Previous chapter [“The rifle,” September 6]: My family’s first meeting with Cougar Nancy of Okeover Inlet was a tense one. Defying her no trespassing signs, we had snuck across her yard in Penrose Bay to launch our rowboat for Desolation Sound, but her dogs heard us and burst from her orchard in a snarling pack. It was the late 1970s, and I was six years old at the time.
When we looked up from our rowboat while trying to make our getaway, my family was collectively staring down the barrel of .303-calibre rifle, cradled by Nancy Crowther, the Cougar Queen.
She was a heavyset, stout older woman with white, unkempt hair that she had tried to tame into a bob. Her face was broad and pierced with small, dark eyes. Her skin was tanned and weathered, with deep wrinkles crossing it in every direction, like a European road map.
She wore many layers of clothing: a red and black checkered mackinaw jacket over a knee-length, colourless dress and faded yellow apron. Thick wool socks protruded out of her muddy rubber boots. And she handled that gun with a comfort and familiarity that most people her age would show a vacuum cleaner.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?” she asked sternly.
My dad apologized profusely for the trespass, and tried to explain our intentions in his most calm and charming demeanor possible. He introduced us as “new neighbours.”
After sizing us up for a few more strained moments, the muzzle of Cougar Nancy’s rifle soon threatened only her muddy earth. Her dogs were now gathered calmly at her feet, and one even nuzzled my rain-soaked jacket, giving his tail a friendly wag. Friendly, noisy goats emerged from the orchard as well.
Nancy Crowther graciously allowed us to park our car on her property and use her beach to come and go as we needed over the next couple of years, and we got to know her. She explained to us that she lived alone with just her dogs, chickens and goats as her only full-time social companions.
The goats had names like Candy, Tully, Pretty Girl and Sheba. The dogs answered to names like Mac, Hippie, Sally and Foxy. Nancy explained that her parents died in the 1960s, that her brother worked on the fishing boats, and that only she remained, occasionally receiving visits from her nieces and nephews in the warmer months.
Cougar Nancy told us how her family had homesteaded the unique isthmus coastal property in the 1920s, and the many mistakes they made. She also told us how her father pioneered oyster farming on their beaches in Penrose and Trevenen bays, considered by some to be the most fertile in the entire Okeover/Desolation Sound area.
Nancy also forebodingly explained to us that she faced numerous and constant threats from wolves, bears and most especially, cougars. But far worse, she told us, was “them.” She was very happy we weren’t one of “them.” She wouldn’t elaborate in front of us kids.
A few months after our first encounter with Cougar Nancy, an American back-to-the-land-er oyster farmer named Rick Terrell showed up on Nancy’s property hoping to do just what we did: launch his boat.
Terrell, who still lives in Desolation Sound, received much the same initial welcome we did, only this time, Nancy told Rick more about “them.” How they stole from her, watched her and haunted her every move. Before allowing Rick to launch from her beach to scout out potential oyster leases, she first made him disconnect his car battery, because she didn’t like electricity. That also had something to do with “them.”
After my family’s first meeting with Nancy Crowther, my dad rowed us out into the still water of her bay, disturbed only by the falling rain and the rhythm of the oars dipping into the dark water.
I looked back over the glistening gunwale of the rowboat, in fascination at the Cougar Lady, rifle cradled in her arms, on the land she first set foot on when she was a child. You’ll read that story in the next chapter of the Cougar Lady Chronicles.
Grant Lawrence is an award-winning author and a CBC personality who considers Powell River and Desolation Sound his second home. Portions of the Cougar Lady Chronicles originally appeared in Lawrence ’s book Adventures in Solitude and on CBC Radio. Anyone with stories or photos they would like to share of Nancy Crowther are welcome to email [email protected].
