Fireside Books: There's exciting news for book lovers. Fireside Books in Parksville now has a second location in Port Alberni, The Bookwyrm. Used books are just five dollars or less. The Bookwyrm on the corner of Redford and Anderson opens seven days a week from ten to five. Fireside Books at 464 Island Highway East in Parksville is a book dragon's dream come true. Browse their extensive collections seven days a week. Order online at firesidebooks.ca and pick up at either location. Details available online. Ask about returning books for a book credit.

 Eddie Van Haddock & The Rockfish: In a little town by the sea where the stories never end, lived Captain Dave and his crew, every child's favourite friend. With a smile as wide as the ocean and a heart that's full of dreams, he sails a mellow submarine where magic gleams and beams. Every morning at sunrise, when the world awakes anew, Captain Dave and his crew set sail in waters deep and blue. Through the ticking clock of time, where adventures come alive, they laugh and learn and play each day in their underwater dive.

Dave Graham: 

It was a sunny Tuesday morning at French Creek Harbour, and Captain Dave was doing what he loved most: drinking his coffee on the deck of the Mellow Submarine and watching the harbour wake up. Seagulls swooped and called above the docks. Fishing boats chugged out toward the open water. The smell of salt and diesel hung in the warm air. And somewhere nearby, someone was frying bacon.

"Good morning, French Creek," said Captain Dave, lifting his mug.

"Good morning, Captain Dave's coffee," said Larry the Lobster, climbing up through the hatch with his own tiny mug. "Is there any for me?"

"There's always coffee for the first mate," said Captain Dave.

Larry settled onto his favourite spot on the bow, a coil of rope just the right size for a lobster, and the two friends sat quietly, enjoying the morning. That's when they saw it.

A boat was coming in through the harbour entrance. Not a fishing boat, and not a ferry. It was a sailboat, a beautiful one, painted deep blue with a white stripe along the hull. It moved slowly and carefully between the docks, the way a boat moves when its captain is paying close attention to everything.

"Someone new," said Larry.

"Looks like," said Captain Dave.

They watched as the sailboat found an empty slip and gently eased in. A man stood at the bow with a line, and a woman was at the helm. On the deck, a child, about seven or eight years old. She was looking around at everything with wide, curious eyes.

"Should we go say hello?" asked Larry.

"That's exactly what we should do," said Captain Dave.

By the time Captain Dave and Larry walked down the dock, the family had just finished tying up. The man was tall, with a sunburned nose and a friendly smile. The woman had her dark hair tied back and was checking something on a chart. The child was sitting on the dock with her legs dangling over the edge, looking down into the green water below.

"Welcome to French Creek," said Captain Dave, raising his hand. "I'm Captain Dave, and this is my first mate, Larry."

"Hello," said Larry, waving a claw.

The man shook Captain Dave's hand warmly. "I'm Marco, this is my wife, Priya, and that's our daughter, Suki."

Suki looked up. She had paint on her fingers and a serious expression, the kind that meant she was thinking hard about something.

"Hi," she said. Then she looked back down at the water. "There's something moving down there."

Larry scuttled to the edge of the dock and peered over. "Oh, that'll be a small greenling, I expect. Maybe a sculpin. They like the shadows under the dock."

Suki's eyes went wide. "The lobster talks."

"Most lobsters don't," Larry admitted. "I'm a special case."

That made Suki smile. It was a small smile, but it was there.

"Where have you sailed from?" asked Captain Dave.

"Vancouver," said Marco. "We left the city about three weeks ago. We've been anchoring in different spots, working our way up the coast."

"Are you staying in French Creek for a while?" asked Captain Dave.

Priya looked at Marco, and something passed between them, a look that meant they had talked about this many times and were still figuring it out.

"We think so," said Priya. "We're looking for a place to settle, somewhere smaller, somewhere quieter than the city. But Suki isn't sure about it."

Suki said nothing. She was watching the water.

Captain Dave invited the family aboard the Mellow Submarine for tea, and they accepted. Larry put the pot on and found a package of ginger snaps at the back of a cupboard that were only slightly stale.

"Only slightly," he said, offering the tin to Suki.

"I don't mind slightly," said Suki.

She took two and sat cross-legged on the bench in the galley, looking around at all the dials and instruments and the old map of Vancouver Island pinned to the wall.

"Do you really go underwater in this?" she asked.

"We do," said Captain Dave, "every chance we get."

"Have you seen a whale?"

"Many times. Humpbacks out past Lasqueti, orcas up near Johnstone Strait. Once, a grey whale, close enough to touch. Though we didn't touch it, of course."

"Why not?"

"Because wild animals need their space," said Larry, settling onto a stool. "Even when they seem friendly, especially when they seem friendly."

Suki chewed her ginger snap and thought about that. "In Vancouver, we had a park near our apartment. I knew all the squirrels. I had names for them."

"That's not so different," said Captain Dave.

"It feels different," said Suki quietly. "Everything here feels different."

After tea, Captain Dave asked if Suki would like to come out on a short trip, just around the harbour mouth and back, nothing big. Marco and Priya said yes. Suki didn't say anything, but she was first down the hatch.

The Mellow Submarine moved out through the harbour quietly, past the other boats, the fish plant, and the breakwater rocks where the cormorants sat with their wings spread wide.

"Why do they do that?" asked Suki, pointing at the cormorants.

"Drying their wings," said Larry. "Unlike ducks, cormorant feathers aren't fully waterproof, so after a dive, they spread their wings in the sun to dry. If they didn't, they'd get too cold."

"That seems like a design flaw," said Suki.

Larry laughed, a good, genuine laugh. "I've said the very same thing. But it works for them. They're excellent divers because their feathers don't trap air. It's a trade-off."

Suki wrote something in a small notebook she pulled from her pocket.

"What are you writing?" asked Captain Dave.

"Cormorant feathers, trade-off," she said, not looking up.

Captain Dave smiled.

They didn't go underwater that day. It was just a surface trip out to the harbour mouth and a slow circle in the calm water of the Strait of Georgia. But from there, with the sun on the water and the mountains of the mainland in the distance, and Lasqueti Island low on the horizon, French Creek looked like something worth staying for.

"You can see forever," said Suki.

"On a clear day, you can see the mountains above Vancouver," said Captain Dave, "all the way across the strait."

Suki looked, then looked for a long time. "So it's not that far," she said, almost to herself.

"It's not that far," said Captain Dave gently.

On the way back into the harbour, they passed an old man named Gerald, who was fishing off the end of the public dock with no urgency whatsoever.

"Any luck, Gerald?" called Captain Dave.

"Not a nibble," said Gerald cheerfully. "Beautiful day, though."

"It is," agreed Captain Dave.

"Who's your crew?" Gerald asked, squinting at Suki.

"New arrivals," said Captain Dave. "This is Suki. She and her family have sailed up from Vancouver."

"Have they?" Gerald reeled in his empty line and recast in a long arc. "Well, French Creek's a good place to land. I've been here forty years, and I still think so most mornings."

"Only most mornings?" said Larry.

"Nobody thinks so every single morning," said Gerald. "That's not realistic."

Suki wrote something else in her notebook.

Back at the dock, Marco and Priya were sitting on the deck of their sailboat with mugs in hand, looking much more relaxed than when they arrived.

"How was it?" asked Marco when Suki climbed back onto the dock.

"There are cormorants with design flaws," said Suki, "and you can see Vancouver from out there."

"Can you?"

"On a clear day."

Marco put his arm around Priya, and they both looked at their daughter.

"I still don't know if I'll like it here," said Suki. She said it seriously, not sadly, like she was reporting the truth as she understood it.

"That's a fair thing to say," said Captain Dave. "You've only been here one morning."

"Gerald's been here forty years," said Suki.

"And he still thinks it's a good place to land."

"Most mornings."

Suki almost smiled again. "Most mornings."

That afternoon, word had spread the way it always does in a small harbour. By the time the sun began dropping toward the trees, a few of the other liveaboards had stopped by to say hello. Someone brought a loaf of fresh bread. Someone else brought a jar of blackberry jam made from berries picked on Denman Island. Gerald appeared with a hand-drawn map of the best fishing spots between French Creek and Bowser, which he presented to Marco with great ceremony. Larry organised everything on the dock into a small welcome party, which mostly meant arranging the bread and jam nicely and finding enough mugs for everyone.

"Is it always like this?" Priya asked Captain Dave, looking around at the small gathering.

"In a small harbour? Usually, yes," said Captain Dave. "People who choose to live by the water tend to understand something about needing other people."

"What's that?"

"That when a storm comes, you'd rather not be alone on the dock."

Priya nodded slowly. "We had neighbours in Vancouver for six years, and I barely knew their names."

"It's harder in a city," said Captain Dave. "Everything's faster. Nobody has time to bring jam."

As the evening came on, Suki found Larry sitting at the end of the dock, watching the water go dark and the first lights of the harbour come on. She sat down beside him. For a while, neither of them said anything.

"Do you ever miss where you came from?" Suki asked eventually.

Larry thought about that. He was from the Atlantic Ocean, a cold, rocky coastline a very long way from here. He had been first mate on the Mellow Submarine for a long time, and French Creek Harbour was the closest thing he had to home now.

"Sometimes I miss the cold, deep water. I miss the way the current felt different. I miss things I can't quite name. Just feelings, really. The smell of a place."

"Does it go away?"

"Not exactly," said Larry. "But it changes. The missing becomes part of you, like a pocket you didn't know you had. And slowly, new things start filling up the other pockets."

Suki pulled her knees to her chest. "I had a best friend in Vancouver, May. We walked to school together every day for three years."

"That's a good thing to have," said Larry.

"What if I don't find another one?"

Larry was quiet for a moment. "What made May a good friend?"

Suki thought. "She was funny. She never made me feel weird for writing things down."

Larry looked at the small notebook sticking out of Suki's pocket. "Well," he said carefully, "those qualities, funny and kind to people who write things down, I don't think those are only found in Vancouver."

Suki looked at her notebook. Then she looked at Larry. "You're pretty easy to talk to," she said, "for a lobster."

"I've been told that," said Larry.

The next morning, Captain Dave found a note tucked under the Mellow Submarine's windshield wiper. It was written in careful, small handwriting on a page torn from a notebook.

"Dear Captain Dave and Larry, thank you for the tea and the slightly stale ginger snaps and the trip to see the mountains. I have decided to give French Creek until the end of summer before I decide what I think. That seems fair. I'm also going to name the sculpin under the dock. I think he looks like Gerald. Signed, Suki. By the way, Larry, do lobsters have pockets?"

Captain Dave laughed and went inside to put the coffee pot on.

Larry was already up, leaning over the side of the submarine, peering into the dark water under the dock.

"Good morning, Gerald," he said.

Something moved in the shadows below, slow and spiny.

It was going to be a good summer in French Creek.

Eddie Van Haddock & The Rockfish: When the night falls softly, and stars light up the sky, Captain Dave tucks his crew in with a gentle lullaby. Dreams of whales and mermaids, of treasures lush and green, await each little sailor aboard the Mellow Submarine.

Fireside Books: There's exciting news for book lovers. Fireside Books in Parksville now has a second location in Port Alberni, The Bookwyrm. Used books are just five dollars or less. The Bookwyrm on the corner of Redford and Anderson opens seven days a week from ten to five. Fireside Books at 464 Island Highway East in Parksville is a book dragon's dream come true. Browse their extensive collections seven days a week. Order online at firesidebooks.ca and pick up at either location. Details available online. Ask about returning books for a book credit.