Chapter Nine

    Actually, leaving the city had come as a surprise. In the final weeks of their engagement, in the first weeks of their marriage, the old town still held all its charms. Through friends they had learned of an apartment in Kitsilano that could be sublet for the summer. A professor and his wife were going to Europe. As students they were of course none too well-heeled, and actually had little money to get married with when Jelena finally set the date, but she did quickly find a secretarial job, and then through the same friends who knew about the apartment, they were both, as singers, signed on for a short CBC Vancouver filming of a beach party centered on folk songs. Toby was not one of the head-liners, and found himself happiest sitting on a log feeding hot dogs to a German Shepherd, but the money was good, covering six weeks of the summer rent from an afternoon at the seaside.

    And as well, somewhere in that time frame, he had found himself one sunny afternoon pondering the fact that the world had yet to hear of a native saint from the city of his birth. He was by that time completely lost to the norms of the world, utterly wrapped up in the writings of and about the saints, and it had come to him, walking along West Hastings, after lunch with Jelena taking a break from her office, that there should be a Saint Somebody-or-Other of Vancouver. He was pretty sure he had not yet many any clergy who would quite qualify - God had warned him about keeping his spiritual life to himself - but perhaps he could work on the project. Possibly the old town deserved it, for all that it had given him, and it would be a very nice one in the eye for all the Protestant and pagan overburden on the nation's most western province. At the very least, the idea had been a very nice spiritual experience, and of course taking place right on one of the city's most historical streets.

    And then had come the inspiration of not long after they were man and wife, when he had been reflecting on his last year on the campus, as an independent student primarily of theology, fully enjoying - with a few unpleasant distractions from his own quick temper - the status of an unofficial don, a man of genuine learning going about bringing peace, conviction, and cheer to his younger peers still engaged in the classroom structure. He and Jelena should rent a big house, he thought, and take in a group of student boarders, for whom they might serve as laid-back but quite knowledgeable and encouraging study masters.
  
    And then Providence's axe fell like the guillotine. Of a sudden Toby realized that he was actually bored with Vancouver. The place had no challenges. He started to write a story about a character much like himself who became good friends with a young priest. (All the priests he had known were middle-aged and upward.) On the television that came with the apartment they had watched a show about a private school in upper New York state, and Toby had felt, not for the first time, an inescapable pull for the classroom.
  
    And then Jelena, not really interested in a life at the stenographer's typewriter, began to study the ads for teachers wanted outside the city. The provincial department of education had a rule: until the end of July, all school districts had to try to fill their teaching rosters with teachers certified from the Normal schools or the university teaching programme. But once August came, they could hire anybody they felt capable of holding a classroom together. The big centres, with the culture teachers were generally so fond of, were well filled by the fully qualified according to these norms, and it was in fact very difficult of even the certified to break in in Vancouver, Burnaby, Victoria and so on. But the outback was a different story.
 
     It was interesting that Toby, although bitten deeply by the television drama, and earlier utterly provoked by a photo and a story about a Catholic elementary school in the diocesan weekly, felt no urge in himself to apply. But Jelena spotted an ad for a post for which she had most of the qualifications in spades, and caught the boat to Nanaimo to confer with the superintendent of the relevant district.
 
     She got the job, but it was not quite where she had thought it was. Growing up in the eastern part of the province, she was no expert in the geography of the western end of it, for all that she had got to know Vancouver.
 
     "Where's Broughton Harbour? Which Gulf Island is it on? How close to Victoria?"
  
    Toby chuckled. "That's where you're teaching? Broughton Harbour? That's where we're going?"
  
    "Yes. Is there something wrong?"
 
     "Not as far as I know, unless you're anxious to be close to the cultural advantages of Little London. Or feel called to take your history students to meetings of the Legislature on a regular basis. Broughton Harbour is on an island all right. In fact a rather small island. Gull, I think. But Gull isn't in the Gulf Islands. It's a couple of hundred miles north of here. Near the top end of Vancouver Island."
 
     "Oh, dear. Then where's Fulford Harbour?"
 
     "I think that's on Saltspring Island. Which is a Gulf Island, of course, and where we thought we might like to wind up. Did you think Broughton Harbour was on Saltspring?"
  
    "Yes."
  
    "And the superintendent who hired you didn't take out a map and give you a geography lesson. Or, in the this case, is it oceanography? He either needs to go back to school or he was up to something. He's probably been around long enough to know that most recent graduates of the biggest university west of Toronto would think of Broughton Harbour as the end of the earth. I don't because I know a native lad from there who has one of the greatest senses of humour I've ever known. Now I can find out how he got it. If you had stars in your eyes at the thought of being able to hop a short ferry ride to Victoria why should he make you any wiser."
  
    "You don't mind?"
 
     "It is a bit of a surprise, but it's also a job and it feels all right. I'm starting to feel like anywhere out of this city would feel all right, and Broughton Harbour is definitely not one of the suburbs or Fraser Valley feeding lots. I just hope they've got a church. I don't think Billy Whaler was Catholic, for all that us Dogans have the best jokes."
 
     "I think God has just had a good joke on me. The superintendent - which he was; you're right - was very nice. He asked me about you, too. Were you also a teacher? I told him you were currently a writer, although not as yet published. He said he was sorry he didn't have two jobs. I told him you would probably prefer one more year of studying and writing before I had a baby."
 
     "Good for you. Why would anyone want two salaries? And you're obviously much better as a director of personnel than he is at geography. I take it you signed a contract?"
 
     "Yes. I don't see how I can back out."
  
    "Do you really want to?"
  
    "Not if you don't."
  
    "Then we're going. Broughton Harbour it is."