MY OWN PRIVATE ISLAND
Dick Loomer

Globe and Mail
Thursday, Aug. 20, 2009 02:53AM EDT

All I had to do was ask and Swishwash was mine. The NCC let me be
its keeper, and I’ve got a cap to prove it

.I’m 70 years old, happily married, partially retired from orthopedic
surgery and I have my own island.

The island actually belongs to the Nature Conservancy of Canada,
but they are kind enough to let me look after it for them, what you
might call the "island keeper" (they call it a steward). NCC even
provided me with a baseball cap with their logo.

My (our) island is named Swishwash and, although completely wild, it
is located in the middle arm of the Fraser River only 15 kilometres
from downtown Vancouver, 300 metres from Richmond, B.C., and one
kilometre from the south runway of Vancouver International Airport.

In 1895, a salmon cannery was built on pilings on the island, which
was mostly sandbar and marsh. The cannery soon became economically
nonviable and was purchased and consolidated into British Columbia
Packers Ltd. The buildings burned down but the pilings remain
protruding above the water, except at high tide, where they lurk
awaiting my kayak.

In the 1950s, when the Fraser River was dredged to facilitate
oceangoing traffic, the dredgings were piled upon the sandbar, putting
it 3 to 4 metres above the highest tides. In 1999, B.C. Packers
donated the island to the NCC.

I had kayaked and windsurfed around Swishwash for several years when
I learned it had been given to the NCC. I enquired if they needed a
caretaker and they kindly allowed me to be its steward.

Swishwash’s 29 hectares are divided into eastern, central and western
portions by tidal flooding of lowlands. The island and its surrounding
estuary are home to a wide diversity of waterfowl, including some
50,000 snow geese that spend the winter or migrate through on their
way from Alaska and Russia to points south. A family of bald eagles
spends the winter hunting from a tall cottonwood tree. The reedy tidal
waters are also temporary home to millions of juvenile salmon migrating
down the Fraser, where they spend months acclimating to the salt water.

Mammalian life includes a group of 100 or so harbour seals, a family
of river otters, several coyotes, an occasional raccoon and one
lone beaver who, as near as I can determine, made a brief visit,
found insufficient trees to his liking and departed.

My main duty is to try to control the non-native or invasive species
of plants growing on the island and plant native trees, mostly Sitka
spruce, western red cedar, Douglas fir and cottonwood. Controlling
non-native species sounded like a fairly straightforward task until
some modest effort brought me face to face with the two most prolific
and pervasive plants nature has yet devised: Scotch broom and Himalayan
blackberry.

For starters both are travelling with forged passports. Scotch broom
actually originated from around the Mediterranean Sea and Himalayan
blackberry from Armenia. The story of the transport of broom to North
America is somewhat controversial. The principal culprit seems to be
an Englishman who brought it from Hawaii to the Pacific Northwest to
decorate his garden with its abundant bright yellow flowers.

The blackberry’s journey is a bit more obscure. It was introduced to
Europe in 1835 and North America in 1885 because of its sweet black
fruit. Unfortunately, when turned loose on poor, unsuspecting North
America, its survival and proliferating skills were too much for the
fertile soil and abundant rainfall, especially on the west coast,
and they can now be found on most patches of untended ground in
Southwest B.C., including "my" island.

One broom plant can produce 50,000 seeds per year, which are ejected
3 metres when the pod "pops" and hide in the soil for up to 60 years
(waiting for me to die) before germination. Blackberries can reproduce
three ways: by seeds within their delicious berries, which make great
wine; by growing rhizomes beneath the ground which, when dug up,
resemble a plant from a horror movie; or by stalks or canes that are
covered with sharp barbs and bend over so the tip embeds itself in
the earth to start a new plant. You can see I have my post-retirement
work planned for the next 50 years. I’m currently training my son
and granddaughter to the task.

The job is, for me, pure pleasure. I load my kayak, paddle, life jacket
and hoe, drive to the south side of the airport and park next to the
Coast Guard station. They keep their eye on the island and shoo off
any visitors. The first several times I went they tried to kick me
off until NCC provided me with my jaunty cap to verify my status as
official caretaker.

With the hoe (sometimes shovel or rake) loaded in the kayak, I paddle
the 200 metres to the island, taking care to avoid the float planes
taking off from the airport’s south terminal as they buzz overhead
on their way to Victoria or up the B.C. coast. I often wave to them
and wonder if they wonder, "What is that old geezer doing wandering
around on that bushy sandbar?" And, when I arrive home three hours
later, my wife asks the same question.

Dick Loomer lives in Vancouver.