Because they had left the city late in the afternoon, they stopped for the night in Hope, taking a motel. Toby was glad for the early break in the journey. If he could walk around a bit, the perhaps the terrible sensation in his head would ease off. Nothing had shaken it during the ride along the west bank of the river, not even the mighty cottonwoods so reminiscent of his reading through novels about the south and west of the United States, nor any memories he tried to summon from his knowledge of the fur trading explorers who had first found the Fraser. How could this deadness just go on and on? Was this what those poor Jews heading for the gas chambers in their box cars felt like? How much more hopeless could a young man be? And there was certainly point to trying comfort himself with memories of his trip up the valley road a year earlier. Those thoughts only seemed to make the present journey worse. Then, he had been full of expectations of the summer ahead, full of gratitude for the studies and creativity of the winter behind. Almost everything he touched turned to gold, as if he had been some kind of intellectual Midas; for this entire afternoon so far, everything had turned to ashes.
He was, mercifully, right about stopping. The sheer physical motion of settling into their motel was a relief, and once they were comfortable, the Brigadier asked Toby if he would like a beer. Toby said he would and his host took a brace of bottled from the motel fridge, and found the glasses in a cupboard. They settled to their leisure for a bit, and then the Brigadier got up from his chair and went to his own room, returning shortly with what seemed like a smallish Bible, or book of prayer. He opened it at the front and held it out to Toby.
"I'd like you to look at this, if you would." He was not at aggressive about the business, just quite matter of fact, but Toby was instantly aware that it was an attempt to interrupt his movement into the Catholic fold. Did the Brig always carry the book with him when he travelled, or had he been talking to his parents, who thought that if he was keen on joining a church, why not something closer to home, like the Anglican? Toby had always known his father's wartime commander was an Anglican, devout and learned enough to be capable of giving a sermon to his brigade when it was called out for church parade. His father, not an uncritical man where religion was concerned, had high praise for the address.
The text presented to Toby at the front of the book was the famous Thirty Nine Articles of the English Church as it became after Henry the Eighth. Toby knew this from high school history, initially, and it was a subject as well that had appeared now and again in his general reading, and once or twice in his university English courses. Toby took some time, for the sake of politeness, to read down the list, then handed the book back. He nodded his appreciation. "Those are quite high standards, aren't they? Different than other Protestant Churches. More cultural somehow. I've been to different Sunday Schools, but not Anglican. But my Nana - my mother's mother - was raised Anglican, in England. And so was my mother for a bit, but then my Nana joined the Baptist Church, which is the one I know most of, because she took me. But after the war she got married again - she'd been a widow for years - and moved up the Coast and became an Anglican again and sings in the choir." His eye actually caught the denial of purgatory, as this had always been part of his vocabulary for some reason he could not explain, and he had noted the attacks on things Romish, but he was not interested in an argument with a man old enough to be his grandfather, especially when he had no uncertainties himself, except about himself. The sheer joy of Merton's description of his first days in the monastery were enough in themselves to put him beyond recall of doubts of the perfection of the Faith. And this bloody thing in his head left so little room for intellectual alternatives anyway! And he actually felt a little sorry for the Brig because he could not have the same affection for Catholicism. So he asked him if he had ever visited Camp Artaban, the Anglican church camp in Howe Sound.
"Yes, I have. A number of times. How do you know about it?"
"I belonged to a Salvation Army scout troop when I was in high school, and they had a summer camp near Hopkins Landing, on the west shore of the sound. I went twice, before I was old enough to go to cadet camp. In the second year, we loaded up the whalers and rowed from our camp to Artaban. There was no one there at the time, so we got to wander around and have a look. It was a good row. I'd never done two-oar rowing before. It was fun. I kept thinking about the old Greeks, rowing around the Mediterranean. And it seemed very peaceful at the camp, and quiet. All the boys walked around in a hush. We didn't stay very long, of course. That would have been trespassing. And we realized that we seemed to have more grounds for games and things."
"I know your camp," the Brig said. "It is very well appointed."
"I was very lucky to go the first year. We were still recovering the family finances. The next year was no problem. My Dad had been more than a year in a much better paying job, and I had a paper route."
"But your family is not church going, as far as I understand. How did you get involved in the Salvation Army?"
"I wasn't. Well, a bit, later. But when I joined the scout troop it was from my new school in Vancouver. One day this boy just leaned across the aisle and asked me if I wanted to join. Told me where the meetings took place, and so I went. It was a big, successful, outfit at that time. Thirty boys as least, sometimes, and half-a-dozen leaders. They had a week-end camp in North Van, on Lynn Creek. I went to everything I could, right to the end of high school." Toby grinned. "I suppose I got in a fair amount of church, in spite of myself. Pretty cunning outfit, they were. Sang a lot, too. I was all set to learn to play a horn, but my Dad shut that down and I didn't. And somewhere in there along came cadets and then I met the army, again."
"So you belonged to two organizations at the same time. How did that affect your schooling?"
"Not at all negatively. It gave me an excellent balance. I rarely needed to do school work at home. I read, or went out with my friends. And two nights a week with excellent organizations, plus the weekend or summer events. I took it all for granted, of course, but then when I got to university I discovered a lot of kids who did not seem to have had the same advantages, and I realized I'd been pretty lucky. And, to add to all that, my Dad decided to buy a summer camp on Sechelt Inlet. On a tiny little bay with three cabins around it. My uncle bought one of the others. The third was pretty small. One room only. No one ever seemed to use it, but it had a modest library that we made use of from time to time."
"It sounds as if you've had a lot of exposure to Nature," said the Brig's mother.
"Yes. I can't seem to do without it. And of course there was my total summer in the woods last year. That seemed too good to be true, but there it was."
"There will be a great deal of Nature where you're going now," the Brig said.
"Yes," Toby said. "I'm looking forward to seeing it. You're very generous to take me to such a huge, expansive piece of the country that I've never seen before."
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