Charlie's Tugboat Tales

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

In his foreword, Jack Mussallem, mayor of Prince Rupert, B.C., says,
“it is my hope that Captain [Charlie] Currie’s stories, as recorded
by Bruce Wishart, will enrich your life and provide you with some
reading pleasure. Knowing Captain Currie and his family, working with
him, learning from him, listening to his stories, and eating his cooking
have done all of that for me.”

Enrich your life? Perhaps not. But this collection of towboat stories
certainly provides some reading pleasure. British Columbia’s North
Coast, up through Queen Charlotte Sound, past Hecate Strait, northward
to Alaska, is full of islands, inlets, small villages. Captain
Currie’s tugboat, the C.R.C., spent more than 50 years in the area,
towing logs and rescuing ships. Whether or not Wishart, a newspaperman
in Prince Rupert, is repeating Charlie’s exact words hardly matters.
As he tells Charlie’s stories in a salty, flowing dialect, the
captain’s voice can be heard in every sentence. Charlie Currie was
born in 1903 and died in 1997. This book, which is generously
illustrated with photographs, makes a fine epitaph.