Writing in the Rain: Stories, Essays and Poems

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

White is the acknowledged historian of the Sechelt Peninsula, the coast
immediately north of Vancouver (scene of the Beachcombers television
program). He is the editor of the successful periodical Raincoast
Chronicles, and the proprietor of Harbour Publishing. He is also an
excellent writer, as his latest book makes clear. These two dozen
pieces, taken from the Chronicles and from other sources over the last
few years, add to the spate of recent regional writings about the West
Coast (Bill Gaston’s Deep Cove Stories and Don Hunter’s Spinner’s
Inlet are noteworthy).

White combines reminiscences of his childhood in logging camps with
portraits of local characters and regional history, boat trips up the
rugged coast to the Queen Charlotte Islands, some very good poetry, and
rare photographs. The mix succeeds in conveying the isolation of the
area, its color and its rich traditions. One story, “Minstrel,”
recounts a journey up the coast White made with his wife in 1974 in a
borrowed boat for a two-week “research period” to recharge his
imagination. It’s the longest piece in the book, 55 pages, and
incorporates most of its controlling images—the iconoclastic loggers
and fishermen, the dangers of the tidal waters, the reliance on boats
for transportation, the very qualities that make this remote region of
Canada one of its most distinct. As Barry Broadfoot says in his
foreword: “Start at page one, don’t skip a word, and you’ll find a
rich heady flavourful brew with enough chokerknobs rockcod salal bush
steampots and old smells of the coast to keep you coming back.”

Highly recommended.