Extensions (55 page)

Timing and karma. Were they the same thing? Was Jane an unwitting accomplice to her own misery? Was she an enabler? Are we all? Did she believe she had to suffer Roland's alcoholism to atone for the false start to their marriage? She spoke of sins in her deathbed letter — at last in a voice of freedom. I felt sure Sara would have been thankful to know her father found peace with a loving woman, having found the same thing herself with Miles Dryvynsydes.

Dorothy went on. “
GG
felt bad about that daughter of Granddad's. She said they went to the island to her uncle's funeral to see if they could find out where she was. He'd been her guardian, but his widow said she'd moved to the prairies and left no address.”

“You've got a good memory,” Dad remarked.

Tim heard enough to add: “My grandmother was that kind of woman. Made you want to listen to her.”

Dorothy handed us three more photos: Kay and Roland at Niagara Falls with Marie and her husband Victor Shybunka; Roland with Tim and Rilla as children on a ferry; Roland alone with a birthday cake — that one had a couple of lines written on the back:
March 29, 1938, age
sixty-five
. The wizened face still carried an apologetic smile under unshrinking eyes; were they the eyes of his twin daughters that looked past each other on a street in Medicine Hat around the same time?

“Oh, and here's one you might like to have. It ended up with Granddad's things.” Dorothy spoke casually, tossing a picture of two little girls with bows in their hair onto Dad's lap. Dad's utterance came from such a deep place I could see the hairs on his neck stand up. Dorothy sat back and watched us as he passed it to me. “You know this picture?”

I nodded. “That makes three out of four. The other is somewhere in Wales.”

Between us, Dad and I filled Dorothy and Tim in on the history of the photos, Dorothy sitting close to her father to repeat when necessary. At the end both were speechless, until Dorothy sprang up and coaxed us to stay and have homemade borscht with them. “Pops eats so much borscht, perogies, and cabbage rolls, you'd think he was a full-blooded Ukrainian, when his name is the only Ukrainian thing about him.” Tim Shybunka strained to hear what his daughter was saying and smiled.

It had been a long afternoon and we declined politely. When we stood up to leave, Dorothy offered to have copies made of Roland's photos; we accepted on behalf of Janetta and Wendell as well. We promised to meet again soon.

Traffic crawled on the Lions Gate Bridge. Dad nodded off next to me. In the middle of Stanley Park, he sat up straight.

“Dreaming?”

“Maybe. Mother used to talk about the songlines in Australia among the aborigines. She read books about them and couldn't contain her wonder at how they kept their stories alive for thousands of years, all orally. Each generation sang their sacred paths to life through rocks, trees, landmarks. I think I just had a dream about those songlines. Except the landmarks were all these people we've unearthed, including the ones under it. Each of them has offered scraps of memory to the same songline, thereby preserving it. Is this our sacred path?”

“Well said, Pops.” I gave him a light punch on his arm, as we turned off Denman to Davie, finally moving at a normal speed. “I've had an overactive imagination myself. Blamed it on lack of sleep.” I didn't try to explain the circus I envisioned in Gastown.

When I dropped him at his house, he asked me in for supper. “Thanks, but I've got places to go. And you need a nap. Then open a can of sardines and get back to your musical.”

He slapped the air dismissively and got out. Maybe someday he'd get a kiss on his head — from Dorothy, for sure.

Within minutes, I was in the maze of False Creek streets off Spyglass Place and found a parking spot not far from my target. I stepped inside and pushed the button for 315, my stomach churning. The voice spoke, and I said “Arabella” into the speaker, wondering if the buzzer would sound. When it did, I pushed the lobby door open and took the stairs. At 315, I knocked. I would have deserved the half hour it seemed to take someone to answer, but it was only a second or two. Warren Wright stood in the open doorway, looking bewildered. Inside I could see sun streaming from the west through all the space he had chosen to leave around his few pieces of furniture.

“Come in,” he said, gesturing me past the galley kitchen and into the sunlit living room.

I stood fast on the sisal mat next to the door and shook my head. “If you're not doing anything, I'd like to invite you to my place for supper.”

A smile started to curl one side of his mouth.

If bad timing were responsible for misplaced letters, photos, affections, and even sisters, this family was long overdue for a change of course. “You might want to bring your toothbrush.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Extensions
is a work of fiction, although I have drawn upon many reports of the coal mining world around Nanaimo in the late nineteenth/ early twentieth centuries for its creation.

For inspiring my interest in this era, I credit my late aunt Olive Harper, who, thirty-five years ago, gave my family a copy of
Ghost Towns
and Mining Camps of Vancouver Island
by T.W. Paterson and passed along the four letters she possessed in her mother's handwriting. My ensuing vision has relied on many sources. Lynne Bowen, author of
Boss
Whistle,
has provided not only a primer on coal miners, but also personal encouragement. To the late Peggy Nicholls I owe a great deal for sharing her vast historical knowledge and genealogical findings. Other helpful books and publications were
Go Do Some Great Thing: The Black
Pioneers of British Columbia
by Crawford Killian,
Old Square-Toes and
His Lady: The Life of James and Amelia Douglas
by John Adams, several essays on Sir James Douglas by Charlotte Girard in
B.C. Studies
,
The
Dunsmuir Saga
by Terry Reksten,
America's Forgotten Pandemic
by Alfred W. Crosby,
The Great Influenza
by M. Barry,
The Silent Enemy: Canada
and the Deadly Flu
by Eileen Pettigrew,
Flu
by Gina Kolata, as well as various studies online. Among the many references I consulted on the Louis Stark family were articles from the Salt Spring Island Archives, including “Recollections of Sylvia Stark as told to her daughter Marie Albertina Stark Wallace,” the B.C. Archives, Nanaimo Archives, Lynne Bowen's
Three Dollar Dreams,
and
The Chronicle of Ladysmith and District
compiled by Viola Johnson-Cull.

My own research trip to Nanaimo and environs was made possible by my dear friend Marilyn Martin and my cousins Irene Luknowsky, Jim, Carla, and Rick Harper acting as chauffeurs, hosts, and enthusiastic explorers. My thanks to them all.

Arabella's story could not have been written without Annelisa Dey Thomas. She has been my daughterlode of information about police situations and protocol, and adjusted the contemporary narrative to reality throughout. To their sister's expertise, Gillian Dunn and Phoebe Dey added discerning questions and comments on several drafts of the book. They were always up for a consensus in a dilemma, despite their busy lives. My gratitude for the three of them and their help goes beyond words.

I am deeply indebted to Carol and Jan Fishman for their patience and willingness to enlighten me on legal proceedings.

John Lebeau deserves high praise for his careful reading of the book and his thoughtful and heartening remarks. I am also grateful to Richard Lebeau and Louise Lacouceur for their suggestions. Others who have contributed prompt answers to research questions or offered relevant debate on various points of the book are Art and Doreen Alexander, Novell Thomas, Pat Gilkes, Renate Williams, Joan Jason, Valerie Richie, and Colleen Martin.

Sincere thanks to my NeWest editor Anne Nothof for her support of the novel from the start and her keen eye thereafter. My appreciation to Lou Morin for her warmth in the NeWest process, to Paul Matwychuk for his easy, knowledgeable manner, to Natalie Olsen for procuring the enthralling cover photo, and to Shawna Lemay for her early guidance.

Finally, I give thanks to my husband Cedric, for balancing my heart and art and keeping me on my grammatical toes.

myrna dey
GREW UP IN CALGARY AND RECEIVED A B.A. AND AN M.A. FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA. FOLLOWING RESEARCH IN BERLIN, SHE TAUGHT AND STUDIED GERMAN AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, FOR TWO YEARS IN THE MID-SIXTIES. SHE ALSO LIVED FOR SIX YEARS IN GUYANA. SINCE 1976, SHE AND HER HUSBAND HAVE MADE THEIR HOME IN KAMSACK, SASKATCHEWAN, WHERE THEY RAISED THEIR THREE DAUGHTERS. HER SHORT STORIES, ARTICLES, AND ESSAYS HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED IN
READER'S DIGEST, NEWEST REVIEW, CANADIAN LIVING,
THE NATIONAL POST, THE GLOBE AND MAIL,
AND
MACLEAN'S.