A varied rugged coast’s history

Calm Harbour, Turbulent Seas: A History of Ucluelet
by Shirley Martin

Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2025
$39.95 / 9781998526161

Reviewed by Adrienne Mason

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Shirley Martin’s Calm Harbour, Turbulent Seas: A History of Ucluelet fills a long-vacant hole on the bookshelves of enthusiasts of the history of Vancouver Island’s west coast. The local history—particularly post-settlement era—of Tofino and Clayoquot Sound has been well covered in recent years, with titles by Margaret Horsfield (Cougar Annie’s Garden, Voices from the Sound: Chronicles of Clayoquot Sound and Tofino 1889-1929, and, with Ian Kennedy, Tofino and Clayoquot Sound: A History) as well as Kennedy’s The Best Loved Boat about the Princess Maquinna, and my own Long Beach Wild. Ucluelet’s stories, however, remain largely untold in book form. As a fourth-generation west coaster who has lived most of her life in Ucluelet, Martin is well-positioned to record its stories with authority and insight.

Born in Victoria, Martin’s early years were spent at the camp of the Kennedy Lake Logging Company, about eight kilometres from Ucluelet. Her family moved into town when she was in grade three, and she has lived there ever since—marrying, raising a family, and working and volunteering in various capacities over the years. Martin’s long history with place gives her a deep and nuanced knowledge that a writer from “away” would lack. With it, she brings a strong vein of unpretentious charm to the book as she weaves in anecdotes and personal stories, such as the time she lifted a miniature Chinese-English dictionary from the wreck of the Vanlene; or when, in 1929, artist Emily Carr stayed with her paternal grandparents in Port Renfrew; or when community members held a walkathon to raise money for a grand piano, key by key.    

Her writing, always a passion, has flourished in retirement and Martin writes fiction and poetry and is an active member of the Clayoquot Writers Group. She has self-published several books for children; Calm Harbour, Turbulent Seas is her first traditionally published book. Martin’s interest in the history of her community is evident through her long volunteerism with the Ucluelet and Area Historical Society.

Calm Harbour, Turbulent Seas is, for the most part, arranged thematically rather than sequentially. The approach, writes Martin, allows readers to “seek out areas of interest” rather than needing to read through from cover to cover. Martin does begin at the beginning though, touching on Ucluelet’s geography, geology, and climate to situate the reader, but right away demonstrates that this is a history book with personality, giving first-person accounts of earthquakes and tsunamis (both warnings and realized), which are regular occurrences for a community in a tectonically-active region.

The second chapter—Stewards of the Land—provides the broad strokes of First Nations people, particularly of the Ucluelet First Nation (Yuułuʔiłʔatḥ), in whose traditional territory Ucluelet lies, and the Toquaht First Nation, which is close by in Barkley Sound. While some readers may construe three-and-a-half pages too few to cover the history of people who have been in the region for millennia, Martin takes care not to relegate First Nations characters and histories to one section. Rather, she weaves their stories throughout the book—firmly grounding the original inhabitants, from whom the modern village took its name, in the contemporary story of the region. In this chapter, Martin also introduces the orthographic representation of the nations and places—for example the main village of Hitacu (also written as Ittatsoo) as hitaču— which she carries throughout the book. This is a timely and respectful decision as more communities, including Ucluelet, are adapting or changing place names to include names and spellings preferred by local First Nations.

After laying the groundwork with these first two chapters, Martin launches into the history post-settlement—the “arrival of the uninvited”—and succinctly touches on the many ways traders, settlers, and the colonial government changed forever the home of the Yuułuʔiłʔatḥ. Martin only has the space to briefly explain transformational changes such as the enlisting of Indian agents to police the movements of First Nations, potlatch bans, the reservation system, and residential schools, but she grounds these sweeping changes with details of local realities. When discussing residential schools, for instance, she relays the personal experiences of local elders, such as Earl Mundy who attendee Alberni Residential School. Her eschewing of telling a rigidly sequential history allows Martin to finish this chapter by showing how things have changed for First Nations’ people today, and also how far the town has come to acknowledging the effects of colonialism. She gives space to a discussion of language revitalization programs, for example, and how Ucluelet’s local government works closely today with that of the Yuułuʔiłʔatḥ. 

For the most part, Martin’s fluidity with the timeline works. If a reader is particularly interested in religion, the short-lived gold rush, the war years, or even the stories behind the names on the cairn that sits in front of the Ucluelet District Office, there is a chapter that covers just that. The challenge with this approach though is that it can be easy to lose sight of inconsistencies with the timeline. For instance, the seaplane base—now a local recreation landmark—is referred to long before the building and its reason for being (an RCAF seaplane base constructed during the Second World War) are introduced to the reader, and there are casual references to restaurants and businesses, now long gone. While most locals of a certain age will understand, a reader not familiar with the region might be left out. This is a minor quibble however—and largely an editorial one—and the detailed index can help sort out any confusion.

Martin’s intimate understanding of the community’s history with the logging industry is one of the strongest chapters and provides important perspective to the many titles that have been written on the “War of the Woods” years, when there was large, and daily, protests over logging in Clayoquot Sound. Martin comes from a logging family and, as she writes, keenly feels personal losses the industry exacted—she lost her brother, an uncle, and a close friend in logging accidents. During the protests of the late 1980s and early ‘90s, Martin’s husband worked for MacMillan Bloedel so the family was living with employment uncertainty. She is even-handed in her discussion of the industry and acknowledges that forestry practices did need to change, but her lived experience brings the struggles home—her husband being spit on by a protestor, tensions at the high school where children from both Ucluelet and Tofino attended, and the fallout in the community when MacMillan Bloedel pulled out of the area. Martin dismisses “both side-ism”—to her, a black-and-white portrayal of both loggers and environmentalists is a non-starter—and, with her account of this era, provides nuance as to how these conflicts play out on the ground: in relationships, in families, in communities.

Personal interjections of Martin and her friends and family bring lightness and humour to the book, giving the reader a real sense of what it was like to live “on the edge”—the excitement of boat days when the steamships would pull into town (the road didn’t go through until 1959); learning to drive on Long Beach; exploits, and broken bones, of kids riding their bikes off the government wharf; swimming lessons in the ocean or at Kennedy Lake.

Safe Harbour, Turbulent Seas is the perfect title for Martin’s sweeping exploration of her coastal home. Ucluelet, is, of course, the literal translation of the Yuułuʔiłʔatḥ’s home—they are the “people of the safe harbour.” And the place and its people, as Martin makes clear in her forward, have always been Martin’s safe harbour. But she doesn’t shy away from the struggles—the literal wrecks on the shores, the injustices to First Nations and Japanese people, the vagaries of resource-based economies and cumbersome bureaucracies—and all the turbulent seas on which our histories ride.

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Adrienne Mason is the author of Long Beach Wild: A Celebration of People and Place on Canada’s Rugged Western Shore (Greystone Books). A writer and editor based on the west coast of Vancouver Island, she has recently contributed to The Walrus, The Tyee, and Hakai Magazine.

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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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