Mike and Me

More than anything, I wanted to live on the west coast. In 1975, Mike Rantis, my first boyfriend and I moved to Vancouver Island from the suburbs of Montreal, where I have no compunction to return. One memory I have about that sprawling inhospitable place is waiting for the bus in a blizzard and my eyelashing freezing, day after day on that same bus going to my dead-end job at Cargo Canada where everyone spoke French except me.

When we came to Vancouver Island it reminded me of a Brueghel painting: bucolic, welcoming and warm. And exactly where I wanted to be.

Mike was twenty-two, just a few years older than me, with long black hair that he usually wore in a pony tail so his one gold earring would really stand out. He always wore a hand-made leather coat cut like a tuxedo jacket for the swashbuckler look. He liked that look – the rock-and-roll hash dealer. But the drug trade wasn’t steady employment and I was always nagging at him to get a real job. He mainly got by on his charm — but he also had dreams of going west. Mike didn’t want to be in Montreal either.

We had a plan. Mike and I wasted no time finding a little home-made camper that fit snugly on the back of a ’67 pick-up truck. Even though it swallowed up nearly all of our savings, the big bucks were just days away and we could live in the camper and work anywhere. We were promised jobs in Gold River-- a small logging village in the middle of Vancouver Island--from Bobby Pope, a guy Mike befriended at a beer hall on Douglas Street, in Victoria. Mike couldn’t stay away from beer for too long, particularly after a six hour flight. Besides, he needed to be around "the guys" and he made friends easily. Too easily. He sure trusted Bobby Pope.

Gold River was, in those days, surrounded by wilderness. A desolate logging road was the only way in or out. For hours at a time, the only vehicles we saw were monstrous logging trucks barrelling down one lane – the same lane we were driving on. After several mechanical glitches and a few flats, we arrived two days later. This was the Wild West…

While we waited for work and our meagre savings dwindled, we spent our days fishing for Steelhead salmon, washing our clothes in the frigid river waters, and as the job never materialized, bickering with each other.
“ How long are we going to wait here?” I’d ask. I'd raise my voice a few notches. “We could get jobs in Victoria, what makes you trust this guy who you met once in a bar?”

“ Just cool your jets," he’d say, and smoke another joint.

Laid back Mike. Now and then Bobby Pope came by with a bag of weed and said, “Hold on. Just be patient a few more days and we’ll be up and running." And we waited. After about a month Bobby Pope vanished so we drove to the only phone booth in Gold River and used up the last of our coins on calls. After we tracked him down, Pope finally came clean and said the job fell through.

“ I told you not to trust that guy," I said. Mike didn’t say anything. I was feeling smug with that "told you so" attitude. Mike hated that.

He wasn’t much good at roughing it either. He phoned his parents and they sent us one-way plane tickets home – back to Montreal. I was devastated at the thought of going back. Sullen and depressed, we “broke camp” and chugged down the perilous logging road to Victoria. The air was thin and crisp, thick green mountains surrounded us, and the smell of cedar permeated my clothes and hair, although it was probably the smell of clear-cut logging. I wanted to climb to the top of the highest craggy peak and stay there. We drove by pastoral rolling hills and through the fertile Comox valley and I wanted to run through the misty green pastures and stay there forever. We drove through Cathedral Grove and I wanted to dig up primeval ferns and decorate the camper. Instead we heaved up to the intersection, turned right on the island highway, clunked the old beater into fourth gear and headed toward Victoria.

We were flat broke, busted. Someone had told Mike about the Salvation Army in town and how they gave out food vouchers. That was our first stop. We both felt defeated, small. This time I didn’t say anything. After a few hours of waiting and filling out the necessary forms in triplicate, we got a whopping twenty bucks. Naturally Mike wanted to stop at the Ingraham Hotel where draft beer was three for a buck. But the voucher was only redeemable at Safeway, so he waited for me in the parking lot while I went in to shop. We had heated discussions as to how this voucher should be spent: big fat juicy steaks or veggies, beans and rice. Mike was a true carnivore. We just needed enough food to last a day or so, until the plane tickets arrived.

I sauntered out of Safeway into the fresh, crisp September afternoon and strangers smiled and said hello; the parking lot was landscaped with cascades of brilliant flowers in hanging pots and tropical flora – pampas grass, palm trees and bamboo— filled the boulevard. It was nothing like the streets of Montreal where scruffy weeds sprouted from concrete cracks and everyone scowled and never made eye contact.

Mike took one look at me and went ballistic.
“ What the fuck is that?” he screamed so the whole parking lot full of nice gentle people turned and stared.
“ It’s a plant," I replied.
“ I know it’s a fucking plant, where’s my steak?”
I told him we weren’t leaving. Or maybe it was “I’m not leaving." He grabbed the plant and threw it on the pavement, calling me a stupid bitch and a moron. I started to cry and yelled at him that I wasn’t going back. Victoria was now our home. I was down on my hands and knees scooping up the Philodendron that had spilled on the parking lot, and packed it back into the little green plastic pot.

We drove a few blocks to the beer parlor, my face blazing red, plant on my lap, not speaking a word to each other. He disappeared into the beer hall and I sat in the back of the camper with my plant and books, hungry and alone. I was afraid of not knowing what tomorrow would bring, but I felt strong.

I got a job the next day, and a few days later at the beer parlor, Mike met a few guys on a construction crew and said they could use some help. He could bang nails into wood. We split up a few months later. My Philodendron grew into a tree and stayed with me for fifteen years.

A few years ago Mike phoned. He was living in the Comox Valley and called to tell me he had lung cancer. Unfortunately, Mike passed away and one of my biggest regrets is not seeing him before he died. I loved that guy.