Breakfast with Kayak Bill - by Colin Lake

Originally posted 12/22/2019

Image by Colin Lake

In the fall of 1994, I got a job with a small logging outfit on British Columbia’s mid-coast.  Rather than felling live trees like most loggers do, we made our living by salvaging trees that were floating in the ocean or deposited on shore by high tide.  This method of logging is known as “hand-logging” or “beach-combing”.  We would collect timber from the myriad inlets and channels using a small tugboat, and construct a large floating raft, or ‘boom’ of logs that would be picked up every couple of months by barges travelling up and down the coast. 

Image Colin Lake

Our floating camp was nestled in a sheltered inlet roughly midway between Klemtu and Bella Bella, in the Finlayson Channel area of northern Milbanke Sound.  We were about a three-hour tug boat ride from town, so supply runs were only made every four to six weeks.  The camp consisted of several trailers on top of a barge measuring approximately 10 x 30 meters, with the deck sitting about 2 meters above the water.  Long lines, the thickness of your forearm, ran from each corner of the camp to the shore, maintaining the barge’s protected position at the back of the inlet while still allowing for rise and fall with the tide.  It was common for several weeks to go by without seeing anyone, with the possible exception of a prawn boat or salmon fisher who would unexpectedly tie up at our camp for the night to get out of a heavy sea.  We didn’t punch a clock or work regular hours; available daylight, weather conditions and tides determined where we went and what we did each day.  I was in my early 20’s, and recently graduated from college.  I grew up in a small town in eastern Ontario, and this was the first time in my life that I had spent any amount of time on the ocean - the scenery, weather and wildlife all seemed exotic and overwhelming. 

Kayak Bill - Foraging

Published 4/7/19

Disclaimer:

I Am far from an expert on the ins and outs of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.  As interested as I am in the topic, I find that my distaste for all stages of food preparation makes it more likely that my hair will grow back than that I might become someone you should look to for guidance on what to eat in the wild.  I do know a little bit about Kayak Bill, though.

I have great admiration for individuals who have learned to live off of the land and sea and I hope to someday attain that knowledge.  For now, I will study the accounts of foragers, fellow paddlers and the rich history of our First Nations who host our visits to their territorial waters.  Perhaps the most celebrated BC Coastal paddler of our time who succeeded in living off the land was Billy (Kayak Bill) Davidson. 

Obviously, fish played a primary role in his diet for its nutritional value and because it was so easy to come by.  He also ate a lot of clams and mussels.  Mussels were a favorite for their size and flavor.  Large mussels provided “steaks” that were easy for him to prepare.  Whether he was ever sick from PSP is not known to me. 

Though there are many types of “vegetables” that grow on or near the shoreline he primarily ate Goose Tongue, Sea Asparagus, Wild Carrot (Queen Anne’s Lace) and Wild Pea of some sort.  The flowers and buds of the Wild Carrot were eaten and as far as the Wild Peas go, he stuck with new branches that were still curled up like a bud.  The peas, themselves, were not eaten.  While Goose Tongue and Sea Asparagus are easy to discern, both Wild Carrot and Wild Peas look very similar to poisonous plants that can be lethal.  I’ll pass on those two.

Bill would also harvest deer and seals.  Seals became more important to his diet as he moved further out from the mainland and his First Nation’s sources of Oolichan grease.  He had been utilizing Oolichan grease for dietary purposes but the Oolichan fish is rendered down to oil by the ton.  It’s a messy process that requires infrastructure and labor.  Not something that a solitary individual would provide but he found that oil rendered from Seal blubber replaced his need for Oolichan. 

Bill would choose a small-ish seal to shoot so that he could manage getting it back to camp.  He would skin it and then remove the blubber layer from the meat.  The blubber was cut into small cubes about 1” square.  Any smaller than that and it was too small and slippery to handle.  The cubes of blubber melted down to oil when put into a hot flying pan.  The oil was poured into containers for storage. 

The meat was cut up into pieces that would fit in his large pot and boiled until it fell off the bone.  It was removed from the pot and the oily water was thrown out and replaced with clean water.  The meat was squished up by hand into a hamburger-like texture, mixed with sea water and made into patties.  The patties were then smoke dried over the fire, placed into stacks and stored. 

To prepare them they were put into water overnight and allowed to rehydrate.  He would put some seal oil in a pan, add the seal burger and cook.  He claimed that the seal oil tasted like bacon grease and that the seal meat was indistinguishable from tender beef.  He felt that the “too-strong” flavor that kept folks from choosing to eat seals was mitigated by pouring off the initial water and boiling it again with fresh water. 

Next came the flour and rice.  These staples were brought from town.  Usually Shearwater.  The flour was used for making chapatis.  He mixed sea water with the flour and added oil for flavor.  The chapatis were made over the fire, dipped into oil and eaten.  Rice would be prepared with chunks of fish, bivalve, seal or “vegetable” added. 

When Bill traveled, he would carry a container of blubber oil and a stack of dried seal burgers.  The oil would last as long as bacon grease before turning rancid.  Goose Tongue and Sea Asparagus are everywhere so they could be quickly be gathered most anywhere that he camped. 

Aside from using the seal oil for food he used it on a rag to keep his knife and tools from rusting as well as oiling his .22 rifle.

Kayak Bill - A Requiem

Posted with permission - This article appeared online through Sea Kayaker Magazine in October 2005

Kayak Bill- A Requiem

by Keith Webb

Kayak Bill found his freedom under a regime of strict necessity, first on a wilderness of vertical rock, then in the wilds of a horizontal ocean. His goal was to be as independent of civilization as possible. By reversing civilization, he succeeded. For the last twenty-eight years of his life, Bill returned to a hunter-gatherer way of life. He must have spent more time than anyone in a sea kayak since aboriginal peoples left kayaks, as a way of life, behind.

“Perfection consists in doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.”

-Bill Davidson

Looking for Kayak Bill - by Neil Frazer

Posted with permission  (This short article appeared, with maps and reproductions of a few of Bill’s paintings, in Sea Kayaker Magazine, October 2005.)

Looking for Kayak Bill

by Neil Frazer

The letter from Stewart in Sointula said: “Kayak” Bill Davidson’s body was found awash with his gear somewhere on the Goose Islands early in March. They are doing a forensic exam on him, and we’ll soon have a clearer idea of what happened. Reading Stewart’s words, I felt a door close and tried to wish it back open. Stewart and Bill were friends and artists who both kayaked freely on British Columbia’s outer coast (as freely as you or I might take a breath), living out of the ocean for seasons on end. How could Bill be dead?

Bill had wintered at Goose Island, I guess. Located just off British Columbia’s coast about 14 miles southwest of Bella Bella, it’s an easy place to stay fed (lots of deer and seals, and no bears to interrupt at mealtimes), and it was a place he knew well. I was pretty sure of that because I’d thought a lot about Bill over the years. I’d hoped to actually meet him one day, but there were unstated rules about it (the kind of rules that somehow get promulgated while you aren’t looking, and later you realize you’ve been living by them). We had to meet in a place like Goose. The problem was that, in the summer, Bill avoided places like Goose because of the people. The dozen or so adventurers who visit Goose in an average summer regard it as only slightly less remote than the moon, but Bill’s notion of remote was not the usual one. Goose could only have been a winter place for Bill.