Early one sunny morning, I loaded my blue, rust-dotted Saab hatchback with supplies for my writing retreat. A new Apple PowerBook, my dot-matrix printer, computer paper, pads of lined paper, yellow highlighters and fine tipped pens for editing, Scotch tape, my coil-bound journal, my Walkman, and a box of cassette tapes I’d made.
A neighbour walked by, said, “You moving out?”
“No, just going to Saltspring Island for a month. To write.”
“Nice. Enjoy.”
As I looked over all my gear, I chewed a knuckle; rolled my shoulders.
Hmm? Something’s missing.
I ran back into the duplex and grabbed the two books I’d left on my office coffee table so I wouldn’t forget them. Zinsser’s On Writing Well and Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones.
Then I drove south to the Tsawwassen ferry terminal to catch the Saltspring Island ferry; tapping my ring on the steering wheel as Linda Ronstadt sang “When Will I Be Loved” from a 70s mixed tape I’d made. When Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way” came on, I took it as a positive sign.
*
Saltspring is the largest of the southern Gulf Islands, lying in the lee of Vancouver Island, across Georgia Strait from Vancouver. An hour drive and 30-minute ferry ride north of Victoria, it span 70 square miles, and, back then, boasted a population of 7,000.
When I arrived, the island seemed much as it had during my Booth Bay winter. A portion of Ganges Harbour had been filled in and a grocery store and parking built on the fill. Maybe fewer houses and more businesses in town.
I had rented a recently renovated, 2-bedroom cottage on a side road off the Ganges-Fulford Harbour road, about a mile above the town of a Ganges. Windows facing east, west, and south provided natural light. A thick rug, comfy furniture, and a Jotul wood stove in the living room made for relaxing evenings.
Early each morning, I walked down the long Ganges hill into town to have breakfast in a coffee shop that catered to locals. A cute, friendly waitress learned my name and would stop by my booth to chat. After breakfast, I walked back up the hill to start writing.
I spent mornings and early afternoons on my laptop at the kitchen table, surrounded by Post-It notes, lists, and short, hand-written pieces taped to walls and windows.
I spent late afternoons touring the island, hiking its trails, and getting to know a few the cottage owner and a few of his friends.
Evenings, I kicked back in an armchair warmed by the wood stove, read mystery novels, and jotted ideas in my notebook for the next day’s writing.
I drafted a rough version of an outline for a book-lengthmanuscript. Taking A Stand for the Earth would combine my thoughts about ecological awareness, personal mastery, integrity, environmental activism, and living simply.
I believed living lightly on the Earth was the greatest contribution we all could make to our and the Earth’s futures.
But, I wondered if living in Vancouver and competing for consulting business matched the simple living advice I offered in the manuscript.
*
Toward the end of my Saltspring retreat, thumbing through the local Gulf Islands Driftwood paper — I spotted an ad for a “3-bedroom cottage; minutes from town.”
I called the phone number; made an appointment to see the cottage. A few days later, I met the owners at a locked gate in a 7-foot-high cedar fence that ran across the front of their property on Seaview Avenue.
Mr. Scott, 75 years-old and 69-year-old Mrs. Scott owned a candy shop in Vancouver. They had planned to retire to the cottage, which sat on a football-sized lot — half covered by tall cedars and second-growth Douglas Fir; the half nearest the cottage was grass and fruit trees. But Mrs. Scott had trouble walking. So, they had stayed put in Vancouver.
Mrs. Scott made tea and served it and Peek Freans biscuits while we chatted at a semi-circular pull-down table in the adjoined kitchen-living room. But she seemed reticent to rent at first.
“Our last tenants nearly wrecked the place,” she said, eyes wide, cheeks pulled back. “They believed boy children were gods. They let theirs pee all over our carpets. We worry about something like that happening again.”
“Godless heathens,” Mr. Scott murmured. “Not believers in the one true God!”
Then he asked me, “Are you religious?”
“My father was a minister,“ I said. “But I don’t discuss my beliefs.”
He harumphed.
“Do you drink alcohol?”
“An occasional beer on a hot day. Sometimes, a glass of wine with dinner.”
“Do you run around with women?”
I wanted to say, “Sadly, no.” But, shook my head. “No.”
He looked at his wife. She nodded. He leaned forward.
“Can you afford $450 a month?”
I almost punched a fist into the air. My Vancouver rent was $960 a month.
“Yes,” I said. “I think so.”
I wrote a cheque for a month’s rent and a security deposit; said goodbye to the Scotts.
Before I drove back to my rental cottage, I bought a barbecued chicken, a pint of coleslaw, and a carton of Ben and Jerry’s “Cherry Garcia” ice cream in the new food store. At the government liquor store, I added a bottle of Spanish Verdejo with which to toast my new adventure.
*
First of February, 1992, I emptied the duplex into a U-Haul truck, then headed to Saltspring.
A Norwegian commercial fisherman had hand-built the cottage in the 1940s. The living room/kitchen shared a six-foot-square brick Norwegian wood stove. Down a hall, two bedrooms and a 14-by 22-foot room which had been a garage. The child worshippers and their spawn had trashed it.
I set up camp in the first and largest bedroom. Then began upgrading the second as an office, and turning the trashed room into a workshop space.
The Scotts paid for materials. I fixed holes in both rooms’ walls, then painted them bright white. I ripped out pee-stained carpets, scrubbed and sanded the plank floors, then painted them blue.
I made and installed pine baseboards, and laid down my 8- by-14-foot Berber rug — beige wool with dark brown flecks — in the workshop room, and a smaller version in my office.
(See, Dad? I can do! )
I hired an electrician to rewire the workshop room and replace light fixtures stripped by the former tenants. I bought an extra three-foot section for the pine frame Ikea sectional I’d bought in Vancouver, then wrapped couches along three sides of the large room. I placed 3- and 4-foot-tall palm plants in three corners.
In Victoria, I bought an aluminum flip chart/whiteboard stand, a director’s chair, and a music stand for my workshop notes. I was ready for business.
I printed postcard invitations to “Free Intro Nights” and bulk mailed them to every address on the island. I bought weekly, 3-inch classifieds in the Driftwood. Its editor wrote a short blurb on my offerings and background.
I left stacks of 3-fold fliers in cardboard brochure holders in bookstores, the library, bars, restaurants, and community buildings.
Twenty-three people attended three Intro nights. Seven signed up for my 5-week course.
Jane Lewis — the ex-Springbank High student who had introduced me to Carlos Castenada’s Don Juan books and set me on my search for a “path with heart” — hosted a buffet dinner to introduce me to friends. She and her partner owned a hydroponic greenhouse and sold produce to the supermarket.
I began to nod at familiar faces in town; attended several parties.
*
Charles, the tall, handsome, curly-haired, young fellow I’d met doing EYC work, came to stay with me for five days and helped me build a wooden extension on the back of Mr. Scott’s wide, stuffed with junk garage. The shed was big enough to hold a GMC pickup truck, and two ride-on lawn mowers. We covered its slanted roof with tarpaper and asphalt shingles we got free at the recycling center.
Scored big points with Mr. S!
During his stay, Charles I laughed a lot, and had long, serious talks. We decided he would market my OTFC courses in Vancouver. I’d pay him a base salary and commissions on business he brought in.
Charles had little luck, until, at a party, he met the Executive Director of Human Resources at the Open Learning Agency (OLA) — a consolidation of BC’s Open University, Open College, and Knowledge Network TV.
She arranged a meeting with OLA’s president.
I met him and stern-looking VPs in an OLI lecture room. My mouth and throat dried up. I had to put one hand in my pocket to stop from gnawing a knuckle during my 45-minute slide presentation about the OTFC approach and its benefits to organizations.
I shouldn’t have worried. The president told me he had interviewed a leader of the Leadership and Mastery workshop I had taken in Toronto. But hadn’t liked the consultant’s “cocky attitude.”
I got the contract.
Brew Creek Centre
We kicked off the year-long program with 3-day OTFC retreat for the OLA executive team at Brew Creek Center, a rustic resort 20 minutes south of Whistler Ski Village.
Then I did a 2-and-a-half day Directors’ workshop at a fancy in-city facility.
Every two weeks, I followed up with two-and-a-half day workshops for teams at OLA’s Burnaby campus.
Taking on such a daunting challenge terrified me until the president told me the team retreat was “the best three days of training I have ever attended.”
The department heads’ workshop was tougher, but I won over most of them.
The afternoon before each team workshop, I spent five hours getting from Saltspring to the mainland, then driving to OLA in Burnaby.
I did a one-hour briefing session for the team, explaining the purpose of and plan for the workshop. I stayed for two nights in an Executive Inn mini-suite.
After completing workshops, I rarely got back to the island before 10 pm. If I missed a ferry, I’d arrive home after midnight.
An arduous schedule, but worth it to ensure the workshops went well and teams benefited.
However, the Human Resources director had missed the executive retreat and director’s workshop because of a car accident. Her stand-ins scheduled their staff workshop after all the other departments’. So, no HR staff understood my approach. We butted heads as I tried to explain to them what to share about the workshops with other departments.
After I had done workshops for about half the teams, HR called me in. They told me they would do the first afternoon’s briefing — so OLA wouldn’t have to pay for my hotel room that night. I told them I’d have to fly over the first morning of the workshop and start an hour later. They agreed.
Return air fare cost more than a hotel room.
* When I arrived for the next workshop, team members were boiling angry at me because (they thought) I was late, and had missed their briefing the day before.
“We sat in the lecture room for nearly an hour waiting for you.”
The HR staff had forgotten to do the briefing and blamed it on me. And failed to mention the new start time.
I was so mad I could spit.
But I regrouped; the workshop went well.
About nine months into the year, we decided Charles would do the remaining workshops because the HR staff liked him. But — I don’t recall why — they ended the contract after the first two.
*
My Earthways partner, Duncan Dow, worked for Alcan Smelters and Chemicals Ltd, in Montreal. He arranged a three-day workshop with their executive team. They wanted to become more environmentally friendly to better compete with a Brazilian company.
The five execs and managers oversaw three $2 billion smelters. A famous Boston consulting company ran a multi-million dollar “strategic planning” program for all Alcan divisions. But it confused many employees.
On the second day of my workshop, Denis, a smelter plant manager, smiled, nodded his head, and said, “Now, for the first time, I understand what is strategic about strategic planning.”
I grinned at Dunc; he grinned back.
At the end of the workshop, the Senior Vice President said, “I believe this approach will be critical to our success. You have a remarkable ability to communicate.”
*
OTFC gigs generated substantial income, but they rarely had heart for me. Getting to them by car, ferry, and air belied my environmental ethics. I reconsidered my role as Organizational Trainer, its travel costs, and burden on the environment.
I believed if individuals created rich yet simple lives doing what they most cared about, they would be less likely to over-consume and more likely to leave minimal environmental footprints.
So, I planned and promoted a new retreat, “Living Well, Living Deeply,” to be held at a yoga retreat centre on-island. Promo brochures read, Simplify and enrich your life; become the person you are meant to be; and save the Earth while you’re at it.
I only sold one workshop to a non-profit from Seattle. But the income did not cover promotion expenses.
So, I focused on local “Creating What Matters” courses and follow-up coaching, trying to better practice what I preached.
I also worked on turning my Taking A Stand for the Earth outline into a marketable manuscript.
*
In July, my first summer in Vancouver, I had been washing my car at the curb, when I heard a radio announcer mention it was a long weekend; people were flocking the beach.
I had flocked nowhere since Mexico with Emma five years earlier.
So, I shut off the hose, went in the house and grabbed clothes, books, and camping gear. I pointed the Saab south toward Washington State. In Bellingham, just across the Canada/US border, I bought a mountain tent and a camping gas stove. The clerk pointed me toward nearby campgrounds.
But every site was full. Our July 1, Canada Day weekend overlapped US Independence Day. People flocked everywhere.
Flock!
Frustrated, I drove south until I saw a sign that read “Port Townsend Ferry.” Curious, I caught the ferry and ended up in a quaint, history-rich, hippy-influenced “village-by-the-sea.” No space in their campgrounds, but I managed get the last room at Swan’sMotel.
“PT,” as locals called it, sat at the top of the Quimper Peninsula — a kind of thumb jutting out of the Olympic Peninsula. I wandered about town, marvelling at its Victorian architecture, enjoying its bars and bistros, and hanging out in its four bookstores.
On the fourth day, exploring PT’s environs, I discovered TheEcologic Place on Marrowstone Island.
Lying south-west across Port Townsend Bay, the island connected to the mainland via a bridge onto Indian Island, then a causeway over a tidal marsh to Marrowstone.
The Ecologic Place sat beachside at the edge of Oak Bay and a salt marsh. It comprised an eclectic collection of 10 beige-painted cabins, and a two-bedroom house. 650 feet of low to no-bank beach ran along the bay.
Cabins 3, 4, 5 - The Ecologic Place
The owner, a University of Washington Environmental Studies professor, had bought it as a “study center” for student groups. She had added a central lodge with a kitchen, 30-person meeting room, and a deck overlooking Oak Bay and the Olympic Mountains. When budget cuts at the university ended off-campus trips, she offered cabins for rent.
Four large cabins with low decks fronted the beach. Smaller cabins dotted the 9-acre property. Cabin 11, a converted cedar Pan-Abode garage with a 12- by 8-foot cedar deck, had no services, but guests could use the lodge facilities.
Half of the dozen or more times I visited the resort, I stayed in Cabin 11. The owners provided a microwave and a Styrofoam cooler. I used the Lodge bathroom and showers. Kept ice cream in its fridge.
I paid $25 a night.
At the beginning of each visit to the funky resort, I would stop in PT to buy books, CDs, groceries, beer, and wine.
Then, in Cabin 11, I’d set my laptop on a wooden tv table and sat on an aluminum and straight-back canvas beach chair Emma’s parents had given me.
After morning and afternoon writing stints, I sat on my deck, read, watched grazing deer, and gazed through aspen and alder crowns at the sun setting behind the Olympic Mountains.
Once a day, I walked the beach and a state park trail to the Indian Island bridge and back. Sometimes I brought my bike and rode the island’s narrow, twisting roads.
The Ecologic Place was my heaven on earth.
Over three 5-day visits, I wrote Taking A Stand for the Earth.
*
I sent my manuscript to agents recommended by two well-known authors I knew.
One agent told me publishers didn’t want to see complete manuscripts; they wanted book proposals that described my book and explained why it would work in a competitive market. Explaining why my book should exist.
The other agent liked my manuscript and said, “I’ll shop it around NYC when I go in two weeks.”
But later, she, too, told me I needed to create an enticing proposal.
Once again, I went into self-learning mode.
I bought three “How To Write A Book Proposal” books, and corresponded with the author of one of them.
A month later, I sent a 30-page proposal to both agents.
One advised me to cut environmental activism from the manuscript and focus on ‘skills to create a simple, rich, and purposeful life.’
I took her advice and crafted a new proposal for Simplicity and Success: Creating the Life You Long For.
A New York agent told me my proposal was “excellent” and asked for a three-month “exclusive.”
But, after 12 publishers rejected it, she told me the barrier to publication was my lack of an impressive “author’s platform” — i.e., widespread recognition in the public eye and proven ability to reach a large audience.
To build such a platform would entail creating an extensive social media following, writing articles for relevant magazines and journals, and being a regular on radio and TV talk shows.
It would entail a multi-year effort and more money than I wanted to spend.
*
When my mother died and left me a small inheritance, I dropped OTFC workshops and stuck to local workshops and coaching. I wrote and rewrote drafts of book proposals. As frustrating as that process was, the experience helped me revise my manuscript with more relevance and power.
In July 2003, I self-published Simplicity and Success.
The 9-by-6-inch, glossy covered paperback garnered good to great reviews in Canada, the USA, and the UK.
I sold enough books through local and nearby bookstores, and from an umbrella covered table in the Saltspring Saturday Market that, had a mainstream publisher promoted it, Simplicity and Success could have been a Canadian best-seller.
Indeed, one publisher who had passed on it chatted with me after a ‘sold out’ book reading I did in the Vancouver Library.
“I kick myself for not publishing your book,” he said. “We went with another author, but his book failed to produce results.”
Simplicity and Success generated a consistent flow of local coaching clients and — thanks to Amazon and the internet — clients from across Canada, the US, and six continents. I did much of my work by phone or Skype.
I felt gratified that ‘my own damn system’ worked well for many. And me!
At last, I was on a heartfelt path, living a life I had longed for.
One afternoon, I answered a knock on my Saltspring cottage’s sliding glass door on to my deck.
An unfamiliar dark-haired woman, wearing a black “Pave Everything” t-shirt, stood there with two young girls by her side. I slid the door open a few inches.
“Yes?” I said.
“Hey, Bruce! It’s me, the bane of Earthways. These are my kids.”
“Kelly?”
“In the flesh!”
She turned around.
The back of her t-shirt read, “NOT!” in bright red letters.
“I was visiting a friend on Vancouver Island,” she said. “So, I thought I’d pop over and thank you for a life I wouldn’t have if you had kicked me out of camp that summer.”
Rustling her kids’ hair, she added, “and these two.”
I blinked tears. Opened deck chairs. Brought cold beers for Kelly and I. Ice water for the girls.
Details are fuzzy, but I think Kelly told me she ran a not-for-profit conservation group near Boston. Her husband taught literature in a small, private college. We chatted and laughed for 30-some minutes.
As they stood to leave to catch a ferry to Victoria, the youngest girl asked, “Why are you crying, Mommy?”
“Happy tears, darling. They’re happy tears.”
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