Day 77 – Sullivan Bay to Joe Cove – July 28, 2018

Completely fogged in this morning down to the waterline! But by 10:30AM, we had glorious sunshine and clearly the day is gearing up to be a scorching hot day for which we are so thankful! We set off for our next stop, Joe Cove, which is just on the edge of the Queen Charlotte Straits, where we will anchor for a day or two. From there we will have crabbing, shrimping, and fishing right at our fingertips. The goal now is to catch a ling cod or halibut and a pile of prawns for the freezer. We haven’t been super successful at prawning yet so we’ll see! We are on our way to Joe Cove and have short period of cell coverage which is why I am able to post this blog today. Just to fill some space, I will tell you about the latest book that I finished.

“The Home for Unwanted Girls” by Joanna Goodman was given to me by Laura Orr a couple days ago, and is a very disturbing but compelling story. It is historical fiction based on true stories of children in Quebec in the 50’s that were given up for adoption and placed into decent orphanages run by nuns. In the mid 50’s the Premier of Quebec suddenly decided to turn all the orphanages into mental health institutions instead because the funding available from Canada was far greater. The orphans were then falsely diagnosed as mentally retarded or hopelessly violent, and made to co-exist with the truly mentally ill patients, in fact they were put to work caring for these patients at very young ages. Ruled over by a different set of cruel nuns who did despicable things to these children to keep them compliant, some of the children were drugged to keep quiet and complacent. The woman at the center of the story is the girl who was forced by her parents to give up her child as she was only 16 and the child was born out of wedlock. Back in those days it predominantly brought unspeakable shame to a family and ruined a girl’s reputation to be an unwed mother. Anyway, haunted by her memories she spends great efforts trying to find her child facing roadblock after roadblock. There is a great love story woven into the book as well and while the subject is certainly shocking it was another well written book I couldn’t put down. Reminded me of the book “Before we were Yours” – another good read on a similar topic.

Going off air again for a couple days, talk to y’all soon!

A FEAST FROM THE OCEAN!