Tales from Hidden Basin
A sea serpent silently appears on a sunny spring day; a shrieking devil thing wreaks havoc in a logging camp cookhouse; a wandering blind priest travels miles by boat, accompanied only by a young mute companion with an unearthly talent for throwing stones. These are the stories of a lost civilization. Its ruins peek out from alder thickets around ruined homesteads, or wash up as beached wreckage on the shores of deserted inlets.
Not too many years ago, almost every nook and cranny along the BC coast was dotted with cabins, market gardens, rough-hewn floats and handloggers booms. Settlers came from all over the bright lights of Vancouver. They eked out bare livelihoods by farming, fishing and logging, and at rare get-togethers, visiting via woodland trail or clinker-built row boat, they told each other stories about this rugged and beautiful place. Stories of marauding cougars, enormous fish and mysterious winds that could reach down from the sky to rip a mighty fir to shreds.
Author Dick Hammond draws extensively on the stories of his father Hal, who grew up on the shores of Nelson Island's Hidden Basin. He writes of an intriguing community peopled with renegade bandits, master craftsmen, handloggers, Natives, farmers and crooked land agents' But these are also stories about a family hidden away in the wilderness, survival and the relationship between father and son. Tales from Hidden Basin is rich in west coast lore and resonates with the ring of truth and the power of myth.
Not too many years ago, almost every nook and cranny along the BC coast was dotted with cabins, market gardens, rough-hewn floats and handloggers booms. Settlers came from all over the bright lights of Vancouver. They eked out bare livelihoods by farming, fishing and logging, and at rare get-togethers, visiting via woodland trail or clinker-built row boat, they told each other stories about this rugged and beautiful place. Stories of marauding cougars, enormous fish and mysterious winds that could reach down from the sky to rip a mighty fir to shreds.
Author Dick Hammond draws extensively on the stories of his father Hal, who grew up on the shores of Nelson Island's Hidden Basin. He writes of an intriguing community peopled with renegade bandits, master craftsmen, handloggers, Natives, farmers and crooked land agents' But these are also stories about a family hidden away in the wilderness, survival and the relationship between father and son. Tales from Hidden Basin is rich in west coast lore and resonates with the ring of truth and the power of myth.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:1550171364
ISBN13:9781550171365
Release Date:January 1996
Publisher:Harbour Publishing
Length:256 Pages
Weight:0.95 lbs.
Dimensions:0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"
Customer Reviews
3 ratings
remarkable short story collection for all ages
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 16 years ago
Reminiscent of "Little House on the Prairie" crossed with "Huckleberry Finn," it's a collection of true stories, chronologicallly told, about two boys' upbringing on an island off the BC Coast in the first two decades of the 1900s. As written by one of the boys' sons, an undiscovered reclusive author, (himself also reared on the BC Coast,) it tells of the magic, mystery, and adventure in an almost perfect Garden of Eden. It presages two books (Haunted Waters and A Touch of Strange) by the same author telling of the adventures of one of the boys as a man. This is a sleeper that survives many re-readings. Mythical. A classic. A successor to Curve of Time.
Those were the days...
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 19 years ago
No health and safety restrictions for these boys growing up in the wilds of early 20th century western Canada! Diving for money thrown from visiting boats, stalking inhumane deer-hunters in the dead of night, playing practical jokes on psychotic camp cooks; not only would kids not have opportunities like this today, there'd be social services to contend with if they did! This is a unique perspective of a bygone era, with yarns almost too good to have really happened, although they have the ring of truth in the capable hands of Mr. Hammond. There are characters, such as Jack, Charley "The Old Indian", and even the visiting German pot-mender, who ought to be national folk heroes in Canada, as I have no doubt they will be as soon as the first film or TV adaptation is inevitably done.
A Tom Sawyer in Canada!
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 19 years ago
I was very fortunate to be given a copy of this book for Christmas last year, as I don't think I would have found it for myself. It hasn't had nearly the attention it deserves, for if it had, we'd be seeing it everywhere. Two young lads growing up in one of the last frontiers to be discovered by the white man, having no end of fascinating adventures, these stories are all true (if Mr. Hammond is to be believed, which somehow I think he is), unique, funny, informative, and delightfully engaging. They could hold their own in any decade, and don't rely solely on their unusual context as so many of the genre seem to, but are well told and have a breadth that one might not expect. If you are interested in the west coast of Canada, you must buy this book. If you are indifferent to it but like a good read, you likewise must buy it. I can't endorse it strongly enough. That Mr. Hammond's father told his son of these times and events, remembering such detail, and that Mr. Hammond was then able to write it all down, is our great gain. There are two other books courtesy of Mr. Hammond and his father Hal, and I recommend them also. This one, the first, deals with boyhood and has the added benefit of being of equal interest to adults and older children alike.
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