It is a quiet morning here on Nexwlelexwm/Bowen Island. The equinox has come and gone and the mornings are darker and cooler. We have stopped changing the clocks in this part of the world, so the mornings will only ever grow darker by the clock until the solstice. I'll be walking in pitch black in a month or so.
My partner is the walking champion of our household, taking her morning and afternoon walks everyday as a non-optional part of her morning. She is the one that walks around in every weather.
Our walks are different. Hers takes her through the forest and meadows of the Terminal Creek valley and mine skirts the north side of Mannion Bay along David Road, crosses the point-with-no-name through the Miller's Landing neighbourhood and visits the tiny cove of Sunrise Beach at Miller's Landing.
I always walk with a head full of music and thoughts, but my eyes and ears are wide open and in that way, walking is less the action and more the practice of noticing. Every morning I am rewarded with a moment of novelty. Today it was the rare sound of a Western Tanager calling from a Big-Leaf Maple. It was no doubt on its migration south, but it was making a call I had never heard before. Merlin very clearly confirmed it. At the beach, I drained and stowed my kayak on the driftwood kayak rack made by one of our neighbours. It had somehow turned upward and caught a few centimetres of yesterday's rain in the cockpit.
I sat in the cool outflow wind for a moment watching a single seal sleeping on a rock that had only recently emerged from the falling tide. I took the photo that graces this post as the sun snuck a chance to pierce the gloaming.
It's a holiday here Canada, so the usual business of school buses and commuters on the road was absent. On my walk back up the hill to my home, about one kilometre and 75 meters of climb, there were few cars, no dogs – none of my regular friends Elvis, Annie, Scout, Legend, or Lola were up yet – and only the sounds of kinglets, nuthatches and ravens in the canopy around me.
Slow, sauntering, quiet, attentive.
The Squamish welcome figure at Sw?aywi (Ambleside Beach) in West Vancouver
Once a month I fill in to lead worship at our little Bowen Island United Church. I love the chance to do so, because I get to sit with a piece of scripture and reflect on it. Over the years here I’ve shared a few of my sermons and today, the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, I’m sharing last Sunday’s sermon. The reading was suggested by the Lectionary, without reference to the September 30. But the reading lined up incredibly well and suggested important teachings for people of faith to stay with this long and faithful journey of reconciliation work in Canada.
Exodus 17:1-7
From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” But the people thirsted there for water, and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do for this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarrelled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”
This week will see us commemorate the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. On Wednesday we will wear our orange shirts and remember the effects of residential schools and the targeted campaigns of cultural genocide that did so much harm in Canada, and which effects continue to linger. As a country that prides itself on the rule of law, we’ve made a big mess of how that law applies to Indigenous people, and while we generally come around to correcting these kinds of problems with respect to things like slavery, the right of women to vote, marriage equality and so on, Indigenous rights, including Aboriginal rights and title are a confusing mass of issues and quarrels from all sides that make it hard to sort out what’s happening.
You all know how important this issue is to me, and I’m always available to talk about it all, which we can do afterwards during coffee if you like. But this morning I’d like to talk about where we might collectively stand as a people of faith in the reconciliation journey and tie it back to this important scripture. This journey is hard and in society at the moment there is a a lot of complaint that maybe we’ve “gone too far with reconciliation.” Some are even saying that we should take active steps to erase Constitutionally protected rights like Aboriginal title once and for all.
This is not the first time in history that a people has grown tired and thirsty on the journey. In this morning’s reading from Exodus, the Israelites are in exactly this situation.
To refresh your memory, Moses received a commission from God, speaking through the burning bush to free the Israelites from the slavery in which they were held in Egypt. He led the people away from the Pharoah’s tyranny, across the Red Sea, and into the desert in Sinai, that little triangle of land in the far southern part of the modern day state of Israel. They will spend forty years there, wandering and waiting for the time when they can settle in the Promised Land.
Today, as always with me, we are going to read that as a spiritual story, a tale that charts the journey from a place of spiritual captivity to one of spiritual liberation. Such collective journeys are not easy, and they involve long periods of being in the wilderness, of enduring spiritual hardships, of losing faith in God and our leaders and each other and ourselves. They are also journeys where we become parched and starved of nourishment, and yet, every spiritual tradition encourages us to push on.
When the story begins, the people have been through all of that and a few weeks has passed and they are genuinely thirsty. They are struggling to survive in the heart and the bleached landscape, away from everything they knew. Some are even questioning whether it was the right move to leave a land of slavery to die here in this desert. So they take up a quarrel with Moses. It is not just a complaint. In the Hebrew text, the word that is used to describe a quarrel is more like “a legal dispute.” They are suing Moses for accountability.
Moses doesn’t know what to do — which is a humility I would love to see more in our leaders — and so he prays to God and God tells him to go ahead of the people and strike the rock on Mount Horeb, where God originally met him in the burning bush. God says “I will be there.” He takes some Elders with him, strikes the rock with his staff, and water flows from the land. And the people drink. And they named the place Massah and Meribah which means “quarrel”and “tested” to commemorate the event. Moses took Elders with him, because it was a legal dispute that the people had lodged, and so these Elders served as a kind of tribunal of witnesses, who could keep the events in perspective. Kind of like our modern day Courts.
So how does this story relate our own journey of reconciliation?
Canada’s legal traditions are derived from the Crown and going back to 1763, the order from the King was to reach agreements with the Nations that already existed here before settlers moved into their lands. To that end, the Crown entered into honourable treaties with First Nations. Over time the Crown made these deals and then forgot about their obligations, which is why so many Treaty Nations continue to quarrel with the Crown for the government to fulfill their obligations. First Nations cultures are almost universally relational, and when treaties of friendship and collaboration are made, they are always taken seriously to be enduring contracts that bind people’s fates together.
By the time the Crown got to British Columbia, they mostly just stopped making treaties, and started settling and taking over the lands. This is why we call these territories “unceded.” First Nations have always been here governing themselves and others on these lands and waters, they have never given them up, and they continue to exert their own jurisdiction and governance over these lands, waiting patiently for the settler governments to come to the table and make agreements. And at every turn First Nations have offered the promise of liberation for all of us if we get the relationship right.
Reconciliation means to figure out together how to live on this land, with honesty, dignity and honour, sin a way that unlocks the potential of all of us. No one is asked to leave. Instead we are asked to journey out of our comfort and enter into a process that invites us to find a new promised land together, where the land and sea can be protected, where people’s needs are looked after and where relive together as co-habitants of these beautiful territories.
So I see in us a journey towards freedom from our own small thinking and spiritual impoverishment. A possibility that we might find a new relationship with the First Nations on whose territories we live that takes us to a place where we can so far only imagine. I believe that commission of Jesus Christ obligates us to love our neighbour as ourselves and that in Canada, that is expressed by a personal commitment to deep and lasting reconciliation of the Crown’s obligations and power and Indigenous obligations and power. Reconciliation is not merely territorial acknowledgements and orange shirts. It is long lasting relationship building across our minds, hearts, laws and hands that recognize whose land we are on and builds a world that is prophetic and possible only if we work together.
Some say “we’ve gone too far with reconciliation.” Perhaps what they are really saying is that they are thirsty for something meaningful. But we have only just begun. And when the going gets hard and tiring, the people take up quarrels and complaints. It’s the oldest story of all, as evidenced by this tale. That’s fine. But friends, this has been my life’s work and I’m happy to report that I think I have visited the rock that lies ahead of us and I have witnessed the prophets striking the ground and seen the water that flows. First Nations, right here in BC, rising to their own power and jurisdiction, are doing things that feed us in ways that would have never been possible ion we had continued the policies of colonization and cultural genocide.
So where are these places of flowing water that comes from true reconciliation? Here are just four.
Just this past month the Great Bear Sea initiative was recognized for outstanding leadership where along BC’s north and central coast, 17 First Nations have worked with Canada and BC to create one of the world’s largest Indigenous-led marine conservation initiatives. More than $300 million is being invested in Indigenous stewardship, conservation and sustainable coastal economies. The people who have cared for those waters for thousands of years are exercising greater authority in caring for them now—and everyone benefits from healthier oceans, fisheries and coastal communities.
In Vancouver, the Squamish Nation is building Sen?á?w on its own reserve land near the Burrard Bridge: eventually about 6,000 homes, most available to anyone. At the same time, the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations have become some of the largest land developers in the region, building thousands more homes on returned lands. In the middle of a housing crisis, Indigenous nations aren’t simply asking for a place in Vancouver, they are literally helping build the Vancouver of the future. They are answering the call for housing affordability by building it.
There are older initiatives too. On the Sunshine Coast, the shíshálh Nation has been part of regional health care for generations. In 1962, the Nation gifted more than eleven acres of their small own reserve lands for the hospital in Sechelt. Sixty years later, that hospital serves more than 30,000 Indigenous and non-Indigenous residents and the shíshálh Nation, back in 1986 became the first self-governing former Indian band in Canada. A strong Indigenous nation has helped create health infrastructure that serves everyone who shares that region.
And then there are issues that counter the panic that some are creating around private property rights and Aboriginal title. In 2024, BC formally recognized Haida Aboriginal title throughout Haida Gwaii something the Haida had fought to have recognized for generations. But recognizing Haida title didn’t mean telling everyone else to leave. The agreement protects existing private property and local government while creating a process through which the Haida Nation and BC work out how their respective jurisdictions coexist. That’s reconciliation becoming constitutional and practical: the truth about whose homeland this is can be acknowledged while everyone who lives there works out how to live there together. It is an agreement of possibility and inclusion, and everyone on Haida Gwaii is sharing in the struggle to make it all work.
The ocean. Homes. Health care. A shared homeland.
These aren’t promises about what reconciliation might someday accomplish. They are things already happening when Indigenous nations become stronger and relationships begin to change.
Here on Bowen Island, Pauline Le Bel and I are helping to mark this work with a welcome figure that will stand outside the Community Centre. It is a grandmother. And she welcomes us in, to to our place of community governance and culture as the house of what Squamish Elder Dennis Joseph called the Nexwlelexwm Uxwimixw, a village of people living in Squamish lands, on Bowen Island. The Nation has leant it’s support to this initiative and will be helping us with teh ceremony when she is installed there and the community has been donating funds, because this is the initiative of islanders, putting a tangible mark on the land, remembering that reconciliation is a long journey watch over by the grandmothers who keep their eyes on the possibilities we cannot see yet and welcome them in.
We are allowed to be thirsty and to quarrel and test this idea of reconciliation. But we are invited also to trust: to trust God, to trust each other, and to trust in the long journey of reconciliation. We need only strike the ground to find the water that flows.
Snug Cove a few hours ago, looking over the Queen Charlotte Channel to the east wall of Atl’katsem/Howe Sound.
It’s a bright, warm September, and the light in the sound is softened by water vapour, condensing over the cold water. Humpbacks and seals are eating and resting and the birds are active, eating seeds and insects, preparing for, or stopping over on, their long migrations southward. Orb weavers are busy building their evening webs.
Just Bowen Island things unfolding. This morning I stopped in for a routine blood test at the health centre, and our local technician, Kelly, had a live stream of the Vancouver Aquarium sea otter pool showing in his clinic room. He said it’s been the most successful calming presence he has ever had for his clients undergoing tests. His daughter suggested it two weeks ago. Now nobody can stop talking about it.
I’m reading two books at the moment. In hardcover is Seamus Heaney’s incredible translation of Beowulf. The book itself was sitting in the window of Canterbury Tales Bookstore in East Vancouver. Last Thursday, I was walking past with my friend Ciaran, and I caught sight of it. I went in and said “I would like to buy Beowulf, please.” It’s incredible.
I was reading it in the waiting room when Kelly called me in. I had just read these lines, from Beowulf’s story of a seven day swimming contest against his rival Breca:
Light came from the east,
bright guarantee of God, and the waves
went quiet; I could see headlands
and buffeted cliffs. Often, for undaunted courage,
fate spares the man it has not already marked.
The image of the headlands and buffeted cliffs is so evocative to me. And that line about the light. It landed with me this morning partly because I have also just started Crossing Home Ground, a book by David Pitt-Brooke about a John Muir-inspired walk he took across 1000kms of the central interior of British Columbia, charting the changes of landscape and community. As he describes pitching his tent on the first night, in a meadow high above the Similkameen Valley, he perfectly captures what it looks like to see the night arising in the river country of central BC:
Only six weeks past the solstice but the days are already closing in. The sunset is long gone. The western sky has faded to a pale aquamarine. Glowing twilight still bathes the summit but the night-tide is rising from the east, pooling in the deep gorges far below.
Here is a man who has read Heaney and probably Gerard Manley Hopkins too. As a person whose house faces east, the “night-tide rising” is the most evocative image of the purple darkness of the earths shadow creeping across the sky. I can’t wait to dive into his travelogue.
It sort of feels like summer is over although we are enjoying a warm stretch here in mid-September that has brought sun and warm temperatures and calm winds to the island. This is more typical of the summers I remember from half my life ago, before we experienced extreme heat and drought. There was always a dry patch between the middle of July and the middle of October with a bit of rain usually in August and more at the beginning of September. But in the past 20 years that pattern has changed. This summer seemed like an anomaly.
But as a result of the warm spell we are having there is a second dawn chorus in full swing. Yesterday I recorded 24 birds including forest and ocean and this morning the birdsong was so overwhelming that I just from my porch I have already recorded 27 in less than a half hour. Visiting sparrows make up the interesting bits: Savannah, Fox, Lincoln and a White-throated Sparrow clear as day. All of them added to the list of this year’s birds, which is up to 315 now. It might yet hot 365, but it’s going to need some additions from the mudflats of Reifel sanctuary and October migrations in Ontario.
Here on the island, the rhythm has returned somewhat to the quieter days of the shoulder season. With a pleasant weekend coming up I have no doubt that we will be overrun by visitors. Another few weeks, when the rains return and the daylight grows shorter, our visitor levels will return to “we aren’t complaining” levels.
In the meantime, a pair of visitors to the inlet were taught the lesson we all know about how volatile and unpredictable the sea can be here. Two kayakers, after being unable to find good information online, resorted to ChatGPT for advice about paddling in Howe Sound. The ended up being caught in a strong wind – both inflow and outflow winds can come up in mere minutes – and capsizing. They were very lucky not to have been killed in the process.
Howe Sound is an extremely dangerous body of water. The only way to navigate here is paying attention to conditions that you are faced with and understanding how forecast models might imply particular changes for particular places based on wind direction and tide. It takes years of observation and local knowledge to properly navigate here, especially in a small craft. Our local kayak shop supplies paddlers with this information tailored specifically for the moment you are setting out. That’s the reason it is hard to find good knowledge. The knowledge is context specific and changes by the hour or minute. If there is a small craft warning issued and the water looks calm, it may be perfectly safe to paddle. Or you may begin your paddled and few minutes later get caught up in what seems like two meter waves that come out of nowhere.
Yesterday I travelled into the city across a beautiful calm sea, and Adam Taylor and I spotted five or six humpback whales. Adam, who has done more for ocean awareness and conservation on our island than anyone I know, said that he thinks September and October are the high seasons for humpbacks now. It’s hard to know what their rhythms are as they travel through our waters or take up summer residence, but the herring schools start maturing around now so the whales of the Salish Sea have less urgency to head south to their birthing grounds. Some whales even stay well into the winter now before making the journey.
Whales are new to the inlet. It has been five generations or so since we had regular folks noticing whale behaviour, because they were almost hunted to extinction. They are back now, and people like Adam, whose family have lived for more than a hundred years on Bowen have memories of the cetaceans that live around us. We talked about a famous pilot whale that for years was the only cetacean in the Sound who was always drawn to the hum of crew boat engines and tugs.
TH generations of people who have lived in these parts are being honoured in a couple of ways. Pauline Le Bel and I have reached our first fundraising goal for the Squamish Welcome Figure Project which will be installed at the Community Centre once it’s completed. This first $15,000 allows us to pay our career Xwalacktun to begin work on the log he has secured for the carving. The next $15,000 we raise will pay for him to complete and deliver it and to host a ceremony and event to have it installed. You can donate here.
This week’s Undercurrent contained a story about another project honouring ancestors, as the Nexwlelexwm/Kosei Peace Park will open next weekend. The Park recognizes the Japanese-Canadian families that settled here in the early part of the 20th century and who were interred during the Second World War along with many other Japanese settlers on the west coast as part of an egregious chapter in Canadian history. This history will be commemorated at Sandy Beach where apple trees have been planted taken from cuttings of the original tress planted by the Yamada family who homesteaded on King Edward Bay.
Back in 2001 I wrote a song about the end of summer here on Nexwlelexwm/Bowen Island that contains the lines “The winds have turned southeast again/And the Sound is full of cloud.”
Today is that day, right on time. Blustery winds in the channel in front of my house, a steady blow in the tree tops and a sprinkling of rain. What has been a fairly normal summer is turning to a fairly typical autumn. What happens next is anyone guess, as an unusually strong El Niño is predicted to arrive in the next few months.
On the subject of turning, this morning as I was sitting in the spot pictured at the top of this post, I was reading an address by Joan Chichester from 2001 where she addressed the urgent condition of women in the Catholic Church. If you’re in mind for a dose of fierce prophetic voice this morning, this will raise your dander. And it’s twenty-five years old, and structurally speaking, nothing has changed.
It is true that theological debates are raging everywhere; but it is also true that everywhere the Holy Spirit is breaking through – as the Holy Spirit did in Rome in the 60’s. In Asia, Buddhist women are demanding ordination and the right to make the sacred mandalas. In India, women are beginning to do the sacred dances and light the sacred fires. In Judaism, women study Torah and now carry the scrolls and read the scriptures and lead the congregations. Only in the most backward, most legalistic, most primitive of cultures are women made invisible, made useless, made less than fully human, less than fully spiritual. The humanization of the human race is upon us. The only question for the church is whether the humanization of the human race will lead as well to the Christianization of the Christian church. Otherwise, discipleship will die and the integrity of the church with it.
A tip of the hat to the daily email from the Centre for Action and Contemplation.
Turning and churning. In Participatory Narrative Inquiry we talk about “churning” as a way to let stories and meaning and people work each other through different kinds of connections. Today Ron Donaldson has a beautifully rich field note in which he looks at how a single piece of knowledge entered into a field of expertise because of exactly this phenomenon.
A good story doesn’t necessarily give us the answer. It changes what questions we are capable of asking.
Different narrative ecologies (living, evolving, adaptive patterns of knowing distributed through people, practices, stories, environments and relationships) can preserve different parts of a phenomenon for very long periods, even when one community has developed sophisticated explanatory knowledge that never reaches another.
Expertise is often deep knowledge of a domain. But phenomena don’t necessarily respect our domains…
Perhaps that is one of the things we mean by expertise. Not knowing everything within a domain but knowing when the answer might live somewhere outside the domain.
“The knowledge wasn’t lost. The connection was lost.”