She's Paved All the Way to Sooke, Now	Back to the Current Issue Back to Features
by Ross Boast

Before, the road to Sooke was all gravel and we didn't get very many visitors because it was a tough one: potholes, washboard, sharp turns, steep hills. This is the western end of the road in Canada, you know. You just can't go any further west, not unless you can swim awful damn good, because Japan is quite a few thousand miles away.

They say North America is tilted toward the west and that all the strange people keep sliding this way. I don't know if that's how Dinty came to be in Port Renfrew or not, but it's as good as any reason he could lie about. Dinty provides our local colour here.

He must have seen a picture of Willie Nelson once and it looked good to him, so Dinty wears the red bandanna and the scruffy beard, but that camouflage doesn't do it. He really doesn't look anything like Willie, only a caricature. It's just Dinty, you see. He's too short, for one thing.

Since the mill closed and the store burned, there's not a whole lot of things to do in Port Renfrew. You go up to the coffee bar at the Rec. Centre in the mornings and talk over all the serious happenings for a couple of hours and then in the afternoon you go down to the pub for a beer and rehash the same things. It can get tiresome, so Dinty tries to relieve the tedium by chatting up any visitors that may come by.

Like I said, we don't get many, but since she's been paved all the way to Sooke, a few more drop in. They come out to see Botanical Beach and all the sea creatures that get trapped in the pools. Some of them don't get here at low tide so they don't get to see any creatures at all. Only us.

Others come out to meet hikers struggling in off the trail to Bamfield. But that's uncertain, since you can't tell whether the walkees have stuck to their schedule.

That uncertainty was lucky for me, at least, when those two women's fellows didn't show up on time. The women were camped down by the river. I didn't think three people could get that tangled up in a tent and still have fun. And the next day, when the men arrived, the girls didn't let on by as much as a glance.

A very few visitors come in by boat. Dinty had two of them, an American couple, cornered in the pub. They were up from Oregon in their big new Bayliner. They said they were taking a rest from bucking a strong north-west entering the strait. Port Renfrew is okay to shelter in like that, but not if it's a westerly. Power boat guys often seem to look like the American. He had the big belly, heavy jowls and a requisite yachting cap. She was a small, faded blonde. A cowed appearance, as if she was allowed to talk only when he approved.

There's only a few tables in the pub and we were only one over so we could hear most of the talk between Dinty and the Yanks.

Now, Dinty is proud of Port Renfrew and he talks it up every chance that he gets. I don't know why he's proud because there isn't much here. I suppose if you reach the town at the end of the road, maybe it's the end of your road too, and you might as well make the best of it.

So, Dinty is mentioning all the lovely sights around here, but the guy keeps interrupting and he comes on like the original Ugly American. He's telling Dinty how much money he made last year and how much he paid for the Bayliner and how fast it goes.

Dinty took this for awhile, and then he turned his head slowly towards our table and gave us a wink. He hoisted his beer and took a sip, then began coughing like some had gone down the wrong way. When he saw he had their attention, he gave himself a last fist pound on the chest and started in quickly.

"I don't think you know what a truly unique place Port Renfrew is. There's nowhere up and down the whole coast from Central America to Alaska that his even a little bit like it. It's one of a kind."

"What's so different? There's nothing I read about it that says it's different," says big belly. His wife pipes up, "The people at the tourist bureau in Portland never mentioned that there was anything different about it."

"Well," Dinty says, giving his beard a rub, "They like to keep it quiet, you know, keep the riff-raff out. It ties in with the new pavement to Sooke. That was so they could get the ambulances out here smoothly, without any hitches or slowdowns."

The wife looked apprehensive.

Dinty continued, "You see, they collect everyone in BC that has AIDS and bring them out here. Everybody in town has AIDS. Everybody in this pub has AIDS. Gee, I hope your glasses were washed out well. It's sort of like a leper colony here, you understand."

Never has a Bayliner gotten powered up faster than that one. He booted it down the channel full revs, nose high, terrific roar.

Dinty came back from the window where he'd been watching the Bayliner disappear and sat down at our table. He looked down for a moment, then up, and with a sly smile on his face said, "I bet you anything that fellow goes in for a test tomorrow morning. It don't pay to talk down to people, now does it?"