Ian Lindsay & Associates: Ian Lindsay of Lindsay and Associates has played an active role in the local community since 1979. He has been with RE/MAX Vancouver Island's most advanced real estate business network since 1996, marketing and selling residential, rural, strata, recreational, investment, and project development real estate. Ian has received several awards recognizing his exceptional community commitment locally, as well as awards for outstanding performance and achievement from both RE/MAX International and the Vancouver Island Real Estate Board. You'll find true real estate professionals at ianlindsay.ca.

Rockin' Rhonda & The Uptown Blues Band: Here comes Peter, here comes Dave. Oh, listen! Bringing stories, making waves. No missing. Spinning tales in the podcast cave. So much laughs and insights everywhere. Peter and Dave, they're on the mics, alright. Join the ride—it's gonna feel just right.

Peter McCully: Wishing you and yours the happiest of summers. Welcome to the Pulse Community Podcast. We bring you the people and stories from Mid Vancouver Island, and here to help deliver the goods is my lively co-host, Dave Graham.

Dave Graham: Do you think that's a typo? Maybe that's supposed to be "lovely." I mean, not in the literal sense, but I've been told I have a nice personality. Okay, "lively's" good. Thank you, Peter McCully. I'm lively, and you—well, you're pretty energetic yourself with all the workouts and the dog walks and the podcast producing. What's on tap today?

Peter McCully: Jordan Schley returns to the podcast to update us on his recently opened medical clinic in Qualicum Beach. He also outlined his hope for expanding to include an MRI machine.

Jordan Schley: I think public helps to get private going because of the broken gaps we see, but I do think that they should be able to mesh well together and everyone's put down their guards of private or public. Public is still private because we're paying for it, and so there's no difference in what we're seeing in Colwood that opened up a private clinic. But the Ministry of Health thinks it's a public clinic. But if you're not from Colwood, you don't get healthcare. So is that private or public? But your tax dollars are paying for it, plus you're paying into the MSP.

Dave Graham: Shanon Sinn, author of "The Haunting of Vancouver Island: Supernatural Encounters with the Other Side," joins us to talk about the supernatural energy of the island, including stories about the former Qualicum Beach Heritage Inn, the Heriot Bay Inn on Quadra Island, and the Schooner Restaurant in Tofino.

Shanon Sinn: The accounts are wild—like multiple people seeing full apparitions sitting at a table beside them. There's two people I interviewed who both saw at the same time a crate of dishes hovering several feet and then dropping and smashing. There's doors that flew open, lots of sightings of an apparition described as a shadow looking through the server station window. The server station for the lower level is built to look like a ship with stained glass, so they would see somebody looking through, but they'd go on the other side and there'd be nothing. And these people that I spoke to were very convincing. They're not your TV-watching type people. All of them had that attitude of like, "I wouldn't believe this either, but this is what I saw." And the fact that there'd be multiple people present when they saw something at the same time was really interesting to me too.

Peter McCully: And from the Speak to Us line, we have this reminder for you.

Mulberry Bush Bookstore: Hi, everyone. I'm Christina, and I'm Warren, and we're from The Mulberry Bush Bookstore in Qualicum Beach. We're so excited to be celebrating 50 years of books, community, and connection this summer, and we'd love for you to join us. It's all happening on Saturday, July 5th, from 11 to 3 in our parking lot right here in Qualicum Beach. There'll be a live band, delicious food, local vendors, authors signing books, and lots of great surprises. We're honoring the amazing legacy of this store, including Barb and Tom Pope, who ran it for 34 years before passing the torch to us. Whether you're a longtime customer or just discovering us, we'd love to see you. We're always here to help with all your bookish needs—recommendations, gifts, or just a cozy browse. So bring a friend, bring your family, bring your love of books, and come celebrate this milestone with us. That's Saturday, July 5th, from 11 to 3 at the Mulberry Bush Bookstore in Qualicum Beach. We can't wait to see you there.

Peter McCully: Dave, what are you doing next Saturday?

Dave Graham: Well, I was planning to reorganize my sock drawer again.

Peter McCully: Well, cancel that thrilling adventure. Parksville Beach Festival opens July 11th, and world-class sculptors are arriving this week to prepare for the Circus by the Sea sand sculpting competition.

Dave Graham: You mean they're not just winging it? There's actual preparation involved?

Peter McCully: Well, these are professionals, Dave. The opening features ribbon cutting at two o'clock on Friday—that's July 11th—followed by Chilliwack's Farewell Tour Saturday night, July 12th. And you can learn to sculpt like a pro with hands-on lessons.

Dave Graham: Ha! Finally, a skill more useful than sock organization.

Peter McCully: Plus, Tim Hortons' free summer concert series starts July 18th. Daily buskers perform, and your suggested $5 donation supports local community projects.

Dave Graham: Five bucks to see incredible art and help the community? That's cheaper than my sock drawer organizational system.

Peter McCully: Parksville Beach Festival, July 11th, where Dave trades socks for sand. Details at parksvillebeachfest.ca.

Windsor Plywood French Creek: The Pulse Community Podcast is brought to you in part by Windsor Plywood in French Creek, specializing in hard-to-source interior and exterior home finishing products, including flooring, doors and moldings, and exterior project materials such as yellow cedar. Windsor Plywood French Creek carries high-quality, responsibly sourced products and is committed to providing outstanding value and personalized one-on-one service to all of our customers: homeowners, do-it-yourselfers, renovators, builders, designers, craftsmen, and contractors. Regardless of the type or size of your project, Windsor can help you bring your vision to life from start to finish. Let Windsor Plywood in French Creek help you with your renovation, new build, or building project. Visit them online or call 752-3122.

Oceanside Cweed: Oceanside Cweed—that little pot shop—is Parksville's first licensed cannabis store since April 2022. Cweed is under new ownership with a product expert at the helm that includes two decades of retail mastery and seven years in the cannabis industry. Cweed is a legacy in the making. With cannabis products regulated by Health Canada, community-minded Cweed is a member of the Parksville Chamber of Commerce, the Parksville Downtown Business Association, and the Retail Cannabis Council of British Columbia. Those 19-plus can drop by the store at 154 Middleton Avenue, next to Tablet Pharmacy. Open 7 days a week, 9:00 AM to 8:00 PM. Visit the online store at cweedoceanside.ca.

Dave Graham: So Peter, I gotta say, I found our summer music special pretty inspiring.

Peter McCully: Oh yeah? How's that?

Dave Graham: Well, the music's part of it, of course, but it was equally about what people had to say. And when we asked them about summers past and present, it reminded me that it will be over all too soon, and it's so important to make plans and to jump on those opportunities and to perhaps maintain a record of what you schedule—and maybe to check it from time to time. I already missed one event because it slipped my mind.

Peter McCully: Which leads me into offering a reminder of our reminder offer. If you would like a weekly email reminder of the latest Pulse podcasts and contests, just head over to thepulsecommunity.ca. Click on the contact link to sign up for our newsletter. Yes, Dave, checking your schedule is a very important component of just keeping one.

Dave Graham: I'm the guy who makes the shopping list and leaves it on the kitchen counter.

Peter McCully: You still use pen and paper? Okay, well, moving along, it's time for our first guest, and so we will hand it over to Marilyn for the introduction.

Marilyn: Jordan Schley of Care2Talk is in the green room. Jordan is a native of Qualicum Beach who has been working in the healthcare field the past few years. He created an online healthcare business called Care2Talk and recently opened a private healthcare clinic in Oak Bay and Qualicum Beach.

Peter McCully: Thanks for being with us on the podcast today, Jordan. This is your second visit to the podcast. You were on our very first episode in late 2024. We wanted to check in with you because your healthcare business appears to be growing.

Jordan Schley: Thanks for having me, and it was good to be on the first one, and happy to be back to go deeper into this.

Peter McCully: Before we talk specifically about the healthcare clinics, for listeners who aren't familiar with the Care2Talk model—some refer to it as telehealth—can you outline for us how it works?

Jordan Schley: Basically, what Care2Talk is is a primary care clinic that you see kind of all across BC. But the perk with us is our model is in-person and virtual care. So you get care with the provider during the week, but you could always follow up with the virtual side if it's something that doesn't need that in-person. And of course, the longer appointment—our in-persons are 45 minutes long—and really, at the end of the day, it's that same-day access point, and it makes it much easier from the patient flow.

Peter McCully: It's an online business, so I'm wondering if your patients are concentrated in any defined geographical area.

Jordan Schley: No. 85% of our business is virtual, so we operate in Western Canada—so between BC and Ontario. So a lot of our customers are on virtual, and then we obviously have the in-person clinics in Qualicum and Victoria. The majority of it is all virtual care, and the price point is much lower for the virtual side.

Peter McCully: When we chatted in the fall, the success of your online healthcare clinic allowed you to open a bricks-and-mortar clinic in Oak Bay and now one in Qualicum Beach where we're sitting chatting. What did you learn from the first clinic that you could apply to this Qualicum Beach clinic?

Jordan Schley: A friend of mine named Jason Ridge has CRD Pharmacies in Victoria, and we just started chatting. He says, "You know what? We did a little pilot in the pharmacy to see if there's any momentum," and it kind of started from there. And so I learned from that space in CRD Pharmacy in Victoria—it wasn't the perfect spot. There's some opportunity to grow, and it leaned into having an opportunity in Qualicum to do what we kinda learned. We listened to our providers to build that clinic. So we really had not my vision, but everyone's vision of how to make a good clinic and make a flow. And then learning our outcomes from Qualicum, we decided to now get into a much bigger space in Victoria, which is in September, which is larger and more efficient from the Victoria side. So it's interesting—every clinic you do—but the most important part is letting your providers give their advice to make it great for everybody.

Peter McCully: We've all heard about the shortage of doctors right across the country. Have you had any difficulty attracting doctors and nurse practitioners for your clinics?

Jordan Schley: Doctors will be challenging for sure. It's just the model that we don't really get into. We have doctors as advisors, friends, all that, but they don't practice. Nurse practitioners are great, and there's so many out there in a way where you could build quite a model around it. Right now, we're seeing a ton of providers apply from Ontario to come to BC. So there is this opportunity that keeps on growing. But the main thing that maybe attracts us or makes it different from the health authority side is we give like a work-life balance. A provider will never see more than three patients an hour, which—the average is five an hour in the public system. So the idea for us is have a model that really works well with the providers, and the patients leave happy and they don't feel rushed. So we kind of make it that genuine. And I'm not saying nothing's genuine about the fast, quick appointments, but a lot of patients, when they have a quick appointment, they feel like they weren't heard. So the idea for us is you make them feel heard, listen to them, and then if their follow-up needs to happen, the follow-up can happen within that same week. So the provider's like—because they don't have to keep charting, and there's lots of good opportunities to attract great people. And hopefully down the road, we work with the public side and have a private-public partnership just because there is so much talent out there. And I think today we have 45 or 48 applicants that wanna work for us, but we just can't hire them all. So good problem to have.

Peter McCully: Tell us specifically about the clinic in Qualicum Beach that opened recently. What can patients expect?

Jordan Schley: A patient can expect 45-minute care, but the same provider. We have a full-time medical office assistant here, so you can drop in any kind of paperwork you need or assistance booking your appointment. We're kind of that turnkey spot. And then next door to us, in the same hallway, there's the brand-new pharmacy opened up. So then we could work with the pharmacy and lean in that partnership. And then at the end of the day, the patients will kinda one-stop shop for primary care and pharmaceutical.

Peter McCully: What's your relationship like, Jordan, with the public healthcare system? Do you see yourselves as competitors or collaborators?

Jordan Schley: I'm trying to collaborate. It depends on who you chat with. The ground floor, they love the idea, but obviously they can't get through kind of the hierarchy of the health authorities. I always come across as we should partner and really focus in on the patients first, especially if you have providers that you could hire more and build up, and then really this healthcare problem we talk about—it can maybe reduce the pressure maybe from the system for a bit. And then once a partnership's over, we can just end it and kind of carry on. But there is opportunity to have that collaborative approach for sure.

Peter McCully: I saw on one of your social media posts that you're working towards having an MRI machine for your clinics, so you must have run the numbers on purchasing such an expensive piece of equipment and hiring the staff and all that goes with that.

Jordan Schley: Yeah, it's not cheap to get into. But what we're seeing over the last three, four years is the wait times keep growing and growing and growing. Machines are getting older and older, so every province has their MRI kind of situation of a bit public or private or collaborative approach. We feel that something on Central Island will help reduce the pressure between the two hospitals and WorkSafe claims. Or if it's ICBC claims, that would kind of help. Maybe the MRIs going from six-month waits—maybe it's one-month wait. But really having that kind of partnership—from our patient standpoint too, there's a lot of requests for it. And we see a lot of our customers go to Vancouver for MRIs, and it'd be nice for them to not have to travel because a lot of them are seniors, and going to Vancouver is another added cost, plus their private MRIs are more as well. So something should happen on the island.

Peter McCully: Jordan, private healthcare in Canada always sparks debate. What role do you see private clinics playing?

Jordan Schley: Yeah, there's always a debate in BC of this private and public side. I ultimately think we can work together. I think we complement each other. It's no different than private practice working with a government body in a way where it benefits the people. And I think if you have the opportunity to have the providers on staff, there should be a partnership because of what we say—lack of healthcare. I don't think we have a lack of healthcare in BC. I think we have a lack of partnerships. It's a big beast to move, but I think it takes someone to say, "You know what? How do you do it? And how do we work together?" Because if we thought about people first, we would actually have a smoother workflow. We wouldn't solve everything, but the idea is, can we get to see more people in one time? So I think public helps to get private going because of the broken gaps we see, but I do think that they should be able to mesh well together and everyone put down their guards of private or public. Public is still private because we're paying for it, and so there's no difference in what we're seeing in Colwood that opened up a private clinic. But the Ministry of Health thinks it's a public clinic. But if you're not from Colwood, you don't get healthcare. So is that private or public? But your tax dollars are paying for it, plus you're paying into the MSP. So it is an interesting concept of what we do versus a town could do it and they're heroes. So, but it's all private as well.

Peter McCully: How does the provincial government view the private healthcare clinic business?

Jordan Schley: I've talked to folks at the UBC level. I've talked to people at the ministry level, and I've talked to folks that run hospitals, and it's a mixed view. I would say 60, 70% of people are in favor of private healthcare, but they just can't say it. They can't put it in an email, but they believe in it. So there is something that we're doing is creating some interesting conversations about it. But when you're in the public setting talking about private healthcare, yeah, some people will get upset, but I think we could all partner together and make it great and make it cohesive.

Peter McCully: Where do you see your business and the need five years from now?

Jordan Schley: We want to start doing more brick-and-mortar, but in small towns where towns don't actually get maybe the notice they get. We wanna work with action municipalities like the City of Colwood, but really make a turnkey package of—go to Prince George. It takes us 16 weeks to open a clinic up. We'll do the hiring, and we will kind of structure the clinic, and you rent from us. But the idea is go in these towns where just no one really has a voice. They don't make the news, or maybe Cache Creek or Prince Rupert—all these towns that have no healthcare and hospitals are closing down. But can we be a way to help 300, 400 people, which is better than zero? So our growth, I think, is going to be in the smaller towns other than the big cities, just because I think they need attention too.

Dave Graham: In a world in which there is no perfect healthcare system, Jordan Schley offers a viable answer for some. We appreciate his contribution to the podcast.

Peter McCully: Friday, July 4th, is the deadline for a chance to win a four-day general admission pass to Sun Fest. It kicks off July 31st at Lake Town Ranch, just outside of Lake Cowichan. You can enter to win a four-day pass to Sun Fest now by heading to our website, thepulsecommunity.ca, or visit our Facebook page, The Pulse Community.

Dave Graham: Yes! Live music—oh, there's nothing like it. I wanna make sure I schedule more time this summer to experience the arts—all of them. More theater, more galleries, more music. Oh, the Parksville Beach Festival actually covers most of those bases, and we are going to be offering a sweet little package of goodies in an upcoming Beach Fest Rocks giveaway. Tell the folks what they could win, Peter.

Peter McCully: Well, that's right, Dave. Our Beach Fest Rocks Giveaway prize package includes two beach chairs, a cooler, a $50 smile card from Thrifty Foods Parksville, and two tickets to Beach Fest Rocks.

Dave Graham: Watch for details coming soon on our website and social media for the Beach Fest Rocks giveaway. Hey, if you sign up for our newsletter, you won't have to worry about remembering stuff like that. So that is something for the adults, and then for the younger ones, well, we invite you to check out our original stories for kids. Our Skookum Kids stories are available on all the major platforms.

Peter McCully: We have stories about the adventures aboard the Mellow Submarine with Captain Dave and his first mate, Larry the Lobster. Last time we heard from them, they were getting lost in fog off of Tofino. Plus, there's the series featuring Gracie, the Eskimo dog.

Dave Graham: Yes, Gracie and her friend Peter visit places all over. In the latest episode, they're off to the Oceanside Dental Clinic. Wait, what is that? For real? What's gonna happen at that dental clinic? I guess I'll have to tune in to find out. The Skookum Kids stories can be found at thepulsecommunity.ca—also skookumkids.com—and Apple, Spotify, iHeart, Buzzsprout, Amazon, and YouTube. Hey, if you're interested in joining our growing family of sponsors for Skookum Kids Stories and the Pulse Community Podcasts, let us know. Email peter@thepulsecommunity.ca.

Fireside Books: There's exciting news for book lovers. Fireside Books in Parksville now has a second location in Port Alberni. The Bookwyrm used books are just $5 each, and be sure to ask about their volume discounts. The Bookwyrm on the corner of Redford and Anderson, open seven days a week from 10 to 5. Fireside Books at 464 Island Highway East in Parksville is a book dragon's dream come true. Browse their extensive collection weekdays from 9 to 6 and weekends 10 to 5. Both locations make growing your personal library easier than ever. New books, used books, activity books, puzzle books, and much more. Order online at firesidebooks.ca, and your books will be waiting when you arrive. Ask about returning books for a book credit. Fireside Books and the Bookwyrm—two locations, one amazing adventure in browsing.

Parksville Beachfest: There's just one week to go. Parksville Beach Festival opens July 12th. The excitement is building—world-class sculptors arrive this week to prep for the amazing Circus by the Sea Sand Sculpting Competition. Opening day features the ribbon cutting at 2:00 PM, followed by Chilliwack's Farewell Tour that evening. Learn to sculpt like a pro with hands-on lessons. Enjoy the Tim Hortons free summer concert series starting July 18th and watch daily buskers perform with a suggested $5 donation. You'll support local community projects while experiencing incredible art. The magic starts in one week. Visit parksvillebeachfest.ca.

Dave Graham: Our thanks to the Parksville Beach Festival Society for their support of the Pulse Community Podcast. Oh, I'm counting down the days to the kickoff event, the Sand Sculpting Competition. I'll be there to provide music Friday, Saturday, and Sunday—that's July 11, 12, and 13—and I've been going through my music library for all the best sand sculpting music. But what we need right now is some ghostly music. Do we happen to have anything with shimmering bells or maybe a choir of angels or suspenseful Hammond B-3 organ? No? Okay, let's bring on our next guest then. Marilyn, if you please.

Marilyn: Shanon Sinn is the author of "The Haunting of Vancouver Island," an editor and publisher of "Black Cat: A Collection of Eerie Tales Set in BC's Pacific Northwest." Shanon received his comics and graphic novel certificate in Victoria and has a writing degree from Vancouver Island University, where he was awarded the Barry Bradford Award for journalism. He was the host of Folklore Thursday and Weird Wednesday on Twitter.

Peter McCully: Thanks for joining us on the podcast today, Shanon.

Shanon Sinn: Thank you for having me.

Peter McCully: I asked Siri, one of my best friends, my research assistant, about your background prior to our conversation today, and she told me you have a writing degree from Vancouver Island University and you've also studied comics and graphic novels. Can you tell us how all that came about?

Shanon Sinn: Around 2011, 2012, I went through chemotherapy and ended up with nerve damage, and I had to leave my previous careers. I had spent time in the military, and I was also a loss prevention manager for the Hudson's Bay Company. It was pretty physical because it had components of arresting people committing property crime. So I had to decide, I guess, what I wanted to do. And I went back to school, got my writing degree, and when I moved to Victoria shortly after, I ended up going to Camosun College to get a comics and graphic novel certificate as well. And that kind of marries together my writing passion with art, and I'm also involved in publishing as well.

Peter McCully: Shanon, I just finished reading "The Haunting of Vancouver Island," and I know the book was published in 2017, but it's still extremely popular. Can you tell me how the book came about?

Shanon Sinn: Yeah, I was blogging a lot about folklore, which is one of my passions. I ended up writing two different posts about haunted locations on Vancouver Island. One of them focused on Victoria, and one of them focused on the rest of the island. Both of them went viral, and so I kind of kept that under wraps. I didn't let too many people know, and I used that to pitch a publisher, and they were excited to publish it. No one had ever written a book about Vancouver Island as its own region before as far as ghost-type lore. Also, I saw an opportunity to do something a little bit different, and that was to include Indigenous content that was non-appropriated. If you think of Vancouver Island, it isn't just settler cities—it's also like places like Ahousaht, and there's Kwakwaka'wakw territory and all these other fascinating stories as well that I thought needed to be in a collection of, quote-unquote, "Vancouver Island stories." And so that's kind of how my vision was, and the publisher was on board, and it's done well ever since. And I've been working on a sequel for quite a number of years now that will be more focused on coastal lore and ghost stories, but for all of BC. So it'll include like Haida Gwaii and Vancouver waterfront and such. So that's been a huge research project, but I believe that's another area that there hasn't been a lot published as far as that subject goes.

Peter McCully: Shanon, we'll get to a few of the stories in particular, but first I wanted to know a few other things. One of the things I was curious about is many of the stories that you tell have been retold over and over again, basically passed down. What was your process for peeling away what we could call the exaggerations, I guess, to get to the historically accurate folk tale?

Shanon Sinn: It was quite difficult at first because I didn't wanna step on anyone's toes, but it became more and more apparent that some of these stories had been intentionally altered and often in very unflattering ways to non-settler people or people of color. That was one of the main reasons that the book has sources throughout. Otherwise, it would be like I'm saying one thing, somebody else is saying something else, and I didn't really want to get into some sort of dispute that way. I was just really interested in the stories themselves. So it wasn't necessarily important to me if it really happened. Some stories, you know, you're less likely to believe—somebody really saw a mermaid, for example, or something. But if the story's real, I wanted to see if the history behind the story was real as well. A lot of the stories involve a murder. It's pretty easy to find out if there was a person named that that died at that time and place and some of the other details. So it seemed like sometimes it's just like really heavily sensationalized for sales of books or for tourism purposes and for TV shows and such. And by approaching it more as folklore, it allows me to step away from kind of that whole paranormal vibe, in my mind, anyways.

Peter McCully: One of the things I really enjoyed about the book was that you included some of your own experiences while you were checking out these stories.

Shanon Sinn: In the introduction, I tell people that I call myself a skeptical believer. I've had a number of experiences in my life. Sometimes I'm just really baffled by some of the things that have happened, like the chapter in the book that I share about Keha Beach when I was camping on the beach and I saw the light hovering through the trees. I climbed up to the cliff the next day, and it was like very impenetrable woods, and there was no way that somebody could have been up there with this big light. So I know I saw this light. I had an experience that I felt woke me up and made me feel like I wasn't alone. And I've had other things happen where I can't really explain them, but I think the difference between me and maybe a lot of people, even readers, is that I'm not totally convinced that we know what these things are. So when somebody says, for example, "Ghosts are spirits of the dead," while that might be the most logical, for lack of a better term, way to describe it, I don't know if that's the truth or if there's something else that we don't understand happening. But I do know that people have these experiences. They've been having them all over the world since time immemorial. So there's something to it. But is it the spirit realm, or is it something else? I don't know.

Peter McCully: Well, you mentioned in the book that Vancouver Island has a supernatural energy. Could you explain what a supernatural energy is and what do you think contributes to that atmosphere to create that?

Shanon Sinn: Well, I grew up in northern Saskatchewan, so I moved to Vancouver Island in the mid-1990s, and I've spent most of my adult life either in Vancouver or somewhere on the island, whether it's Tofino or Victoria or Nanaimo. So I think coming with those eyes where it's like, "Wow, there's the ocean, there's mountains, there's these monster trees"—some of them up to a thousand years old, older even—and there's so much Indigenous history about this territory, and there's so many places that feel unexplored. Also, it's kind of liminal. So you've got your beaches, you've got your mountaintops, you've got all these places where it feels like spirits might reside or otherworldly entities are, or it just feels so alive on another level compared to other places that I've been.

Peter McCully: Shanon, what do you hope that readers will take away from the book beyond just the entertainment value of hauntings and ghost stories and whatnot?

Shanon Sinn: Well, I think ghost stories are teachers of history. They're like snapshots of what's happening in a specific time. So you get something like the Valencia ships sinking in 1906 off of our west coast, and then a ghost story emerges around it, and people remember that this tragedy happened there, even though there were other ships that sank with a lot of fatalities as well in those waters. They kind of remind us about different times and show us what's happening and what people were up to at the time. I also think one of the things that I really like about ghost stories is that in these really divisive times, it feels like everybody can just share common ground on—doesn't matter what somebody's political view is or their age or their culture or where they've come from. People share these ghost stories, and they're this oral tradition that has probably existed since as long as we've had speech and maybe even before that.

Peter McCully: There are many stories in the book, including Craigdarroch Castle, Kanaka Pete on Newcastle Island, "The Mystery of Nanaimo's Old Fire Hall," to name just a few. I had hoped we could dive into a few stories in a bit more detail for our listeners. Perhaps we could start with the Qualicum Heritage Inn in Qualicum Beach. Before it was renovated into a condo project, it was reported to be one of Vancouver Island's most haunted buildings.

Shanon Sinn: It's an interesting place because there's so many different ghost stories there. The staff had believed that one of the ghosts—they called him Buddy. It was an elitist school, and then it closed, and then for 30-some years it was an inn before this condo period. Well, it sat empty for a while, and then the condo development period and everything that happened after. And it was in that period where it was an inn that a lot of people, mostly workers, came forward with different claims and different experiences. It's not like a well-evolved tale. It's like people just reporting that they've had these experiences. So it comes across to me more credible because they're just regular people that have these things happen to them or see these things, and they don't necessarily have this story about who it was when they died and all this other stuff. And because there's so many different types of entities there that have been seen, it kind of comes across as that there is something that was happening there versus just a story that was attached to a place.

Peter McCully: How willing were the former staff members to discuss their experiences? I recall a soldier, a child, and perhaps a woman.

Shanon Sinn: A lot of them that I used directly had spoken or left comments on the post that I mentioned. They came forward with their own experiences. Others had already been interviewed by people like a very good writer that wrote a couple books named Robert Belyk. He's got a couple of books about ghost stories, and he had interviewed people, and there had been some TV interviews as well. So I had taken these accounts as well and used them because one thing I don't really like doing is going out and searching for witnesses because, to me, it's too easy for people to just want to be included and make something up. Where it's like, if I can find somewhere that somebody's already left an account, or if they come to me without knowing that at some point it might evolve into a book, at least at that time it felt more credible because since this book has been published, a lot of people come forward with stories, and you kind of get the sense that they want their story out there attached to their name, and they want to be involved in kind of a more paranormal community.

Peter McCully: And so what were the sightings that have been reported at the former Qualicum Heritage Inn?

Shanon Sinn: There were two different staff members that had reported that they'd heard piano playing. There's lots of stuff like doors closing, toilet flushing, water turning on—a lot of things like that. But as you mentioned, there was an account of a soldier, which some people say is many of the students that went there went off to fight in the war. There was a story about a woman too, but I don't think it was as clear or as evolved, and that there was also a boy seen running that people had claimed to see. But none of them are really like well-defined stories other than the name Buddy that the staff gave. I believe to the child, but it might've been to the soldier, but there isn't a very well-developed story there.

Peter McCully: You mentioned the west coast. Tell us about the haunting of the Schooner Restaurant in Tofino. What specific phenomena were you writing about that was noted at the Schooner Restaurant?

Shanon Sinn: The Schooner Restaurant was a really interesting place to talk to the staff because the staff are often very temporary, very seasonal. They're there for a year or two, and there were so many accounts that were very recent, like from the year before or from that season. Tofino's a smaller community, even though a lot of people go for tourism or it might seem at times like it's very populated. When I was interviewing the staff at the Schooner, it just happened to be that there was a school teacher sitting at the bar who had worked at the Schooner in the past as well, so she could fill me in on other stories. The story is that most people believe the haunting is by a chef that used to work there and live in the building that passed away in the 1970s. The accounts are wild, like multiple people seeing full apparitions sitting at a table beside them. There's two people I interviewed who both saw at the same time a crate of dishes hovering several feet and then dropping and smashing. There's doors that flew open, lots of sightings of an apparition described as a shadow looking through the server station window. The server station for the lower level is built to look like a ship with stained glass, so they would see somebody looking through, but they'd go on the other side and there'd be nothing. And these people that I spoke to were very convincing. They're not your TV-watching type people. All of them had that attitude of like, "I wouldn't believe this either, but this is what I saw." And the fact that there'd be multiple people present when they saw something at the same time was really interesting to me too. So I found that the most cool thing about that was just how credible the people were to me and how down-to-earth they were. And they were just like, "We all saw this," and I believed them. They're not like a group of people that grew up together. They were there to work, but they all had these encounters together.

Peter McCully: My wife and I have been to the Heriot Bay Inn more than a few times, actually, so I'm curious to hear about your stories surrounding the haunting of the Heriot Bay Inn on Quadra Island.

Shanon Sinn: That's a very interesting haunting, for lack of a better term, because there's been many people that have had accounts there. And whereas the Schooner, it's mostly staff, this building—it's all sorts of people that have had like it's guests, it's staff, people that have been patrons in the pub, a lot of activity. One of the owners and the manager, Lois, she started working there when she was a teenager, so she can trace the stories back at least to the 1970s. The first Heriot Bay Inn was built in 1895, and then it burnt down. A second one was built that burnt down, and then the most recent one was built in, I believe it was 1912. Whatever happened over the years to make it such a haunted place is unknown. But Lois said that the original story of the male was that he was an axe murderer, but over time that story has kind of changed so that he's the murder victim. There is also a story of an old woman that's been seen knitting by the fire and also in room number 14, leaning out of the window, like yelling at people. These are the two main spirits. Lots of activity there. Even when we were there, we saw things that were kind of a little bit harder to explain, but at least something going on there.

Peter McCully: So you experienced something unusual while you were visiting?

Shanon Sinn: Yeah, so I stayed in that room number 14, and there's a story about the glass in the window popped out at one time and was found laying in the grass, which is very strange because there's no frame around it. It didn't break—it was just laying there. When I checked into the room, put my bags there, the window was open a bit, and when I came back it was closed, and that seemed very strange. So I set up a camera and caught it closing on its own. When I tried to open the window again, it wouldn't stay open after that. So it was almost like whatever friction or whatever closed it, it prevented it from staying open on its own after that. I woke up in the night, and I saw what looked like a small orb coming through the door, and so I don't know if this was like a type of sleep hallucination, but with everything else, it felt like there was a presence in the room with me—like a grandmother-type presence. And we also captured what sounded to us like an EVP, an electronic voice phenomena, and that's like one of those pseudoscientific type of things where people walk around with a recorder, they ask questions. When we asked if anybody that was there, like "Lois," it said, "Yeah," very faint at first. And listening to it a few times, it was almost like it changed. It became easier to hear. Besides all the testimony there as well and all the stories there, I'd say that that place feels like something's going on. They do have more of a sense of openness and more kind of spiritual. They're more believers compared to the Schooner. I would say that they're proud of the haunting, and it's become kind of a selling feature because they have people that come there over the years and do types of investigations since we were there, and even charge clients to accompany them. So it's become a little more commercial that way.

Peter McCully: And did you get a sense of how the broader Quadra Island community views the inn's reported hauntings?

Shanon Sinn: I would say the white community of Quadra Island seems very supportive of it. Like, it's like a matter of pride almost that the inn is said to be haunted. The inn is built on an Indigenous midden, which they showed me in the basement. So there's some history there that I would say probably it might not have been the best place to build an inn. And there were some people going there doing séances in the past too, and they were claiming to talk to Indigenous spirits and such as well. So I would say the Indigenous community is not really as on board, although I haven't heard any confrontations or anything. It just doesn't seem to be seen as a matter of pride like it is for the rest of the community.

Dave Graham: Shanon Sinn—we thank him for his contribution to the Pulse podcast and to storytelling because that's at the heart of what we do here. Believe them or not, ghost stories can be at least entertaining. Let me tell you a quick one—true story. When I was a kid, we visited my mom's parents. They were far enough away that we'd have to stay over, and the only way to make room for our family of five was for me to sleep out on the screened-in back porch. So they set up a cot for me, and I'd fall asleep to the sound of quiet conversation and laughter among the adults in the house. Well, one night I woke up—the house was dark, everyone else was asleep, and I woke up. I don't know why, but I was awake, and I looked down to the end of my cot. There was someone standing there, absolutely still, watching me. There was no sound. In the darkness, I couldn't make any details, but there was no denying there was something barely visible there—a figure, but it wasn't moving. It's not normal to be still like that. My heart was pounding. What else could this be but a ghost? I lay there wondering, "Where did it come from, and why is it staring at me, and what on earth might happen next?" I must have fallen asleep with the covers over my head. I woke up in the morning—sun shining, birds singing, grandma nearby in the kitchen starting on breakfast—and one of grandpa's shirts on a hanger, hung out to dry on a hook at the end of my bed. Well, that sounds like a scary experience for a kid, Dave.

Peter McCully: Well, yeah. Now I'm afraid of laundry.

Dave Graham: Isn't everyone afraid of laundry? And isn't it time we head to the cafeteria to check out Mabel's special for today?

Peter McCully: Oh, were we booked for the cafeteria today?

Dave Graham: But Dave, we go to see Mabel after every episode.

Peter McCully: Oh, I don't think I have anything else going on. I left my schedule at home.

Dave Graham: You know you can do that on your phone now.

Peter McCully: I can't give up my pen and paper.

Dave Graham: Oh, shoot. Now where's my pen?

Rockin' Rhonda & The Uptown Blues Band: Here comes Peter, here comes Dave. Oh, listen! Bringing stories, making waves. No missing. Spinning tales in the podcast cave. So to speak. Laughs and insights everywhere—what a treat. Peter and Dave, they're on the mics, alright. Join the ride—it's gonna feel just right.