-bolts van, drive down his arduous, potholed, thorny, overgrown driveway to the ramshackle trailer that still had running water, fill up his jugs and drive them back up the hill. Not a great situation for a seventy-six-year-old stroke survivor with a bad leg.

The previous Friday, Russell had made his weekly short trip up Highway 101 to his favourite bar in the world, the Lund Pub. He always arrived early, in time for “beer o’clock” with the other locals.

It was a particularly busy evening at the pub, with friends old and new passing by to give Russell a hug, a kiss or a gentle ribbing about the recent exposure I had given him in the CBC Radio version of this story. By the end of the night, Russell had downed four mugs of Perfect Storm Oatmeal Stout from the local upstart Townsite Brewing.

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