When I was eight years old, I took a walk with my friends and their mom down Cape Roger Curtis. We took a path I’d never walked before and on our way back we lost my friends’ mom. As we retraced our footsteps, the daylight waned and we were terrified that we’d have to spend the night in the forest or perhaps we’d never be found again.
After much handwringing, with our little hearts pounding in our chests, we decided to try an unmarked path we were certain would only lead us further into darkness. At the end of the path, we found my mother, my friends’ mother and two Bowen Island RCMP officers.
We grew up on Whitesails Drive. At the end of our street, Cape Roger Curtis was a summer adventure land. I never knew where the paths would lead. It seemed like the lighthouse was always eluding me and we usually resorted to pine cone fights instead of pressing onward. This is still the only place I’ve ever seen jungle vines. Their mysterious presence all made sense when we learned in school that the West Coast was a rainforest (an exhilarating realization for a child of the Fern Gully generation).
As I grew up, trips down the cape were less and less frequent. But when I went, the forest was as disorienting as ever. No signs, all paths unmaintained, some even deer trails. Once I stumbled on a beach, so pristine I tricked myself into thinking I was the first human to ever lay foot there.
When I heard several years ago that Cape Roger Curtis was going to be developed, my heart sank, as many did in the community. I know some friends who refuse to see it now. But I couldn’t help my curiosity, so a few Christmases ago I drove to Cape Roger Curtis, past the clean new signs, down the fresh asphalt on the forest floor and pulled up to the beach I’d once stumbled upon by accident. It now had a name, a small parking lot and a gravel path leading down to the water. I leaned over the steering wheel and cried.
For the past several years, I’ve been writing songs for my second album entitled “The Cape.” It’s now finished, recorded this winter in Toronto, packaged beautifully using archival photographs from the Bowen Island Museum and Archives, and includes a seven and a half minute long stormy ballad by the same name. I like to think I’ve accomplished what I set out to do with this record, which was to write a collection of folksongs about home, while being careful not to adopt the saccharine, heavy-handed Canadiana we’ve come to expect in the arts (Strange Brew, some Stompin’ Tom Connors songs and a fair bit of CBC television lovingly come to mind). The songs partly serve to process change and to grieve loss. They are also meant to revive old ways and musical traditions that have always drawn me to them. Part lament and part celebration, I imagine this record to be a wake for all the things we won’t have back again, like Cape Roger Curtis.
I invite every Bowen Islander to come to the Bowen Island Pub on Wednesday May 7. It will be the last night of our West Coast CD release tour with my four-piece string band coming out from Montreal. Entry is by donation. Come down to say hello and to enjoy original Canadian roots music that is a direct product of your community.
Listen to The Cape and find event details at www.sarahjanescouten.com
