In the interest of having some of the older history of surfing on Vancouver Island recorded I write the odd story about events that I witnessed during the 12 years I lived at JR, 1975-1987. Because it’s not my place to tell other people’s stories I tell them pretty much first person and try to respect the desire of some of the old crew to remain relatively anonymous. Obviously I have to mention the odd name here and there when it is essential to the story and that’s how I play it.
So here’s the story of when some hippies took over the local surfers clubhouse on the point at JR, back in 1976.
After the last of the old crew drove away from the point in the spring of 1976, only Derek Richardson and I remained at Jordan River. We shared Jim Van Dame’s place, behind where Shakies is now, and we surfed the last little dribblers of May and June in between operating the gas station and drinking beer in the pub next door.
What happened during those few weeks of May and into June led to some interesting events later that year when the surfers returned for the first of the fall swells, in September.
But a little history first.
Some years before I came along the group known as the West Coast Surfing Associates had reached an agreement with a woman named Jesse Mapes to use the cabin she owned, situated right on the point. Jesse was married to Bud Mapes and they lived in the house directly behind the old Jordan River Hotel, upstream so to say.
Jesse owned the cabin and had actually lived in it years before when she was married to her first husband, then the Manager of the logging division.
Every season the surfers belonging to the WCSA would return to JR and have the cabin and sauna at their disposal.
Enter a hustler named Jeff and his lady named Blue.
Jeff and Blue were from the group of ‘70’s era “hippies/freaks/shrubs” who lived along the West Coast Road back then, many of whom lived for a time at what was called Head Acres, a parcel of land owned by folksinger Valdy. They all partied in the pub of the Jordan River Hotel, and I got to know most of them and watched them in operation. I lived right next door so the pub was like my living room to me.
Jeff and Blue went to work on Jesse and Bud, who spent hours every day in the pub as they were both alcoholics. They bought them many beers, visited them at their place and generally buttered them up, particularly Jesse.
They needed a place to live it turned out; having worn out their welcome where they were, plus Blue was newly pregnant.
Finally Jesse agreed to let them move into the cabin on the point, which they immediately did.
Derek and I watched this unfold and had many a good laugh over what we though would happen when the boys came back in September. No way would the boys let this happen we thought.
Those freaks were going to get it for sure.
June came along at about the same time the station’s gas tank ran dry for the last time, signaling the end of Jim’s little gas station, the Jordan River Shell.
Self-serves had arrived and put all the small rural outfits out of business.
Jordan River Shell was one of them.
Derek left for Tofino with the idea of setting up a for-profit surf school at Cox Bay, which he subsequently did, and I turned my attention to trying to survive until the surf started again. I had no job, no income and now no gas station to make even a few dollars with. I was down to one meal a day, often pancakes made with water, and a good day was if I caught a trout in the river-mouth, so I’d have some meat.
I ate perch too if I caught one.
It was very tough for a period there and I was very pleased when local resident Ray Carlson hired me to help him dismantle the old BC Hydro powerhouse.
I made a little cash from that and was invited out for dinner now and then by another local resident who was a guard at the prison camp, so I survived until it was time to get to Tofino for the annual surfer movie and party. No surfer missed that in those days and I was determined to get there somehow. Besides, Derek had said I could stay with him and work the surf school when I got there, so I had something else to look forward to.
Problem was I had no ride, and all the other surfers were already up there or would be going there from Victoria, and not likely to drive all the way out to JR to pick me up and take me with them.
I’d only spent one winter at JR and a few of the old guys still barely talked to me, so bumming a ride from that crew was out of the question.
But I found a way to get there by convincing Jeff, who somehow had acquired an old station wagon, that if he’d drive me to Tofino that weekend I’d pay for the gas and get him into the surfer’s party.
I though he might balk at going to a surfers get-together, but he was a big and somewhat intimidating guy plus he knew some people in Tofino, so he agreed to take me. I’ll give him credit for having guts alright, and he DID like to party, so it wasn’t that hard a sell really.
We left JR in the morning, Jeff, a pregnant Blue and two other shrubs I didn’t know, all stuffed into Jeff’s station wagon. My surfboard was tied onto a couple of pieces of 2x4 on the roof and held down with ropes looped through the slightly opened windows of the back seat. Everyone got in first and then I tied the board on before slipping in through the window.
Just north of Duncan Jeff pulled over and we picked up two hippy chicks who were hitchhiking, heading for Tofino also it turned out. After getting them all in and the board tied back on we set off again.
Jeff had produced a bottle of whiskey earlier and proceeded to get progressively pissed as we motored along, him at the wheel. It was a sketchy trip and both chicks were scared silly most of the way. Blue kept him under control pretty well I thought, but I hate riding with a drunk driver.
After some long hours cramped together with only one badly needed piss break along the way, we finally arrived at Cox Bay.
The two chicks disappeared down the beach, seemingly very happy to be alive and in one piece and Jeff, Blue and crew left to find some friends they were going to stay with.
I hunted around until I found Derek and set up with him.
He slept in his van and I stayed in a tent discretely tucked away in a corner of the Pacific Sands Campground.
Derek had 10 shorty wetsuits and 10 different boards for the surf school so every day we’d carry them back and forth between the beach and our campsite. And every night we’d party with someone new. It was a great time.
But I digress, as usual.
After settling in I arranged for my tickets to the movie and got two extra for Jeff and Blue.
The night of the movie and the bash found most of the surfers of the day, a few Tofino local characters, some tourists, and the two people who had ousted the West Coast Surfing Associates from their cabin on the point at Jordan River all partying together, everyone either drunk or stoned or, in many cases, both.
I don’t recall much of it at all, but the next morning I was alive and well as were Jeff and Blue who then headed back to Jordan River.
Several weeks later I too went back where I again scuffled by until I finally was offered a job on the Forestry Crew for BCFP at Port Renfrew.
That was about September, just as the first swells started to arrive and I remember being mad as hell that I missed a few good swells because I was working.
When I was unemployed and starving at least I could surf every time it broke, so it was a difficult switch to make at first, going to work and being responsible again.
In the end, despite some dark mutterings and many murmured threats, a peaceful if not friendly arrangement was reached between the surfers and the freaks. The freaks could stay in the cabin until Blue had her kid and then they had to go, and the surfers got the use of the sauna, infinitely more valuable than the cabin in reality.
Oh there had been some earlier appeals to the logging company to have Jeff and Blue removed, but the company feared the headlines in the Sooke Mirror that would probably read: Logging Company Evicts Pregnant Woman on Welfare, so they were loathe to do anything until the baby arrived.
That’s how it went down, and in the spring of 1977, after the freaks packed up and moved, the old cabin was bulldozed onto the beach and burned.
It made a wonderful fire too, although I was sad to see it go as it was from the front bedroom window of that cabin that I saw my first ever long lined-up perfect glassy peeling Jordan River wave back in December of 1973, a sight that changed my life in a very profound way.
The cabin that sits on the point now was built by the local crew during the spring of ’77, which turned out to be a particularly good one for surf.
I was working all week in Renfrew but I clearly remember noting nine weekends in a row where I had four foot or bigger surf off the point.
The guys would work a few hours on the cabin, surf a session when the tide was just right and then work some more on the cabin.
Rob H, aka Kiwi as he was from New Zealand, was around those days and, as a journeyman carpenter, was a big help. The rest of the crew all chipped in with materials and labor and it didn’t take long before the new cabin rose in the same spot the old one had occupied.
When it came time to shingle the roof the boys were a bit confused as to how to start so I got old Gord Willoughby to come over and show them how.
He had just finished doing his own roof, at age 80 something, so I figured he was a good guy to ask.
He started off the first row for the boys, showed them how to nail them properly and keep them straight, and they finished it off. The finished cabin was better than the old one and has served the members well, although few of the old guys ever stayed in it overnight as they usually went home, slept in their vehicles or stayed at my place it seems.
So, this spring marked the 30th year since the building of the surfer’s shack on the point at Jordan River.
I was there and, as I recall, that’s how it happened.
And I’m sorry my stories are all first person, but, c’est la vie.
Take care.
