Strong, intrepid, adventurous: Blanchet

The Curve of Time
by M. Wylie Blanchet

Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2024 [Revised edition: First edition 1961]
$19.95  /  9781990776786

Reviewed by Marianne Scott

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When we moved from Toronto to Victoria several decades ago, we brought our sailboat with us. While cruising the Gulf Islands and then further afield into British Columbia’s rugged coast, learning about fjords, tides, and currents, someone suggested we read The Curve of Time, by M. Wylie Blanchet. The stories told by “Capi,” as the author is known, were enchanting. Her lyrical descriptions of the natural wonders of our province combined with narratives of the practical demands of spending the summer months aboard with her brood of five kids—and a dog—have stood the test of time. Her reminiscences were published more than 60 years ago while the events she documents occurred between 1924 and the outbreak of the Second World War. This Canadian classic has never been out of print, and as publisher Howard White writes in the new preface, “[i]t’s one of those rare books that just gets better with passing years.”

Blanchet was a single mum after her husband’s disappearance. He apparently fell from the family’s boat, Caprice. Nevertheless, she kept the vessel and explored the Salish Sea from Puget Sound to Queen Charlotte Sound. The 13 summer voyages she took with her offspring didn’t take place on a spacious, well-founded yacht, but on a 25-foot wooden motorboat with a beam of 6.5 feet and a six-horsepower engine that Blanchet repaired herself. Everything had its own place or the crew couldn’t move.

We meet Blanchet’s children with their various assigned names and nicknames: Betty, Tate, Frances, Joan, and Peter. Finding anchorages in some of the sounds with their “no-bottom shores,” was demanding, so they frequently docked at log booms. Sometimes the Blanchets retraced their previous years’ cruises and visited a wide variety of coastal characters, loggers, and fishermen. They were sometimes tasked to deliver messages to isolated people. That’s how they met two nameless brothers in Homfray Channel living year-around in their neat cabin. They baked their own bread, piped water from a spring, grew a vegetable garden, and pruned cherry orchards. They canned their surplus vegetables, fruit, fish, and game, storing the jars in a root cellar and could thus live on a tiny income. Weekly, the brothers brought loads of fresh fruit and vegetables to logging camps, and the Blanchets were rewarded with a haul of cherries.

This latest edition includes a new introduction by Howard White, as well as a foreword by two of Blanchet’s grandchildren, Michael Blanchet and Judy Reid, who write about the bossy grandmother they visited in childhood. In an appendix, Edith Iglauer, author of Fishing with John—another iconic still-in-print book—reveals different aspects of Blanchet’s life. The essay was originally published in Raincoast Chronicles. Another addition to this edition is an article Blanchet wrote about her sometimes perilous west Vancouver Island journey originally printed in 1936 in The Rudder Magazine. The book finishes with the last letter Blanchet wrote to her daughter Frances—nicknamed Wad—in which she describes her efforts to promote her book and, like today’s authors, laments how her Canadian agent “just sits back and do[es] nothing.”

This edition brings us not only the original text but the introductions, reprints, and appendices, and gives the reader a broad view of this intrepid woman and her kids who cruised BC’s coast in a small boat with a tiny engine and without electronics to guide her.

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Marianne Scott is an award-winning Victoria-based writer who has specialized in marine topics since she and her husband, David, sailed from Victoria to French Polynesia in a 35-foot sailboat. Marianne has written for many marine and other publications in Canada, the U.S., and Australia and is a long time volunteer at the Maritime Museum of British Columbia. She authored Distilleries of Vancouver Island: A Guided Tour of West Coast Craft and Artisan Spirits (Touchwood Editions, 2021), co-authored Vancouver boat-builder Ben Vermeulen’s memoir, Before I Forget (2015), authored Ocean Alexander — The First 25 Years (2006), and wrote Naturally Salty — Coastal Characters of the Pacific Northwest (Touchwood Editions, 2003). [Editor’s Note: Marianne Scott has reviewed the work of John Dowd & Bea Dowd and Ron Holland for The British Columbia Review.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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