When we were growing up our Vancouver cousins used to spend a month each summer in the Gulf Islands, and for a few summers running we got to join them for a week. Once they rented a place on Galiano, once on Salt Spring and a couple of times on Mayne Island, which is still probably my favourite. Every morning we’d get into our bathing suits, pack the car with an all-day supply of books, cheese buns, plums, and Fresca, and head off to a beach. There we more or less lived in our aquasocks and goggles, getting out of the water occasionally to eat or read.
At some point the reading material would run out and we’d exhaust even each other’s books. At this crucial point during one of the Mayne Island summers, my aunt revealed that there was a book swap near the grocery store and so mid-afternoon we abandoned the beach early and went inland. The funny thing with the Gulf Islands is that they are both wetter and drier than you might expect, depending on where you’ve emerged from. After days on the shore the interior of the island felt dark and rainy, but by August the meadows inland, small as they were, got unexpectedly parched.
The swap, at least to my recollection, was in a slightly forested area off the store parking lot. It had two doors, but wasn’t of a size you could actually step into. The pickings were apparently never that great, but because it was a swap there was always the possibility that it might suddenly improve. What I remember from our excursion were a lot of Louis L’Amours and Catherine Cooksons. My cousin Max found a real fatty called Coma that completely consumed him. I can still picture its cover with a drawing of a body suspended from wires.
I don’t remember what I found that day, or if I found anything. I had sort of half turned the corner from being a kid and had bought a copy of Seventeen magazine on the ferry ride over, and I think it occupied me for a ridiculous amount of time on that holiday. My uncle at one point asked me what I would read in a few years when I passed the age of seventeen and I told him that obviously I would keep reading it. They weren’t making a magazine to read for one year of your life. I’m pretty sure, though, that I’d stopped buying it well before I turned eighteen.
I’d love to be able to visit the swap again with the stock that was there that summer and see what I might choose now. If nothing else I might give one of the Louis L’Amours a go.
