Mnemonic by Theresa Kishkan Read Free Book Online Page B

yards, the dogs everywhere. It wasn’t until much later that I learned anything of the history that allowed for such discrepancy between the communities. Paved sidewalks and prosperity on one side of the line, poverty on the other. Yet no one pointed out that each of those homes on the Reserve had a smokehouse behind it, that in spite of education policies that almost exterminated the cultures and languages of the original inhabitants of the coast, there was evidence of pride and dignity. Nobody mentioned or noticed that there was no need to clear out the wild plants in order to have gardens.
    Gardens are an attempt to mirror Eden. But what if you already lived there? What if you could step out your door and pick huckleberries, salal, the new tips of thimbleberry to steam like celery? What if you could dig the roots of the blue camas to dry, springbank clover tasting like young peas, wild onions to flavour your stew? Or climb down to the beach to the clam beds, carefully terraced over the centuries. What if walking in the woods was like wandering through a vast and beloved place of abundance? Why clear the earth of all these life-giving plants in order to have . . . grass?
    Once, riding my bike from a temporary residence out on Ardmore Drive to my summer job near Brentwood Bay, passing through the Reserve, a very old man came out to call off a dog that was lunging at me. “Here,” he said, “try this,” passing me a knife with something speared on its tip. And I ate a slice of warm salmon right out of the smokehouse. It tasted of the sea, and campfires on cool evenings, buttery and smoky. It was utterly of the place and time. And no one I knew was eating it. Except there.

    In autumn of 2009, I was reading Trees of Greater Victoria: A Heritage and was completely surprised to come across this information:
    A rare heritage evergreen species, known as live oak, Quercus virginiana , at 144 Dallas Road, 36 inches (91 cm) in diameter, 22 feet (6.7 m) tall, has an amazing spread of over 50 feet (15.2 m). It is on the old homesite of C.F. Newcombe, outstanding Haida Indian authority for whom the Newcombe Auditorium at the Provincial Museum is named. 7
    So not a eucalyptus at all! Instead, it was a tree I’d read about in southern American literature, a tree associated with William Faulkner and Walt Whitman, a tree ancient and gnarled, draped with Spanish moss. In fact, the tree became a code for Whitman’s robust homosexuality in the much-discussed “Live Oak, with Moss”:
    I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
    All alone stood it, and the moss hung down
    from the branches,
    Without any companion it grew there,
    glistening out with joyous leaves of
    dark green.
    But why did Newcombe choose a live oak, I wondered? Living in a city surrounded by wonderful native species — and himself a man who knew the value of plants and how a culture utilized them for medicines, commerce, and the practical business of everyday life — why choose a tree from the southeastern United States? Although common in southern cities, it is a tree happiest in parks, large estates, and on riverbanks where it can access damp sandy soil and where it can spread. The widest crown of any live oak is more than forty-five metres, belonging to a tree in Florida. I tried to figure out why that tree, in that place.
    Next time I’m in Victoria, I drive over to Dallas Road (144 is next to 138; the lot was no doubt larger in the early twentieth century when Newcombe built here) and park across from Ogden Point breakwater. All those huge granite blocks were brought from Hardy Island, near where I live on the Sechelt Peninsula. I want to walk out on it as I did as a young girl with boyfriends on dark Friday nights. We’d pause to kiss as waves crashed against the exposed side. I always felt like I might fall — into the deep cold water of Juan de Fuca Strait or the more mysterious waters of human affection. Perhaps it