The Warden of Waitabit
At the Waitabit Creek Campground in Golden, BC,
I meet Dan Lavoie, a former sawmill worker
making peace amidst the forest he once turned into Lumber.
Dan Lavoie sits outside his RV at the Waitabit Creek Campground in Golden, BC.
It's nearly eight p.m as we dodge potholes and deep grooves of tire tracks on the Bush River Forest Road. My husband, Komal, and I drive down an old logging road off the TransCanada Highway near Golden, BC, hoping we are on the right track for the Waitabit Creek Campground. Although I'm the local out of the two of us, I still feel unsure about backcountry camping. Will we have to pay? What if there are no sites left? How far is it to the next campground? It's our first night in the Shuswap and my Komal's first night in British Columbia. Dark clouds have been gathering with the threat of downpour for the last hundred kilometres, but we both reckon we can get a tent set up before we feel any drops on our skin. Suddenly, a couple of campers cross the road in front of us, a reassuring sign of life, and we roll down our windows to confirm we are going the right way. As it turns out, we are seconds from arriving at the turn. After driving the entire single-direction loop around the site, past a family prepping their evening meal around a wooden picnic table and a couple sitting in their portable chairs with a river view, we pull into the last vacant spot.
We both tumble out of the jeep with a sigh of relief. Swarms of mosquitos delirious with the promise of our fresh blood are dive-bombing for any uncovered patch of skin. Before we can douse ourselves in bug spray, the neighbouring camper walks over from his RV parked in the spot next to ours. My stomach tightens, and I momentarily forget to exhale. My husband and I are on a six-day road trip through BC despite the rumours that visitors from other provinces face backlash for travelling inter-province during Covid. We've heard about day hikers getting the windows of their parked cars smashed in, tires being slashed, and wheel bearings being loosened. During a pandemic, travelling for pleasure feels akin to being flippant about others' health, even though there are no specific rules.
It is the first time in my life as a Canadian that I fear being “othered” by my own people. I quietly hope our neighbour hasn't seen our Alberta plates and is coming to give us heck for being here.
Instead of making us feel unwelcome, he stops a fair distance away--the recommended six-feet- and introduces himself.
"Hey, I'm Dan. Come on over when you get set up." I exhale. It turns out Dan is social.
Komal and I feel a small victory when we manage to erect our tent without any rain and even missing one of its poles. The temperature is quickly lowering, and the crackling and smoke of Dan's fire beckon us with the promise of its warmth. With woollen jackets and toques on, and ice-cold beers in hand, Komal and I head over to Dan's camp for a proper introduction.
Although Dan doesn't have what seems like the best spot of them all, we soon learn that he spends every May through October living in the Waitabit Campground. To observe the 14-day stay policy, he changes spots often but insists this one is his favourite. I survey his site. He has a healthy stack of wood all chopped in varying sizes, a large bag of empty beer cans he says are not his (he doesn't drink) and a book he's reading on the bench. When I ask him where he restocks his supplies, he tells us that he is a Golden local and has two children with his Cree wife, who remains in town. They talk on the phone every day, and sometimes his wife makes the short drive and brings him her homemade cooking. Dan beams with pride as he tells us that his wife is a well-known local cook.
"People would move to whatever restaurant my wife cooked at; if she went, they went."
"You're a lucky man, Dan." We smile.
Dan slides his hands around the underside of his bulging belly and gives it a shake. "You bet I am."
I soon understand that Dan is somewhat of a fixture at the campground and equally well known in town.
Unlike the Patagonia-wearing, bear spray-slinging outdoorsmen typical of such campgrounds, he is simply a guy who grew up living all his life a few kilometres away, the only place that ever felt like home.
He graduated from high school at fifty and spent forty years working as a wood grading supervisor at a local sawmill, a job he insists requires quick math skills and an almost zen-like ability to concentrate.
"You gotta have a lot of focus to do my job. You can't get hypnotized by the wood. If you lose your focus for even a split second, that's it." He warns.
Thirteen years ago, after decades of luck, a near-death accident forced him into early retirement. Dan's jacket's sleeve got caught in a conveyer belt and dragged him through the heavy machinery until his left shoulder was pulled far enough to touch the right one. For forty-five minutes, a crew tried to cut him out of the machine. When the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) arrived on the accident scene, Dan took it as a sign that he would surely die.
"The RCMP only comes when it's certain death, so when I saw them, I thought, 'this is it.' But they put me in a three-hour ambulance ride to Calgary with a paramedic keeping my arm in the air like this." Dan raises his right arm to demonstrate the excruciating hours he spent wondering if he would make it.
A twenty-one-hour surgery later, he miraculously survived. But to this day, he maintains that the pain in his left shoulder is excruciating.
Although Dan has learned to live with an ache that keeps him up at night, I wonder if coming to the forest every year is his own way of healing his spirit.
It's easy to misread him by a tired stereotype in his baseball cap and shirt and handle-bar moustache. But, as he continues telling us stories about this small part of my country that has been his entire world, I am fascinated.
Dan informs us that he is a Lavoie and claims to have legitimate family ties with Louis Real, a French Canadian settler who colonized parts of Eastern Canada in the 1600s. In his younger years, he made an ancestral pilgrimage out to Quebec to meet his French-speaking relatives, a language his family lost once they moved out west.
"We were here before Canada was Canada." Dan boasts.
Although I can neither verify nor dispute his claim, I do know his people have been here longer than mine. There is a real Canadianness to Dan, the kind I have never felt nor identify with because of my immigrant roots. I appreciate his simple life, with a book in hand and a constant fire burning. He is a man who knows every tree in the forest and every kind of wood he puts in the fire.
"See that wood there," Dan points at a silver metal bucket full of cedar kindling. "That stuff is like gold. Cedar is the wood you want to start a fire; it burns easily. You've got to have it."
For a man who worked his entire life at a sawmill, Dan's camp unquestionably boasts several different varieties of firewood. In addition to his axe, he has a chain saw and an ATV that his friend recently borrowed. He tells us that he has ridden the mountains' tops for great distances, and I realize that I have never considered what this country looks like from that perspective. He never once hesitates to throw a massive log on the fire in contrast to how we ration store-bought bags or the deadwood hauls from the forest. When I asked him to tell me which trees surround us, he looks up. He names every single tree and explains the characteristics and quality of the wood when it is cut.
Dan's stories continue until the smoke from surrounding fires is but a thin wisp. As we sit in silence by the fading glow of his campfire, I watch the contours of his face shape-shift and merge with the blackness of night. I reflect on the strange, poetic justice of his story.
For a man who spent his life working in a place that commodified trees into grades of lumber, it makes sense that he would finally make peace with his accident amidst the forest--alive, intact, whole. Perhaps, it is this very wholeness that he wants to be and is a part of.
The next morning, when the car is packed, and we're ready to set off, Dan walks over with a piece of Cedarwood kindling in his hand.
"Here ya go," he says. "Get your next fire started with that."
With the sweet-smelling fire starter in tow like a blessing from a guardian angel, the Warden of Waitabit himself, we drive away feeling like a part of a local legend that will surely live on as long as the trees of this forest.
