I was born in Vancouver in 1948, but in 1951, moved to New Westminster. Both places are in British Columbia, Canada. New Westminster occupies 15.62 km2, located on the banks of the Fraser River. In 1951 it had a population of 28 639 that had increased to almost 90 000 in 2023. For me, New Westminster was noted geographically for its steep slope from downtown to uptown. I walked down to elementary school, but up walking home. In contrast, the walk to secondary school was almost level, but slightly in the opposite direction. My AI assistant tells me New Westminster’s maximum difference in elevation is 152 m.
Many people see their communities in terms of sports. Thus, New Westminster patriots are supports of the Salmonbellies, a lacrosse team. I have seen a game, or more correctly, half a game, when I took my daughter to see one. The only sports I voluntarily played were curling and tennis. New Westminster is world famous (at least in New Westminster) for its anvil battery, which consists of two blacksmith anvils and some gunpowder, pretending to be a canon. Then, there is the Mayday celebration with maypole dancing. One of the aspects of New Westminster that I find most disturbing is its royalist orientation, calling itself the royal city, until 2021-07, when it decided to phase it out as its official brand. Yes, I have a republican political orientation, despite being a citizen of two monarchies. I would prefer to be a citizen of two republics.
Founded 1957-04-03, The Royal City Power Squadron offered a series of courses. I took their basic course, Boating, in the mid 1960s. Completion of this resulted in a boating licence, totally useless at the time. They also offered other courses: Seamanship (now called Piloting), Advanced Piloting, the VHF Course, Marine Maintenance and Marine Electronic. The name of the organization changed to Royal City Power and Sail Squadron. It is now CanBoat Royal City.
The Fraser River has always captivated my attention, and I remember travelling in a fishing boat up the Fraser River to Mission, with my father and members of the dyke commission. For many years I was captivated by Poplar Island located in the Fraser River, in New Westminster. I only visited it once, using my father’s boat. Trees made it very difficult to walk on the island. The Queensborough area of New Westminster is close by, but on Lulu Island, that separates the Fraser River into north and south arms. This is where members of the Power Squadron parked their boats. Trish’s maternal family, the Heaps, at one time had a factory in Queensborough, making forestry equipment in peace time, and ships’ engine shafts during wars. Adjacent to Lulu Island is Annacis Island, located in Delta Municipality. I had worked there building pre-fabricated houses for Habitat Industries. The municipality of Richmond is mainly located on Lulu Island. At one time I lived there for a short period, on Lynas Lane. Harry Andison, my material grandfather, lived in Steveston on Lulu Island, when he first immigrated to Canada from Gateshead, in England. Richmond also occupies Sea Island, where YVR, the Vancouver airport is located.
My favourite walk in the world is along the Fraser Foreshore Trail, mostly in Burnaby, the municipality adjacent to but west of New Westminster. There are additional, similar trails in New Westminster and Vancouver, including Avalon Park. There are many other places that I would like to visit that are located along the Fraser River. Thus, I would like to take a trip by boat down it, starting at Yale, where Harry Andison lived in the 1940s, a fact I only found out looking at census records in 2024. Another stop would be along the Lower Stave River, particularly at Ruskin, where Trish’s ancestors owned a lumber mill and railway. They also owned another railway for transporting timber on Narrow’s Inlet, on the Sunshine Coast, that would not be part of this proposed trip, but could be part of another.
Jennie, my mother, was born at Eburne, now called Marpole, in Vancouver, but she was raised in Kelowna, where her father owned a butcher shop. I spent much of my summers there, and in its eastern, rural offshoot, Okanagan Mission, where my aunt lived. We would also spend a week fishing in the interior of British Columbia. Sometimes we would use a boat to traverse Beaver Lake, walk across a portage to a second boat, then motor up Dee Lake to a wilderness fishing resort at the end of that lake. One time we took a Dodge Power Wagon along the worst road I have ever travelled to get to a fishing resort at Monte Creek. Both of my parents were hunters and fishers, and if there is any one indication that I have not inherited their genes, it is my lack of interest in these two activities.
My father, Edgar’s family lived on Vancouver Island, mostly in Nanaimo. His father was a coal miner who came from Cape Breton Island. Before that his family had come from Swordland, Morar on the mainland of highland Scotland, and South Uist, an island in the outer Hebrides. His mother was born in Pakenham, Ontario, but spent much of her childhood and youth in the Jumping Pound area of Alberta, before moving with her parents to Nanaimo. Her family came from Mohill, in County Leitrim, Ireland.
My father would often take my sister and I out in the woods, frequently to Buntzen Lake, and other wilderness locations in the Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody area. I find much of Inderøy similar to the places we visited.
In terms of Vancouver Island, our family spent many Easters at Qualicum, the preferred location of my parents for their later active retirement years. We had relatives in Nanaimo, Port Alberni and Victoria, so we also visited these places. In 1974, I worked on an archaeological excavation in Port Alberni. My daughter Shelagh attended secondary school at Shawnigan Lake in 2006-7. At one time we had discussed retiring to an apartment at Sidney, at the northern end of the Saanich Peninsula.
In addition to Vancouver island, I also appreciated other, smaller islands in the Salish sea. In Canada, this includes Saltspring and Galiano. When I turned sixteen, I was asked where I wanted to go for a vacation. One place was Orcas Island, in Washington State. We visited it. I also have an attraction to Deception Pass, a strait separating Whidbey Island from Fidalgo Island, connecting Skagit Bay, part of Puget Sound, with the Strait of Juan de Fuca. A pair of bridges known collectively as Deception Pass Bridge cross Deception Pass. The bridges were added to the American National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
Somewhere here, I should ad that I appreciated a visit to Barkerville, and some of the places in the Cariboo. This includes: Cache Creek, Lillooet, Lytton, Quesnel, Spences Bridge, Williams Lake, in addition to the various mile houses, such as 108 Mile Ranch. While I did learn how to ride a horse, I also learned how to sail. I regarded sailing as a more important skill.
Scandinavia
In 1979, Trish and I went to Europe, for what we thought would result in a traditional tour of the continent = United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Spain. We started out in England, then heading off on a Baha’i pilgrimage to Israel. There we met some Baha’is who lived in Sweden. They encouraged us to change our plans and to visit the Scandinavian countries. So, after spending a month in Greece, we flew back to England, then took a SR.N4 hovercraft from Dover to Calais. We then took a train to Copenhagen. We then spent a month each in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland before returning to Norway. In Sweden, we almost ran out of time on our tourist visa, so we managed to get a one year extension. After a second visit to Norway, we returned to England and Ireland, visiting many of Trish’s relatives in the process. Then we returned to Canada.
Some of the more interesting places we visited included several islands.
In Denmark we spent almost two weeks on Bornholm, in the Baltic Sea, to the east of the rest of Denmark, south of Sweden, northeast of Germany and north of Poland. Apart from the southern coast, it is mainly a granite island. In term of architecture, round churches are found throughout the island. In addition, Bornholmerskolen = The Bornholm school of painters began at the beginning of the 20th century. The artists developed a distinctive style of classic modernism, inspired by the island’s unique landscapes and light. experimented with color, abstraction and cubism. Artists included: Otto Haslund (1842 – 1917), Karl Isakson (1878-1922), Edvard Weie (1879-1943), Oluf Høst (1884-1966), Olaf Rude (1886-1957), Kræsten Iversen (1886-1955) and Niels Lergaard (1893-1982).
In Norway, we visited the archipelagos of Lofoten and Vesterålen, which are climatic anomalies with higher temperatures than their latitude would indicate. I am considering a visit to see Hurtigrutemuseet = (Norwegian) Coastal Express Museum, located in Stokmarknes, the location where it started. This will be done off season because, in recent years, they have been inundated with tourists, but without the infrastructure to support them. Potential tourists should be aware of this.
We travelled by ferry between Stockholm in Sweden and Mariehamn (the capital of Åland). Åland is an autonomous and demilitarised region of Finland, with its autonomy determined by a 1920 decision of the League of Nations. It is the smallest region of Finland by both area (1,580 km2) and population (about 30 000). The Åland archipelago consists of nearly 300 habitable islands, of which about 60 to 80 are actually inhabited. The rest—more than 6,000—are small skerries or bare rocks. After visiting the Åland Islands, we continued on by ferry to the Finnish mainland port of Turku.
Norway
For better or worse, we declined vague employment offers in Stokmarknes, located on Hadseløya in the Vesterålen archipelago in Nordland county. It is located just north of Lofoten and west of Harstad. Instead we applied for student visas to Norway ending up in Molde, located on the Romsdal Peninsula. Originally, Molde was a shipping port for lumber to the Netherlands in the late 1500s. It grew throughout the 17th to 19th centuries, becoming a centre for the Norwegian textile and garment industry, as well as the administrative centre for the region and, more recently, a major tourist destination. For me, geographically, it had some similarities to New Westminster, with a steep increase in elevation.
We moved to Molde in 1980, where I took a cand. mag. degree = bachelor’s degree at the regional college with a dual major in business management and computer science. After five years in Molde, and with Alasdair (1983 – ) with us, we moved to Bodø in 1985. When we moved there, the municipality had a population of about 28 000. In 2024, the population had increased to almost 53 000. I also enrolled at the University of Tromsø, to take an advanced degree in computer science. I was awarded cand. scient. degree = master’s degree in 1988. The 14.91 km2 town is the administrative centre of Nordland county, located between Vestfjorden and Saltfjorden, just north of the Arctic Circle. It is the largest urban area in Nordland county. At this time we were able to convert our student visas into work visas, which ultimately resulted in permanent residency permits. Note: It was not until the 2020’s that we became Norwegian citizens. In part, this was because dual citizenship was not allowed until 2020-01-01.
In 1988, we made our final move in Norway to Inderøy. We settled at Vangshylla, at the extreme western end of the Inderøy peninsula. Vang refers to a plain with grass, while hylla refers to a shelf. So Vangshylla is located on a shelf below the other Vang farms. At the end of 1990, we were able to buy a house, where we still live today.
Biology
Some months before my father died, he gave me my original birth certificate. This was probably in 1990. My name at birth was Richard Edwin Salter. In my late 50s, almost twenty years ago now, I applied for (2006) and received (2007) my adoption records. This allowed me to contact my biological mother’s family, the Salters who lived in Essex county, Ontario. I was welcomed as family by my aunts, uncle, cousins and other relatives. I have visited Point Pelee National Park. This is as far south as one can go on the Canadian mainland, and still remain in Canada. Unfortunately, I have not yet visited Pelee Island, which is further south, in Lake Erie. It is on my bucket list. Originally, the Salters were from St Tudy, Cornwell. Then there were the Pentlands, who had settled at Goderich, in Huron county, Ontario. They were from Greyabbey, located on the eastern shore of Strangford Lough, on the Ards Peninsula in County Down, Northern Ireland. It too is on my bucket list. Before that, they had come from the Orkneys, in Scotland.
I enjoyed meeting all of my biological relatives, and appreciate the kindness they have shown me. In terms of geography, I realized that much of southern Ontario was a little too flat for optimal appreciation. I will write a separate post on the geography of Ontario in the future.
On 2018-10-01, a month before I turned 70, I was contacted by Brad Laesser (1947 – ), who explained that he was my biological (half) brother. We share the same father, Percy Bradd. He was from the same area of Windsor, where my biological mother lived, and where Brad was born. Much of my biological heritage is American. This will be the subject of another post in the future.
Islands
I have a fascination with islands. Inderøy, where we live can be literally translated as Inner Inland. It was an island until 1 000 years ago, but since then has been a peninsula. The closest real island to use, of any size in Ytterøy = outer island.
In the Baltic, I have visited: the Åland islands and Bornholm in 1979, and Gotland possibly 20 years later. I visited two Estonian islands Saaremaa and Hilumaa in 2025. Two islands should have been visited previously, when I had the opportunity: Öland and Rügen.
In the Atlantic I have visited Iceland and the Faeroe islands in 2023, Newfoundland and subsidiary islands as well as the Saint Pierre archipelago in 2024. Then in 2025 there was Cape Breton and Prince Edward Islands, as well as Greenland. There are others still waiting for a change to entice me. These include: the Western Isles of Scotland, especially South Uist, from where the MacLellans sailed to Cape Breton in the 18th century. Then there is Shetland and Orkney archipelagos.
In the Mediterranean there was Rhodes and Patmos, in 1979. In 2015 there was Sicily. In 2025 Corsica. I hope Sardinia will welcome me in 2026.
Literature
In terms of literary geography, I have been significantly influenced by five authors, all male, three Scottish. Chronologically they are: Walter Scott (Edinburgh, 1771 – Abbotsford, 1832); Robert Michael Balentyne (Edinburgh, 1825 – Rome, 1894); Arthur Ransome (Leeds, 1884 – Heald Green, Greater Manchester, 1967); Peter Dawlish (pseudonym) = James Lennox Kerr (Paisley, 1899 – Lamorna, Cornwall, 1963) and Archie Binns (Port Ludlow, Washington, USA, 1899 – Sequim, Washington, USA, 1971). Yes, there are books by all of these authors in our library.
Somewhere around the eighth grade, I read Walter Scott’s Lady of the Lake (1810). By that time I had learned that the name MacLellan was associated with the gilley/ servant of Saint Fillan. However, I had no geographical association for the family, apart from Nanaimo and Cape Breton Island. Thus, after reading some of the poem, I wondered if the Trossachs was our place of origin in Scotland. It refers to an area of wooded glens = valleys, braes = hills, and lochs = lakes lying to the east of Loch Lomond. The fictional setting for Scott’s work is Loch Katrine.
Balentyne’s juvenile novel, The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean (1857) has as its setting an unspecified island in the south Pacific ocean. Balentyne never visited this part of the world, but borrowed details about its characteristics from other fictional authors. The work concerns itself about the civilizing effect of Christianity, 19th-century imperialism in the South Pacific and the importance of hierarchy and leadership. Presumably, this work was intended to inspire me, including to accept my, at best, middle-class place in the world. Fortunately, it inspired William Golding (1911 – 1993) to write his novel Lord of the Flies (1954), which inverted the Coral Island’s morality where children encounter evil. In Lord of the Flies evil is within them. I do not need to visit a specific coral island, but would appreciate the opportunity to visit one of the Hawaiian islands, preferable one that is not overly populated. The most recent book I have read about south Pacific islands was by the Anglo-Norwegian author Sue Prideaux (1946 – ), Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin (2024), read earlier this year.
Arthur Ransome wrote juvenile novels mainly set in the Norfolk Broads and the Lake District of England. I have visited both places. Ransome can be regarded as my favourite author.
The novel that resonates most with me is Archie Binn’s Sea Pup, set in Puget Sound, on the Salish Sea, south-west of Vancouver, in Washington state. I have two copies of this book to give to descendants.