hunters, a district of 4×4’s, logging trucks, dump trucks, skidders, loaders, graders, bunchers, all the heavy-duty machinery rumbling down roads en route to some bush camp work site. Ours was a town divided by the Nechako, whose name meant “big river,” though I didn’t know that either, nor did I know that the white sturgeon swimming the black depths of those currents were also referred to as Leviathans and Methuselahs, the oldest names we had for fish so ancient. Of those who lived here first, I hadn’t heard the stories, didn’t know that we called the Dakelh people “Carrier” because the widows carried the burnt bones and ashes of their men during their time of mourning. I didn’t understand the narrative of colonies, fur traders, company men, traplines, treaties, shifting maps, land claims, outposts, outbreaks, heartbreak, loss.
“Of the farm”—that was the meaning of our town’s name, from the Dutch and carried over from another continent, another family, another man. On our welcome sign, Vanderhoof proclaimed itself the centre of the province, the heart of it all, an X that marked the spot where some great thing might happen yet. We had no claim to fame, except the annual summer air show that swelled the town’s population from 5,000 to 25,000 and cracked our skies with jet-formation contrails and stunt biplanes spiralling loop-de-loops. I sat on the roof on our fifth-wheel trailer, camping with my family in a mown, stubbled field, my binoculars trained overhead, and I felt the swell, that wow at how our town was shining. For that one weekend in July, the Kenney Dam was raised to let more water flow into the river, so the Nechako could show off its high current to Vanderhoof’s sudden rush of visitors. Pickup trucks towing RVs and hauling campers, motorhomes and station wagons, carloads full of kids and dogs and red-faced parents—they poured into the open acres of shorn hayfields rented out by local farmers to hold the air show horde, my family among them. We joined the throng for the three-day event, living in our trailer, flanked by relatives and friends and thousands upon thousands of strangers who turned our town into a city staring up at the sky, witnesses to spectacle.
Leaning back in his lawn chair in the trailer’s shade, my dad would tap his cigarette ash into his empty brown bottle and say, “You just wait. You just wait for them Snowbirds to fly.”
The Snowbirds were the air show’s closing act, the grand finale, and my dad’s version of a celestial sign and wonder: that squadron of aerobatic jets sent by the Canadian Armed Forces to demonstrate military precision in the glory of the skies. When they started their engines for takeoff, my dad stood at the barbed-wire fence along the runway’s edge, one man among the rows and rows of onlookers. As the Snowbirds roared and rose, wings catching the sun, my dad adjusted his ballcap and shielded his eyes, following their V formation until they banked, grew smaller in the blue, then disappeared, leaving us with “Spirit in the Sky” blaring from speakers mounted high on the hydro poles. I made my way to him—my dad transfixed, standing there in his white undershirt and dark-blue work pants, and when the rumble started up again, far off and faint, I squeezed in front of him, leaned into a smooth, unbarbed section of the wire fence, and together we waited, waited, waited until—there, there! I pointed to the black specks overhead, and down they rumbled with such noise I clapped my hands to my ears. My dad whooped and punched a fist into the air like a revival-tent amen. We cheered, clapped, hollered for the Snowbirds, sleek and loud and perfectly aligned in their fly-by majesty. From their view and vantage, we must have looked like weeds in a field, rooted to the earth, and me with my white-blonde hair like a dandelion blossom gone to fluff, here today and gone tomorrow, the way the crowds appeared at the air show’s opening and vanished as the Snowbirds flew away.
Through the speakers, the announcer crackled his enthusiastic thanks and farewell and see you next year, and the national anthem played us out, a swelling soundtrack for the great exodus from the litter-strewn fields: dust clouds and exhaust fumes and a bumper-to-bumper migration inching along the road into town, creeping over the bridge, through the traffic light at Stewart and Burrard, across the train tracks, and back up the hill toward home.
Whatever grandness and glitz our town gained during the air show weekend receded like the river, quick as a dream. The streets went quiet again. Pickups idled in the Co-op parking lot. The dust and dry weeds of late summer shifted to frost-glitter on the fields in the morning and a fat, low-hanging harvest moon at night. Along the highway ditch, the scrawny man in the cowboy hat and boots buttoned his flannel jacket to the throat against the coolness as he walked with his garbage bag slung over his shoulder, bending every few feet to pick up another empty, making his way toward the depot at the back side of the laundromat, where a man named Diamond Jim exchanged cans and bottles for cash.
WHEN I SPUN our plastic light-up globe, I couldn’t even find Vanderhoof. On most maps, it was a pinpoint, its name so small I needed a magnifying glass to find it, but still, I loved it. All of it. Its streets and buildings, the lettering of signs in storefront windows, the busted-up winter-thrashed sidewalks whose cracks I tried not to step on for fear of breaking my mother’s back. Every store and shop held for me a clear and peculiar feeling. In the same way that a song like “This Ol’ Riverboat,” with its jangly tambourines and sunny harmonies, conjured in me a golden warmth, or the tinny trumpet of “Red Roses for a Blue Lady” left me hollow and tight-throated, every building I passed or entered gave off its own mood and tone. Taylor Brothers Hardware felt like Saturday-morning chores, mostly boring, but full of brightness—all those shiny washers, bolts, nails, and screws. Royal Foods was lit with possibility; if Tante Nite was working, she might slip me a free chocolate or cluster of grapes. The bank stretched out like Sunday sermons, blank and full of the same long waiting only to listen to words that held no meaning for me—overdraft, transfer, withdrawal, interest. But Toyland owned all the confetti-cake joy of a birthday party. At the corner of the two main streets, in a narrow storefront that once housed a perpetual church rummage sale and would eventually become Black Bob’s Billiards, a seedy arcade where all the troublemakers hung out, Toyland beckoned every child with its rainbowed bubble-lettered sign. Inside—dolls, trucks, Tinker Toys, boxes of the latest Lego, racks of die-cast metal cars, cap guns, squirt guns, rolls of stickers, bags of marbles, bins of rubber balls in neon colours, parachute men, army figures, whistles, balloons—a wish list come to life.
“You have ten minutes,” our mother would say, and then showed me and my older brother her wristwatch so we knew our starting time. As we walked the aisles and eyed the shelves, holding up items for each other to see—“Check out this air rifle!” and “Whoa—remote control!” and “I’m gonna save up pop bottle money to buy this!”—I felt both the adrenaline of high hope and, as our minutes wound down, the inner sigh of resignation. Three dollars in a plastic change purse emblazoned with “Jesus Loves Me” only bought so many marbles or stickers and was never enough for the electronic Speak & Spell computer with a robot’s voice that said You are correct! whenever I punched in the right answer.
Farther down the block, the Department Store’s double glass doors opened to a realm that left me with the breezy pleasure of a new haircut’s flounce and curl. In the store, I felt dressed up, grown up. The word “department” seemed to me a formal word, a city word, one that might appear in a movie about New York or in a book about a rich girl who lived in a high-rise apartment. The Department Store was the only store in town with wall-to-wall carpeting, which added an air of luxury, especially when I tromped over the orange-and-yellow diamond pattern in snowy winter boots.
Racks of clothing, shelves of footwear, and display cases of costume jewelry took up most of the store’s space, but in the back corner was the section I loved best—fabric and notions. Here, I ran my fingers over lace, ribbon, rickrack, and buttons, turned the glossy pages of pattern books, and followed my mother down rows lined with bolts of calico and flannel, silk and brocade. At the cutting counter, a woman with silver shears and a measuring tape draped around her neck rolled out fabric and cut it into the length required for whatever my mother was sewing. The sound of the scissors slicing cleanly through the cloth was the beginning of something new—a Christmas dress for me, a blouse for my mother.
One block over and down lay the post office, cool and aloof and satisfyingly eerie. Before we entered, we paused a moment to look at the pieces of paper taped to the glass front doors. Here, photographs of the newly deceased were displayed, along with their death dates and upcoming funeral details. My mother read to me the names, told me