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, you'll find true real estate professionals at ianlindsay.ca.

Rockin' Rhonda: Here comes Peter. Here comes Dave. Oh, listen. Bringing stories, making waves. No missing, spinning tales in the hot podcast cave. So laughs and insights everywhere. What a treat.

Peter McCully: This is The Pulse Community Podcast. Welcome back. I'm Peter McCully, and here on mid-Vancouver Island, we're fully engaged in summer. The beaches and campgrounds are full, and we're all indulging in summer fun in a thousand different ways. Plus, the countdown is on to the BC Day long weekend.

Dave Graham: And I'm Dave Graham. I figure I should be recovered by BC Day. Last week's sunburn has reached a sort of patchy two-tone stage I like to call the Dalmatian phase. But I learned my lesson - now I follow the sun safety guidelines a lot more carefully. I'm seeking shade, and slipping on a hat, and slapping on the sunscreen, and slopping... no, wait, I got that wrong. I'm slapping on a hat and slopping on the sunscreen and, uh, sliding on... I'll have to get back to you on that. I need to recheck those sun safety guidelines.

Peter McCully: Well, Dave, I believe it's slip, slap, slop, seek, slide. Slide on sunglasses. It's great that you're being safe out there, but, you know, we've got a show to do, so let's get at it.

Dave Graham: Yes, and what a show. First up, a Vancouver Island legend celebrating a big one.

Peter McCully: Roy Henry Vickers is celebrating two milestones this year, his 80th birthday and the release of his new retrospective, The Best of Roy Henry Vickers, 80 Selected Works, co-created with his longtime collaborator, Lucky Budd.

Roy Henry Vickers: Going over the years, it was like I'm looking at this person, but the person's me. As we're talking about it, all of these memories come flooding back of the first pieces that I did and how I struggled with traditional Indian art, and I loved it, but I got to a point where I realized, well, you're not a traditional Tsimshian or a Haida or a Heiltsuk man. You live in a different time. Maybe you should try and express yourself as who you are today, not as who you would be if you were here before colonialism happened.

Dave Graham: 80 years old and still working out how to express himself in a new way. I hope to be doing that at 80. I, I hope to make it to 80. Another reason to practice sun safety.

Peter McCully: Also joining us, Dave, Kyle Gilson, who has spent nine years on the front lines of wildfire response with BC Wildfire Service. As an initial attack crew leader based out of the Arrington Fire Base, Kyle leads a four-person crew whose job it is to reach a new fire fast and stop it in its tracks.

Kyle Gilson: On the island, a lot of the fires I show up to are human-caused. We don't tend to get a ton of lightning here on the island. I think the general percentage for all of BC is 60% lightning fires and 40% human-caused fires. It could be anything from a piece of glass in some really dry grass- to a cigarette butt or to a car catching on fire, a campfire. There's endless possibilities. I've heard them all.

Dave Graham: A piece of glass on dry grass. That brings new meaning to the concept of sun safety. It's a solid reminder we all need to be careful out there.

Peter McCully: Next week, we'll be celebrating BC Day and a long weekend with a special edition of The Pulse Podcast featuring BC Music and our special co-host, Greyston Holt. He's a member of the cast of the much-anticipated Netflix show, Neely.

Dave Graham: Also coming up, Deborah Garrard of the Vancouver Island Master Gardeners. She'll be returning to the podcast to check in on how your garden grows.

Peter McCully: And award-winning comedian Brent Butt, the star of Corner Gas, is touring Vancouver Island in September, and he'll be dropping by for a chat.

Beachfest: There's something happening at Parksville Beach Festival this weekend that you don't want to miss. Sand and Sounds, July 25th and 26th, hosted by Little Island Parties, brings live acoustic music and kids' crafts right inside the Beauties and Beasts sand sculpting exhibition. A little music, a little art, a lot of summer magic, something for every member of the family. The Tim Hortons Free Summer Concert Series continues Friday and Saturday evenings, 6:30 to 8:30 PM. Canadian Tire Buskers perform at the Gazebo daily, 11 AM to 1 PM and 2 to 4 PM. And those world-class sand sculptures are still stunning visitors every single day. This is what summer on Vancouver Island looks like. Parksville Beach Festival on now through August. Visit parksvillebeachfest.ca.

Thrifty Foods Parksville: At Thrifty Foods, we love to help nonprofits, charities, and schools. Our Thrifty Foods Smile Card bulk program allows organizations to immediately save up to six percent on the purchase of Smile Cards in bulk, allowing you to keep more money in your organization's pockets. Ask for details at Thrifty Foods in Parksville.

Peter McCully: Our Blue Rodeo ticket giveaway is now open to enter. Visit our website or our Facebook or Instagram pages to enter to win tickets, along with a couple of folding camp chairs and a hundred dollar Thrifty Foods Smile Card.

Dave Graham: You know, I've done the math, and you could buy about five dozen double chocolate chunk muffins with that kind of credit. I suppose you could also use a Smile Card to buy some kale. I don't know how much kale you can get for a hundred dollars. Not when there's double chocolate chunk muffins to be had. Ah, great, now I want a muffin. Let's get to our first guest, Dave. Here's Marilyn.

Marilyn: Kyle Gilson has spent nine years on the front lines of wildfire response with BC Wildfire Service, all of them here on mid-Vancouver Island. As an initial attack crew leader based out of the Arrington Fire Base, Kyle leads a four-person crew whose job is to reach a new fire fast and stop it in its tracks. He has been deployed to the Yukon and Ontario and has fought fire in every corner of British Columbia.

Peter McCully: Welcome to the podcast today, Kyle.

Kyle Gilson: Thank you for having me.

Peter McCully: You've been with the BC Wildfire Service now for about nine years, all of those in the Mid-Island area. What first drew you to wildfire fighting as a career?

Kyle Gilson: My two cousins that lived up in northern BC, I saw they posted a picture of them standing by this big burnt-out tree that was on fire, and I thought that looked really cool, and I knew they did wildland firefighting. That's what initially drew me to it, and then I started to look more into it, and I applied to a contract firefighting crew. I got in with them and did a year with them, and I really enjoyed it, and I wanted to step up. So then the next year, I applied to BC Wildfire. Luckily, I was able to get in on the first try. Sometimes it can be a little bit difficult. There's a lot of competition. I was in, and I was super stoked to get started and actually do the real thing too.

Peter McCully: Now, you say there was a lot of competition. Is this a job that a lot of folks aspire to?

Kyle Gilson: It is. It goes up and down. I think this year we had the most people apply we've ever had, or at least up there. It's definitely up and down, and the competition is tough, and there's a lot of great people that apply for sure.

Peter McCully: Now what's a typical day look like when you're not at a fire? Or what does the off-season or the standby period actually look like?

Kyle Gilson: You could break it into three days. We have more like a training day, so we'd be out doing like a fire scenario, a mock fire, just brushing up on our fire skills. Then we have days called project work days. Project work looks like more like chainsaw work, 'cause there's a lot of chainsaw work involved in fire, so we train that a ton. There's usually a lot of base days, so we're hanging around base and tidying up things and getting the truck ready, cleaning gear, all that kind of stuff. That's generally what it looks like when we're not on fires, one of those three days. But it's very varied what we do when we're not on fires.

Peter McCully: Now, Kyle, I understand you've worked in just about every fire center right across the province. What's the most surprising differences that you've encountered in the different regions?

Kyle Gilson: I would say the biggest difference is probably just how different they actually are. The field type, so like the type of trees and the ground that's in different fire centers is so different, so fires behave differently. Also, just how you fight those fires is very different from fire center to fire center. Tactics kind of have to be different 'cause the fires are behaving differently, and there's a large difference from fire center to fire center, and you learn a lot when you go to different fire centers, for sure.

Peter McCully: Could you give us an example of, say, a fire here on Vancouver Island versus one up in the interior?

Kyle Gilson: On the island, usually it's gonna be steep, but it's also, we have a lot of rainforest here, so fire doesn't quite move as quick. There's larger trees, and it's a little bit more damp, so the fires kind of move a little bit slower, but they can be more difficult to fight 'cause they can burn deeper, and there's just larger trees. But if you're up in the interior or up in northern BC, it's completely flat. There's smaller trees. The fires can take off and go up to, like, rank five or six, which is, like, extreme fire behavior, a lot quicker, so it can be more challenging to fight in that way.

Peter McCully: Can you walk our listeners through what first happens in the, say, the first hour after your crew gets a call, from the moment the radio goes off to the boots on the ground at the fire?

Kyle Gilson: I get a call from our dispatch, and they let me know essentially where the fire is. So they'll give me a set of coordinates, and they'll give me basically a rough idea of what the fire might be, 'cause there's a report from the Victoria Call Center. Then we go out, navigate to these coordinates, and get to the fire, and then it's my job as a crew leader to assess and see what we need for resources and basically the game plan to get around this fire with hose. Once we've fully assessed the fire at that point, then we're setting up our water source, finding water and whatever that is. Basically, our objective at that point, once we got our water source set up, is just to get hose around the fire. That's our main goal of initial attack, is to contain the fire as quickly as possible.

Peter McCully: Now, your crew is four people, one lead, three members. You're the lead. How do you divide those roles up on an active fire?

Kyle Gilson: Usually, I'm quite busy with managing the fire. Usually, I'll be the incident commander a lot of the time, so I'll have to put a lot of responsibility onto my two. The crew members go one, two, three, and four. So I'll put a lot of responsibility on my two to lead the rest of the crew, the three and the four, and then their own little separate crew if I'm managing the fire at that point. I kind of just leave the three of them to action the fire while I go and assess the situation, essentially.

Peter McCully: Are most of the fires that you show up to deal with caused by humans?

Kyle Gilson: On the island, a lot of the fires I show up to are human-caused. We don't tend to get a ton of lightning here on the island. I think the general percentage for all of BC is 60% lightning fires and 40% human-caused fires.

Peter McCully: And would that be started from campfires, or?

Kyle Gilson: It could be anything from a piece of glass in some really dry grass to a cigarette butt or to a car catching on fire, a campfire. There's endless possibilities. I've heard them all. Yeah.

Peter McCully: Tell me about the support crew, Kyle. When you're out fighting fires 12, 14 hours a day, is there a crew that keeps you fed and hydrated, and where do you sleep, if you do sleep?

Kyle Gilson: Sometimes we don't sleep. Last fire I was on, we didn't sleep. We stayed up all night. We don't actually have a support crew. We're self-sufficient for generally 24 to 48 hours. So we have some non-perishable food that we bring with us. We also have our tents, so if we need to overnight on a fire, we can anywhere in the bush, and we're self-sufficient. We've got plenty of water. If it's a fire that's closer to base and we're coming back, then it's up to our zone to either get us a hotel if we're a little bit a ways away from our home and get us dinner and whatnot.

Peter McCully: Kyle, what's the most underestimated part of the job, the thing that folks don't see when they picture wildfire fighting or, or see it on the television shows?

Kyle Gilson: The most underestimated part, I would say, is how enjoyable the job can be. People say, "Oh, it must be so tough and mentally exhausting," and it can be, but basically you're working with a team every single day. It's like going back to your high school team. You get to train with them and work out with them, and you get to essentially just grow as a team, and you get to do that every single day. It's a lot more enjoyable than people put it out to be. The camaraderie is huge.

Peter McCully: Now, you've been deployed as far as the Yukon and Ontario on fires. Now, how did those fires compare to what you deal with here on Vancouver Island?

Kyle Gilson: Yukon was a blast to fight fire there. They do things a lot differently. It definitely varies from province to province. The Yukon is a little bit more, I would say, old school, but they also use a lot of helicopters to fight the fires, and everything is quite remote. There's not a lot of roads out there, so that's why you end up flying to the fires. And fire activity can be a little bit more extreme there as well. Generally have bigger fires. That was a quite fun deployment, for sure. Ontario, they also do things quite differently than BC. They use a lot of helicopters, so they'll fly you out, and then you'll just camp for your duration of your deployment, which could be anywhere around 14 days or whatever. So you set up your camp out in the bush, and they fly you in all your food and water that you need, so you're self-sufficient. Then they'll fly you out your fire gear and all that. So you're just essentially camping and fighting the fire at the same time for your 14-day duration.

Peter McCully: Sounds like you'd be living in a fog for 14 days.

Kyle Gilson: You're a bush man for 14 days, and you're out there with your team, and it's a lot of fun.

Peter McCully: Now, tell us about that Cameron Lake fire shutdown. That was 2023. What was your experience working that fire from the inside?

Kyle Gilson: So I was on that fire for a full deployment. Myself and my crew were actually the first ones on that fire. We flew above that fire, landed up top, and basically on a sheer cliff. So half the fire was up on top of the cliff, and then the other half was on the bottom. That created a lot of difficulties 'cause there, you couldn't really get underneath the fire 'cause there was rocks and trees falling below it 'cause it was a sheer cliff. And then up top, you generally don't wanna fight fire from above. We attempted to a little bit, but it eventually got away from us. It was extremely difficult fire to fight in the first few days. The trees in that fire are massive. They're all generally old-growth trees. We had a lot of large trees come down, and the fire activity was a little bit more extreme than we generally see for the coast. Overall, it was quite a difficult fire, and it added a lot of stress to a lot of people 'cause it closed down the highway as well.

Peter McCully: You mentioned old-growth forest versus non-old-growth forest. What would be the difference as the fire travels?

Kyle Gilson: Generally, an old-growth fire will carry a little bit slower because it can't get up into the canopy, and 'cause the trees are just so large, the fire's not gonna reach that. And second-growth, even still, it struggles to get up in the canopy and get moving quite quickly. Also, because we are in a rainforest, fire doesn't generally travel that fast here on the island. But we did have an example of quite fast rates of spread on the Underwood fire last year out by Port Alberni. That was not very common, for sure. Generally, old-growth fires are easier to, to manage other than the size of the trees.

Peter McCully: The Wesley Ridge fire last year is still pretty fresh in everyone's minds, of course. The largest wildfire response ever on Vancouver Island.

Kyle Gilson: That was also a difficult fire to fight, for sure. I came near the tail end of the fire. I wasn't there initially. It started along the lake and ran up that sheer cliff up towards the homes. That was also fire behavior that we're not usually seeing on the island. It made it very difficult to essentially contain that fire in the initial periods.

Peter McCully: That's the first time you've mentioned homes. So I know FireSmart is the program that most folks have heard of. How much difference does it actually make when a crew arrives at a structure that's been prepared under FireSmart suggestions versus one that hasn't been?

Kyle Gilson: It makes a huge difference. When a crew goes to assess a home and they see that it's completely fire smarted, they're able to just do a quick walk around and say, "Yeah, this house is fire smarted, and it's generally gonna be safe from fire." And it just creates a lot less work for the crews. The fire that's not fire smarted, they're gonna have to go in there with their saws and do a ton more work, and it creates an extra workload. Fire smarting is a great thing to do for your home, especially if you're living amongst the trees.

Peter McCully: After a major fire is contained, and you've just talked about two that we've experienced here in the last few years, and you're standing there in what's left, what goes through your mind?

Kyle Gilson: In an IA fire, initial attack fire, once it's contained, so there's hose wrapped around the fire, you can take a deep breath and kind of take a load off 'cause you know that generally this fire is gonna be held now that you have hose around it. But there's still a ton of work to do. A lot of mop-up. We work until the fire is completely out, until there's no smoke showing. So it's like the first half is getting the hose around the fire, and the second half is completely putting it out, which can be multiple days and takes a lot of work. So it's just essentially after that, it's planning for the days ahead and how long you're gonna be out there for.

Peter McCully: What does physical fitness look like for the crew? Obviously, you have to be in good shape to be toting chainsaws around and shoveling dirt and topsoil and all of that.

Kyle Gilson: We get an hour of fitness every day, and that can look like cardio or strength training, high intensity interval training. We do a mix of those three. We do some teamwork activities as well in with those. It's a physically exhausting job, but we get the time to train for it every day.

Peter McCully: Kyle, what advice would you have for someone thinking about training to fight wildfires?

Kyle Gilson: I would say definitely train your physical fitness, but also your mental fitness, your toughness. There can be some mentally exhausting long days, long nights. That accounts for obviously the mental fitness, but also physical fitness. You're going for 14, 16-hour days and sometimes even longer, working through the night. So it's a mix of those two for sure for this job.

Dave Graham: Kyle Gilson, nine years on the front lines, and he has heard every possible way a fire can start, from a cigarette butt to a piece of glass on dry grass. We salute Kyle and all the crews like his out there this summer. You'll find links to BC Wildfire Service in our story notes at thepulsecommunity.ca.

Peter McCully: And new to our website is a collection of links to other Vancouver Island podcasts, plus links to Vancouver Island webcams.

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 or less. The Book Worm on the corner of Redford and Anderson opens seven days a week from 10 to 5, building your personal library for less. Fireside Books at 464 Island Highway East in Parksville is a book dragon's dream come true. Browse their extensive collection seven days a week. Both locations make growing your personal library easier than ever. New and used books and so much more. Order online at firesidebooks.ca and pick up at either location. Details available online. Ask about returning books for a book credit. Fireside Books and The Bookwyrm, two locations, one amazing adventure in browsing

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. You'll find true real estate professionals at ianlindsay.ca.

Dave Graham: This is The Pulse Community Podcast, available on Apple, Amazon, iHeart, Spotify, TikTok, and YouTube. Plus, we're on Facebook and Instagram.

Peter McCully: We love hearing from you. It's easy to reach us or leave a voice or text message. We welcome your feedback, and we appreciate your tips on stories we could be following. Head to our website and click on the contact link at thepulsecommunity.ca.

Dave Graham: Peter, quick check. Am I still looking like a Dalmatian?

Peter McCully: No, Dave. Maybe more like a giraffe. And you certainly don't sound spotted. Let's get to our next guest. Here's Marilyn.

Marilyn: Roy Henry Vickers is celebrating two milestones this year. He turned 80, and the release of his new retrospective, The Best of Roy Henry Vickers, 80 selected works co-created with longtime collaborator Lucky Budd. The book draws on more than 50 years and over 400 works to tell the story of one of Canada's most recognized indigenous artists.

Peter McCully: Thanks for joining us on the podcast today, Roy, and happy belated 80th birthday.

Roy Henry Vickers: Thank you, Peter. It's a pleasure to be here, and kinda hard to believe I'm 80, but I am.

Peter McCully: Well, you turned 80 in June. I read that you spent most of your birthday thinking about your mother, who was a schoolteacher, gave birth to you in the schoolhouse where she taught. That's a great story.

Roy Henry Vickers: It's amazing. Actually, the story began - she was teaching school in a place called Greenville in those days, and today it's called Lekwungen. She wanted to go to the hospital in Prince Rupert, and she couldn't. The boats were all dried up on the beach 'cause the tide was out, and Greenville's near the mouth of the Nass River. This old lady came and talked to Mom and said, "Grace, it's not good. The boats are all dried up. You'll have the baby here." And Mom, being this British ancestry person, said, "Oh, I have to go to the hospital." And the old lady said, "Grace, all of our babies are born here. You don't have to go to the hospital. I want you to clean up the back room in the schoolhouse, and whitewash it, and that's where I'll have the baby." And so I was born in the little back room of the schoolhouse that she was teaching in. I was born at 7:00 in the morning, and the tide was back in by then. Dad was holding Mom's head in his lap, and he started laughing. And Mom said, "Art, what is it? What's so funny?" He said, "Look at the box the baby's in." They'd taken a cardboard box and lined it with nice blankets and everything, and on the box was Heinz 57. Perfect.

Peter McCully: Was that a nod to your DNA?

Roy Henry Vickers: That was. And it took years for me to find out what my DNA is, so when I took the 23andMe, it was no surprise that half of me was from the northwest coast and the other half of me was from all over the continent of Europe, including Manchuria. When I think of people who use the word racism, I think even the use of the word is an ignorant thing because how can there be racism if we're all one family? Hasn't science proven already that all of us can trace our genes, our DNA back to the mitochondrial gene? Yes. So I've felt like that my whole life. I didn't know what discrimination was, except fear of someone who's not the same as you. I never had that fear. I had more of an interest. "Well, who are you, and where do you come from, and can you tell me about yourself?" It's like being in nature. You're always interested in what's happening around you, and people are nature, too. So I always wanna know who people are and where they come from and what language they speak.

Peter McCully: Well, you should have your own podcast then, Roy.

Roy Henry Vickers: That would be fun.

Peter McCully: We'll make it happen. Now, you are celebrating that 80th birthday with the release of a new book, The Best of Roy Henry Vickers: 80 Selected Works, and it spans 50 years, obviously, of your career. What's it feel like- Mm-hmm ... to see a half a century of work in one collection?

Roy Henry Vickers: It was mind-blowing. It was like I was this other person. I'm looking at this guy who starts his career as an artist, and then he goes through all of these phases. I couldn't pick the images that would go in the book, so I left it to my wife, Andrea, and Lucky Budd, who chose all of the images. And as I chose them, you can see the growth of this artist and how he is looking at life and how he incorporates everything that he's learning into his art.

Peter McCully: So Lucky and Andrea had, what, about 400 works to choose from, and they narrowed it down to 80?

Roy Henry Vickers: Yes. They do a good job.

Peter McCully: That's a tall order.

Roy Henry Vickers: It is. And when I think of 400 fine art pieces of limited edition prints, I have to break it all down. So going over the years, it was like I'm looking at this person, but the person's me. As we're talking about it, all of these memories come flooding back. Of the first pieces that I did and how I struggled with traditional Indian art, and I loved it. But I got to a point where I realized, well, you're not a traditional Tsimshian or a Haida or a Heiltsuk man. You live in a different time. Maybe you should try and express yourself as who you are today, not as who you would be if you were here before colonialism happened.

Peter McCully: Interesting. The book includes images that have never appeared in print before, obviously because you're going back 50 years. And without giving away every secret, is there one or two of those rarely seen pieces that you're especially glad made it into the book?

Roy Henry Vickers: I was overpowered by them all. The other thing that happened was I found my old sketchbooks from 1973 and 1974, and I wanted to include some of those. And Lucky finally said, "Roy, it's just, it's too much. We have to just keep it down to a few pieces." And so they were all a surprise. What it does for me is it brings back memories of, for instance, the canoe with the seal hunters. It's called Ulaa Ulaa. When I saw that, I remembered this man, Peter McNair, who was an ethnologist at the BC Provincial Museum before it became the Royal BC Museum. And he looked at this piece and he said, "Wow, Roy, no one's done this before. This is like visual theater. I can see the wind blowing. I can see the hair moving and the waves. I can feel what you've done here. This is amazing, and yet it's all with the symbolism of traditional Tsimshian art." I was very pleased.

Peter McCully: The book obviously is a very affordable, accessible way to bring your gallery into people's homes. Was accessibility and getting the work in front of people who may never set foot in a gallery something that you and Lucky talked about directly while putting this together?

Roy Henry Vickers: Yes. We talked about the early days. This would be 1986. There is a publication called Solstice: The Art of Roy Henry Vickers. I had put the whole book together myself, wrote the story, and it was about the change of moving from traditional Northwest Coast Indian art to a contemporary expression with color and movement and scenes from the nature around us today. When I looked at all of this, there were people coming into my gallery, and I'm a shy person, so I would be over in the corner of the gallery all by myself, usually carving or working on a new drawing or something. And people would come in, and I'd politely say hello to them and welcome, and they would go into the gallery. If they were in there for a half an hour or so, then I thought, "Well, I should get up and go and talk to them." So I'd go and talk to people, and some of them would be sitting in the middle of the gallery, and there were these little postcards that I'd put together in a photographic album. And it was falling apart. This one lady looking at this book full of postcards said, "Roy, it really would be a good idea if you put together these images in a real book. Look at how they've looked at these and read the stories. You should do a book." And so I put together Solstice: The Art of Roy Henry Vickers, and I couldn't find a publisher. Some person in Tofino said, "Well, you've got the book. Why don't you just go to the bank and find out what it's gonna cost and publish it yourself?" So I did. It was Lucky who came to some storytelling sessions in my gallery in Tofino, and at the end of four days of storytelling, he said, "Roy, you have books. You have books here. All of these stories should be in books. And you have images. You could illustrate the books." And I thought, "You're crazy, Lucky. I'm a storyteller. I, I don't wanna write books." "Well, you have to write books." "No, I don't have to write books. What are you talking about?" "Well, there are hundreds of thousands of people who can't get to Tofino and come to see your gallery. If you had books out there, they could see them. They could see your images and read your stories." So my little quip to him was, "Well, then you're gonna have to help me do the books 'cause I really don't have time to do them myself." So we became friends, and look at how many books we've done. Maybe 18? I don't know. I published three myself, and then when Lucky stepped in, he found Harbour Publishing, and away we went. And it's been so much fun doing coloring books. As a kid growing up, I loved coloring, and I loved paint by numbers. Anybody who wanted to get me something that I loved would get me a paint by number, and I'd do this painting in the paint by number. It became the way I appreciated art, doing someone else's art and putting color in that. I loved it. I still do. Also, I am partially colorblind to all colors, and so doing black and red traditional art was very easy for me. I can see black and I can see red. But when I wanted to do more contemporary work, I started with the four canoes that are in this book, and they were spring, summer, fall, and winter, and it was wintertime, so I did the winter scene first, and it's called Elegy For An Old Man, A Young Man, And A Way Of Life. It's tracks going up through the snow into the forest and an empty canoe at anchor. Then I did spring. It's a canoe out on the west coast, and there's a rain squall coming on the horizon. The canoe is in these big waves. And then I did fall, and it was pouring rain, and it's a canoe going to my village of Kitkatla with an eagle, a whale, a raven, and a wolf, the four crests, the four clans of my village, and they're paddling the canoe. The person in the front of the canoe is an imaginary chief, me. I got those three done, and I was so excited because I could hear Peter McNair saying, "Movement. You have rain. You have wind." And I thought, "Okay, so how am I gonna do summer? I gotta do a sunset." What's the greatest things you see here in the summertime on the coast? Beautiful sunsets on the ocean. And I was petrified. I just didn't think I could do it. And part of me saying you can't and part of me saying I will. I took all of these slides of sunsets and put them in a slide tray and got in the room and put a big screen up and went through them time after time after time after time. It dawned on me after a couple of hours of looking at all of these places on the coast, full of memories too. I saw red, orange, yellow, light blue, darker blue, darker blue, and the silhouette of the land and a canoe, and I painted it. And when I finished it, it was a couple of days and I left. And I don't know where I went in Tofino. Probably got on my boat and took off and c- came back and looked at the piece and I was shocked. Wonderfully shocked, surprised. And I thought, "Ah, I can use color. I can paint color." It's one of the favorite pieces I've done by hundreds of thousands of people.

Peter McCully: We're talking about a 50-year retrospective in this new book and what do you suppose your old Oak Bay High School art teacher, Bill West, would think about this book if he had a chance to take a peek at it?

Roy Henry Vickers: That brings a tear. Yeah. Mr. West, he was the man. He was a friend more than a teacher. He was a, a close friend over the years. He impressed upon me coming out of high school that if you're going to be an artist, then understand who you are and where you come from. Everyone in the world is unique, so if you can come to understand this unique person that you are, there's no one else like you. None of your brothers or sisters are like you. And you create from that uniqueness. You will be doing something nobody else can do. He saw my work changing from traditional work to contemporary work, and he was extremely pleased. He said to me one day, we were looking at a piece, Digging Clams, and it was in the Emily Carr Gallery in Victoria. I had a little show there, and he was there standing right beside me, and he's looking at this piece, and he's going, "Whatever possessed you, Roy, to put that boat right in front? It's a stroke of genius." I said, "Well, Mr. West, it's not really a stroke of genius. I was a little boy, and I couldn't dig clams, and my responsibility was to look after the boat 'cause the tide was coming in, and I had to make sure everything was good for the people while they were digging clams. So that's what I painted." And he said, "Do you remember what I said to you in school?" I said, "Yes. You told me that everyone is unique, and if I could understand myself, then I would create things that no one else could do. That's a good example of it, Digging Clams."

Peter McCully: Tell us about your first exhibition, which I understand was held at Emily Carr House. What does that exhibition feel like to look back on now, 50 years into your career?

Roy Henry Vickers: It's seeing this young man who has these incredible teachers in his life who are watching him grow, and they are patting him on the back and talking to him. Wilson Duff, who was a curator of the museum, he was a friend of mine until the end of his life. Peter McNair. I can see this guy, and the reason he did so well learning his art and his expression was because he had incredible teachers all around him.

Peter McCully: When we chatted last, Roy, you were speaking about storytelling as a way of passing knowledge from generation to generation and all about the artists who work from inspiration being storytellers, whether they realize it or not. Looking at 80 selected works side by side, what story do you think they tell that no single painting could tell on its own?

Roy Henry Vickers: Again, it's the story of this artist who is enjoying his life and his creativity and learning about the world around him, remembering his grandfather who never went to school, who escaped residential school or any kind of governmental school. He got to spend so much valuable time with his grandfather that he learned things like, how do you learn? Well, you keep your eyes and your ears open, and you keep watching and looking. You respect what's happening. To look again, respect. He actually said to me, "Well, you know the way we learned. We learned from stories. We didn't have schools. In the wintertime when everybody got around, they sang songs. The songs are all stories because they wrote the songs." Storytellers would sit around and tell stories, and this is what happened this time of the year, and, oh, when I was fishing in this little place, and the tide was coming in, and the rain was coming down, and the creek was rising. You are learning from their stories of how to live and how to work and how to feed your family from this world around you. Beyond school, I had this incredible way of learning from someone who learned the way his ancestors learned before this place became Canada or British Columbia. A very big key to my expression as an artist over the last 50 years, and it keeps coming up over and over and over and over. I also remember being called to old people's houses. And this one old man, Kenneth Spencer was his name, he was a speaker and a storyteller. He never had speeches, but when there was a big gathering of people, they always called him to come up, and he would always get up and speak to the people from his heart. He was a powerful speaker. People could feel what he was saying. Even if you couldn't understand the language, you could feel what he was talking about. The importance of storytelling has always been foremost when I'm creating images. The story's going over and over and over in my mind, teaching my hand what to do with the pencil.

Peter McCully: Roy, between the Order of Canada, the Order of BC, the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal, a Grammy nomination, and then to coincide with your birthday, an honorary doctorate, this has been a time of recognition for you and your work. Are there any lessons learned in there you'd like to pass along to younger generations?

Roy Henry Vickers: Oh, there are, yes. The harder you work at doing the best that you can after you've worked hard at getting to know who you are, how your life has evolved to be the way you are, all of that hard work will bring you to a place, no matter what your creativity is, to a place where you can reach other people. It just happens because you're working hard at who you are and how you relate to the world around you. We all have something to contribute to society. The harder we work at it, the more we work from inspiration, and you will do what it is you should be doing. When I was a young artist, I made a deal with myself because I had to deal with money and I didn't like it. You have to do this. So the deal I made with myself was I would not create a single piece unless I could feel the goosebumps and the hair go up in the back of my neck, the inspiration coming into my being, and it always comes in through my head, down the back of my neck, and out my arms to my fingertips, and it begs me to get to work and do something.

Peter McCully: Now, Roy, if a reader picks up The Best of Roy Henry Vickers knowing nothing about you beyond the cover, what's the one piece inside you'd want them to land on and why?

Roy Henry Vickers: I would say West Coast Sunset because it shows what a person can do even though they don't believe they can do it, and yet part of them says, "You can do it." When I say I can, that will always suppress or quieten the guy inside that's saying I can't. I've always been able to overcome that negativity. Again, it comes back to inspiration. And the way I learned this is one of my teachers said, "Do you know the word inspiration, where it comes from?" I said, "No." She said, "The word is Latin, inspiratus, and it literally means the breath of God coming into you." When that happens, everything that you are and all of the teachers that you've had and all of the ancestors behind you are moving through you to help you to do whatever it is that you're doing because you're inspired.

Dave Graham: Roy Henry Vickers, 80 years old and more than 50 years of work behind him, and how intriguing that he still describes his own art like he's meeting a stranger. You'll find details on the retrospective in our story notes at thepulsecommunity.ca.

Peter McCully: Here at The Pulse, we keep the young ones entertained with our Skookum Kid Stories. There's the Mellow Submarine with Captain Dave and his first mate, Larry the Lobster, and we also have Peter and Gracie, the Eskimo Dog.

Dave Graham: In this week's news story, Captain Dave takes the Mellow Submarine to explore a haunted shipwreck near Nanaimo. Oh, and don't forget to download the coloring pages. We include them now with each news story.

Peter McCully: Our Radio Archaeology series features classic original episodes of Dragnet with Sergeant Joe Friday and Gunsmoke with Marshal Matt Dillon.

Dave Graham: Then we have Parksville's Cindy Thompson hosting A Resilience Project. This week, Cindy is speaking with Kim Wilkinson, a mother and a grief recovery specialist.

Peter McCully: Also this week, another edition of the Non-Partisan Hacks with Joel Grenz and Sean Wood. Their guest, Shayla Day, is founder and CEO of Day Homes Society, a registered non-profit that does outreach, food support, housing navigation, and community coordination. Shayla also chairs the Oceanside Homeless Task Force Board and co-chairs the Oceanside Community Action Team.

Dave Graham: You'll find these podcasts and more at thepulsecommunity.ca. And while you're on the website, sign up for our weekly newsletter. It'll keep you up to date on the latest podcasts, guests, and contests.

Peter McCully: Good luck in our Blue Rodeo ticket giveaway.

Dave Graham: An evening with Blue Rodeo will be the last concert for the summer season at the fabulous outdoor theater in Parksville, and you could be there, enjoying the show from your folding camp chairs with your several dozen double chocolate chunk muffins that you could buy with your $100 Thrifty Foods Smile Card.

Peter McCully: And that marks the end of another Pulse Community podcast. Thank you for spending time with us. We really do appreciate it.

Dave Graham: Hey, Peter, let's get out of here, and I'll let you buy me a muffin.

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. All right, join the ride. It's gonna feel just right.