Fireside Books: Fireside Books in Parksville and The BookWyrm in Port Alberni offer used books at just $5 or less. Both locations make growing your personal library easier than ever. New and used books and so much more. Order online at firesidebooks.ca and pick up at either location. Details available online. Ask about returning books for a book credit. Two locations, one amazing adventure in browsing.
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 the 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. Captain Dave and the Mellow Submarine.
Dave Graham: The morning sun was low and golden over French Creek Harbour, and a crisp autumn breeze rustled the old brown leaves that had been dropped by the arbutus trees along the shore.
Captain Dave stood on the deck of the Mellow Submarine, stringing a line of little paper leaves between the periscope and the railing. “Careful with those, Larry,” he called down the hatch. “We want everything just right for tonight.”
Larry the Lobster scrambled up the ladder, his claws full of squash, a basket of apples balanced on his back, and a very determined look on his face. “Don’t worry, Captain. I have been planning this feast for a whole week. Cranberry chowder, roasted squash, fresh bread, and for dessert, blackberry crumble.”
“It sounds wonderful,” said Captain Dave, hanging the last paper leaf and stepping back to admire his work. “It’s not every day the whole harbour gets together to give thanks for the season. I’m glad we get to host this year.”
“Me too,” said Larry, setting down the squash with a happy sigh. “Although I still cannot decide what I am most thankful for. There are simply too many good things to pick from.”
Captain Dave chuckled. “That’s a fine problem to have.”
Just then, the radio on the control panel crackled to life.
“Mellow Submarine, this is Elder Rose calling from Deep Bay. Do you copy?”
Captain Dave hurried inside and picked up the receiver. “This is Captain Dave. Good morning, Elder Rose. Go ahead.”
“Good morning, Captain,” came the warm, steady voice of Elder Rose, a Hul’q’umi’num’ knowledge keeper who had taught Captain Dave and Larry about the old ways of the sea more than once before. “I hate to trouble you on a feast day, but I have a favour to ask.”
Captain Dave responded, “Anything. What’s going on?”
“You know our family has tended the clam garden here at Deep Bay for a very long time, generations and generations, since long before my grandmother’s grandmother was young. Every autumn, we harvest from it to share at our Thanksgiving gathering. But last night’s big tide brought in a tangle of driftwood and kelp, and it has piled up right against the garden wall. If we do not clear it soon, the tide will not flow through properly, and the clams will not get the food and oxygen they need.”
Larry, who had been listening with his ear pressed to the speaker, gasped. “Not the clam garden! Elder Rose showed us that garden last spring. Remember, Captain? The one with the long rock wall built right along the beach?”
“I remember,” said Captain Dave. “We would be glad to help, Elder Rose. We’re on our way.”
“Thank you, Captain. Bring your gentlest touch. That wall has stood for a thousand years. We are only its caretakers.”
“Understood. Mellow Submarine out.”
Captain Dave closed the hatch, moved to the control panel, and pressed the dive button. The engines hummed low and steady, and slowly the Mellow Submarine sank beneath the cool autumn waves, leaving the paper leaves fluttering gently above on the empty deck.
“Ballast tanks filling,” said Captain Dave, watching the dials. “Depth 10 feet. 20 feet. There we go. Levelling off.”
Larry pressed his face to the porthole as beams of pale morning light shimmered down through the green water. “Captain, I still do not understand. What is a clam garden, exactly? I know clams live in the sand, but a garden?”
“It is one of the cleverest ideas I have ever seen,” said Captain Dave, steering them gently along the shoreline toward Deep Bay. “A long, long time ago, the Coast Salish peoples, who have always lived along this coast, noticed that clams grew better on certain beaches than others. So they built low rock walls right at the low tide line, running along the beach like a smile.”
“What did the walls do?” asked Larry.
“When the tide came in and went back out, the wall held back just enough sand to make the beach flatter and wider,” explained Captain Dave. “That gave the baby clams more soft, warm space to grow in. It’s not fishing from the sea. It’s more like farming with the sea, working together with the tides instead of against them.”
“So the wall is not stopping the tide,” said Larry slowly, working it out. “It is helping the tide do a better job.”
“Exactly,” said Captain Dave, smiling. “And because families like Elder Rose’s have tended these gardens so carefully for so long, taking only what they need and always leaving plenty behind, the clam beds have stayed healthy for thousands of years. That is stewardship.”
“Stewardship,” repeated Larry, trying out the word. “Taking care of something so it can keep giving.”
“That is it exactly,” said Captain Dave.
Along the way, they passed a raft of purple and orange sea stars clinging to a rock just below the tide line. Larry waved his claw at each one as they passed, as though greeting old neighbours.
“Do you think they know it’s almost Thanksgiving?” Larry asked.
“I think every creature out here has its own way of getting ready for winter,” said Captain Dave. “The herons fish a little longer each day. The sea stars tuck into the rocks. Even the salmon are working their way home up the rivers right now, to finish out their whole lives exactly where they began. In its own way, the whole coast is having a season of thanks and hard work all at once.”
As they rounded a rocky point, they rose to the surface, and Deep Bay opened up before them: a wide curve of pale sand with a long, low wall of dark stones running along it just beneath the surface, like a gentle grin tucked under the waves. Sure enough, a great tangled raft of driftwood, bull kelp, and eelgrass had piled up against one section, blocking the water from moving freely through a gap in the stones.
A figure in chest waders stood on the beach above, waving. It was Elder Rose, with a woven cedar basket over one arm. Captain Dave opened the top hatch, and Elder Rose walked out into the shallows to meet them.
“Thank you for coming so quickly,” said Elder Rose, peering at the tangle. “See there, where the driftwood is piled against the wall? The water cannot flow through properly. If we leave it, the clams underneath will not get fresh, oxygen-rich water, and the whole bed could suffer.”
“We will be careful,” said Captain Dave. “Tell us what you need.”
“Move slowly, and lift the wood rather than dragging it,” said Elder Rose. “The stones of this wall were placed by hand, one at a time, a very long time ago. We do not want to disturb even one of them.”
Captain Dave guided the submarine’s small robotic arm out from the hull. “Larry, would you like to help steer?”
“Always,” said Larry, taking hold of the control lever with great concentration. Slowly, carefully, he guided the claw toward the tangled driftwood, lifting one long branch free and setting it gently aside in the sand, well clear of the wall.
“Good,” called Elder Rose, wading closer to untangle a knot of kelp with her own hands. “Nice and slow. There is no hurry when you are working with something that has taken a thousand years to build.”
One by one, Larry lifted away branches and ropes of kelp, while Elder Rose worked the trickier tangles loose by hand, humming quietly to herself as she worked.
“It’s like a very large, very slippery puzzle,” Larry said, his claw moving with surprising gentleness.
Bit by bit, the gap in the wall came clear, and the water began to swirl and flow through it again, just as it had for centuries.
“There,” said Elder Rose, straightening up with a smile as the last branch floated free. “Listen to that.”
Larry pressed his ear to the porthole. Beneath the hum of the current, he could hear a soft, steady trickling as the tide pushed fresh water back through the gap and across the clam bed beyond.
“It is breathing again,” Larry said happily.
“In a way, yes,” said Elder Rose, laughing gently. “The whole beach breathes with the tide, in and out, twice a day. Our job is to make sure nothing gets in the way of that breath.”
She knelt in the shallow water near the wall and reached into the sand with her fingers, drawing out a plump butter clam and holding it up so Larry could see through the porthole. “See here? Because the wall does its work, this beach grows more clams than a beach without one, and bigger ones too. Enough for the crabs, enough for the gulls, enough for the otters, and enough for us to share tonight without ever taking too many.”
“That is the same thing Captain Dave was just telling me,” said Larry. “Taking care of something so it can keep giving.”
“Your captain is a wise man,” said Elder Rose, winking at Dave through the window.
Together, the three of them harvested a basket full of clams from the edge of the bed, Elder Rose showing Larry exactly how much space to leave between each one she gathered so the rest could keep growing undisturbed.
“We only take what we need for the feast,” she explained. “Never more. That way, there is always plenty left for next year, and the year after that, and all the years after that.”
“Like a promise to the future,” said Captain Dave.
“Like a promise to the future,” Elder Rose agreed.
When the basket was full, Elder Rose waded back toward the beach, pausing to look back at the wall, now clear and humming gently with the moving tide. “Thank you both. This garden fed my grandmother’s family, and it feeds mine. And because of the care we all take today, it will feed the children who are not even born yet.”
“Well, we’re glad to help,” said Captain Dave. “Will you join us tonight, Elder Rose? Larry has been cooking all week.”
“I would be honoured,” said Elder Rose, smiling warmly. “I will bring the clams for chowder, if your first mate has room for one more pot.”
“Always room for one more pot,” said Larry.
Captain Dave guided the Mellow Submarine gently away from Deep Bay, careful not to stir up even a grain of sand near the wall, and they turned back toward French Creek Harbour as the afternoon light began to turn a soft, warm gold.
By the time evening came, the deck of the Mellow Submarine was once again strung with paper leaves and glowing lanterns, and the little harbour was full of friends. Dr. Sarah came with a loaf of warm bread. Elder Rose arrived with her basket of clams and a pot big enough to share. Gulls circled overhead, and even a curious harbour seal poked its whiskered nose above the water beside the dock, as if it, too, wanted an invitation.
They gathered close around the deck table, steam rising off bowls of cranberry chowder and roasted squash, warm bread passed hand to hand, and the blackberry crumble waiting its turn at the end of the table, still warm from the oven and smelling of cinnamon.
“Before we eat,” said Captain Dave, raising his mug of seaweed tea, “I think everyone should say one thing they are thankful for this year.”
“I will start,” said Larry, standing up so fast he nearly knocked over the breadbasket. “I am thankful for clam gardens, and kelp forests, and quiet mornings, and good friends, and Captain Dave, and this chowder, which smells absolutely incredible, and also, I suppose, everything else in the whole entire ocean.”
Everyone laughed, and Elder Rose reached over and patted Larry’s claw. “That is a very fine list, First Mate. I am thankful,” she went on to say, “for the wall my grandmother’s grandmother helped build, and for two friends brave enough to help me care for it today.”
“I am thankful,” said Dr. Sarah, “for a harbour full of people who still remember that the sea gives more when we take care of it.”
“And I,” said Captain Dave, looking around at the lantern light glowing on the water, the paper leaves fluttering in the breeze, and the faces of his friends gathered close, “I am thankful for exactly this: a full table, a calm sea, and one more year of learning how to take good care of it together.”
They ate until the stars came out over French Creek Harbour, the lanterns swaying gently on their strings, and the ancient clam garden at Deep Bay kept quietly breathing with the tide, patient and full, and ready for many more Thanksgivings still to come.
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: Fireside Books in Parksville and The BookWyrm in Port Alberni offer used books at just $5 or less. Both locations make growing your personal library easier than ever. New and used books and so much more. Order online at firesidebooks.ca and pick up at either location. Details available online. Ask about returning books for a book credit. Two locations, one amazing adventure in browsing.
