Memoir of farming in qathet region full of history and humour

In her memoir, In Paradise: Wolves at my Back Door, author and historian Barabara Lambert recounts an adventurous life.

First, she covers growing up during World War II in England, where food scarcity was common and families grew what the government called Victory V gardens as vegetables were needed to supplement the meager rations given out. Lambert was lucky enough to be sent to train as a teacher at Wentworth Castle in 1957, once a grand family estate, which was turned into a hospital during the war and eventually sold to Barnsley Council to be used as a teacher training college.

After spending time as a young adult exploring the world outside of the British Isles and travelling by train to East and then West Berlin, she eventually made her way to Canada. Crossing the country by Greyhound bus in the 1960s, she finally found herself coming to Powell River on the Comox Queen in order to take a teaching position.

History of Paradise Valley 

In the book, Lambert says she fell in love with a tall, handsome farmer named Stuart, who lived in Paradise Valley, and started her next adventure as what she reluctantly calls a farmer's wife. For three decades Lambert and her husband lived on a goat and chicken farm which had originally been the largest goat dairy in Canada.

"I was out in Paradise Valley as a farmer's wife, because I fell in love," said Lambert. "I went to the old-time dance club, and there I met Stuart; he was the tallest person in the room, six-foot three, and he came over to ask me for a dance."

Lambert said they immediately hit it off, but she had no idea about farming, as she was a teacher.

"It was a total shock," added Lambert. "On our honeymoon [Stuart] said, ‘when we get home, I'll teach you how to milk a goat,’ and I went into total shock."

Lambert said growing up in an urban environment in England, she had no experience of farming, and the idea of getting up early in the morning to milk a goat sounded preposterous to her. Her book is a memoir, but also an exploration of the history of places, families and the quirky people who lived, and tried to make a living, in the qathet region at that time. 

History in photos and words

Throughout the book are old photos Lambert collected through the years that help document the rural and rustic life of people living in an isolated pulp and paper town on the northern Sunshine Coast.

"The history of the valley is fascinating because at the beginning of the 20th century, they stopped logging in the [Paradise] valley," said Lambert. "People often wonder why the road to Paradise Valley is so narrow and twists and turns; it's because it was used as a roadbed for locomotives to transport logs."

Lambert said a fire went through the valley in 1918 and when logging operations came to a halt, farming moved in.

"I had not really thought about writing my own story," said Lambert. "But it was author Bev Falconer's book [With Good Company] about growing up in Townsite that suddenly fired something up within me."

A story to tell

Lambert realized that she did have a story to tell, and began writing at seven o'clock in the morning, and worked until noon every day.

"I taught for 30 years for the school district and after I retired from teaching, I had time on my hands, and started making notes," said Lambert. "One of the notes was about the big frogs in Paradise Valley."

Big-legged mystery solved

How the big-legged Louisiana bullfrogs ended up in the valley  had been a long-standing mystery in the qathet region. But, in Lambert's book, she has firsthand accounts from people who witnessed what happened.

"Anton Bauman of Valley Road, in the late 1930s, saw an ad in the newspaper for a quick get-rich scheme," recounted Stuart to Barbara in 1998. "The idea was to raise large frogs for the restaurant business, after all frogs' legs were looked upon as an expensive delicacy in some parts of the US."

In Lambert's book, she says the scheme quickly backfired. After Bauman received the fertilized frog-egg spawn, soon dozens of gigantic frogs were jumping around his pond and eventually made their way to West Lake. 

"Then World War II came along and soon everyone forgot about the frog enterprise," said Lambert in the book.

Library presentation

Lambert will present her new book, a collection of stories from her life in England, Townsite, Paradise Valley and Douglas Bay, at 2 pm on Friday, November 8, in Powell River Public Library.

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