Bringing Dad Home

Dad, Harry 'Basso' Menzies was born and raised on BC's north coast. He spent his life on the water. Half his life he lived in Prince Rupert. The second half he lived in the lowermainland, primarily on Bowen Island. Even as he lived on Bowen he continued to return home as a commercial fisherman fishing salmon, herring, and halibut all along the north coast. He kept coming home even when he had stopped fishing. When he became too infirm to travel himself he kept tabs on things through a network of family and friends.

Basso talks with skipper Justin Dickens

Dad kept his wits about him to the end. But there were moments when his sense of the present dissolved. In those moments he would often be on the boat focussed on solving a problem. 

One time he needed me to find the flashlights to check something out in the engine room. Another time I was sent down to the engine room to pump the boat out. Dragging anchor was a major item -both in life and in memory. Several times I had calls from Dad asking me to help him keep the boat on anchor.

Dad liked to talk current issues - the price of halibut in 'Rupert, what boats were landing what kinds of fish in 'Rupert. He did pay attention to other news as he had become a regular CBC listener this past decade. But it was 'Rupert news that kept his attention.

Dad belongs to the north coast and over the long weekend at the end of September I brought him home. 

A memorial reception was held in the First United Church Hall, Saturday September 28, 2024. The attendees included retired commercial fishermen who had known him, family and friends from Gitxaala, Prince Rupert, and the Interior. It was a warm audience who stayed after the short program and talked about Dad and their memories of him.

Dad was born a member of the Eagle clan. His own mother Elizabeth Menzies, nee Gamble, was herself born in Laxh Klan (Kitkatla). Her  mother, first wife of Edward Gamble, was Ellen Denis descendent of a Tlingit Eagle Clan house. Family member Craig Bolton (Eagle Clan) mc'ed the program. Reverend Derry Bott gave the opening and closing prayers. My cousin Anne Barrett (the daughter of my father's sister) shared reflections.  I also shared my memories of Dad. Family member Merle Bolton (Eagle Clan) coordinated and organized the refreshments for the attendees.

The support and assistance of my north coast family was critical in making the reception such a success.

On Sunday, September 29, 2024, Justin Dickens met us at the Cow Bay floats to take us across the Harbour to McNichol Creek, a place that was important to Dad as a young man and child. His family spent a lot of time there during the depression years. They caught fish and crabs, hunted, picked berries, and lived their lives. 

Later as an adolescent and young man he played and partied there with friends and family. 

I was joined by by cousin Eddie Davies (son of my father's sister) and his son Alan. As we pulled into the mouth of McNichol Creek Eddie regaled us with stories of life and times in the cabins. He talked 

about how he spent the first six months of his life living with his family in a cabin at McNichol Creek. His Dad and another man would row to work every morning.

My own father often spoke about rowing across the harbour as a child. He would tell how his sister Babe would swim across the harbour. No small feat.

Eddie, Alan and I stepped out onto the bow of Justin's boat, checked the  

direction of the wind, then slowly let Dad return to the waters of the north coast. We paused in the silence of the moment. I took one final photo of the eagle crested bentwood box that had held Dad on his final voyage.  

Justin turned the boat around and took us back to the dock.

Eulogy, September 28, 2024. Harry Basil Menzies Memorial Reception, Prince Rupert

Harry Basil Menzies, born of a Scottish-Canadian father Harry Menzies (whose family arrived in southern Ontario in the early 1800s) and a Tsimshian mother Elizabeth Gamble (whose family is rooted in this land since time immemorial).  

b. September 12, 1929; d. July 23, 2024.

 

Dad grew up on the north coast. He spent time with his parents out in Grassy Bay and over at McNichol Creek. From a young age he had a lot of freedom to do what he wanted and go where he pleased – mostly this was out on the water. He would tell me about visiting with his grandfather Edward Gamble on his boat when it came into harbour and tied up at CowBay or how Edward and Alice Gamble would visit up at the house on 8^th that Dad grew up in. 

 

He shared stories of his own Dad’s family coming to Victoria and then how the brothers worked their way up the coast to Prince Rupert via Rivers Inlet. He did a relief shift on the MV Thomas Crosby once. ON that trip he was able to go ashore at Rivers Inlet and see the headstone of an uncle who had died while working there.

 

Dad and I spent a lot of time talking about family, who they are and how we were related. These stories were often framed by events. He never just recited family trees, he told stories about the people and how we were connected emerged through the telling. 

 

Dad worked most of his life. I rarely heard him complain about it. He took pride in his stories of work. He told how one morning as he slept in his father came to him and demanded he decide ‘go to school, or go to work.’ Dad replied ‘work’ – his own father then said okay, get dressed, there’s a job for you down at Fairview. So began Dads nearly 60 years of work in the fishing industry.

 

Dad spent much of his time since the 1980s living in the lowermainland. But the north coast was always home. Until a few years ago Dad kept the family home on Eight Avenue East. Several generations of Dad’s family grew up in that house. My sisters and I did. My memories of our childhood home is interwoven with his stories and photos of my father’s own childhood there.

 

Dad kept coming home. His fished halibut out of Prince Rupert until he was in his 70s. But even when he stopped fishing he kept coming up the coast every year to have the Miss Georgina pulled out of the water at McLean’s shipyard. I typically stepped in as his deckhand and traveling companion on those trips. Sometimes my own sons came along, sometimes other family members. We would head up the coast pulling into his favourite anchorages, every place had a story.

Neither man nor boat were really in the best of shape. One trip we had to drape a giant tarp over the bow to hold the water from leaking in through the stem. Dad enjoyed these trips but it was clear they were hard on him.

 

One fall, after working on the boat to get it ready to return south he gathered a crew – Eddie Davies and Norman Viktil, I was too busy at UBC to join in. He headed south just before thanksgiving. They got down to Namu. The weather was rough. The boat mechanics were breaking down. They had to tie up at Namu. They had a rough night at the dock. Dad decided to turn around and run back to Shearwater where he and his crew spent thanksgiving waiting for a mechanic to return to do a repair on the boat. Instead of finishing the trip south, they ran back to Rupert where the Miss Georgina sat at McLeans until she made her final trip across to Haida Gwaii tied alongside of the Star Wars. 

 

But that didn’t hold Dad back. He kept coming back to Rupert. When he couldn’t convince me to take him north Eddie drove down to Bowen to bring him here for his second to last trip. Dad loved that road trip. Today he is on his final journey, coming home to stay.

   

Thank you for being with us here as we remember Harry Basil Menzies. 

Harry Basil (Basso / Teddy) Menzies. b September 12, 1929; d. July 23, 2024.

Comments presented at August 17, 2024 Memorial Service on Bowen Island.

Harry Basil Menzies, born of a Scottish-Canadian father (whose family arrived in southern Ontario in the early 1800s) and a Tsimshian mother (whose family is rooted in this land since time immemorial). 

Harry & Elizabeth Menzies

Eleven years ago, we stood in this place to say goodbye to Shirley, our mother and Basso’s wife. Shirley and Basso were together for 52 years. I was with my father on the day Mom passed. We sat together with her. Then he said he was going home. In the parking lot we hugged, he held back his tears, and then got into his car to return to Bowen. I followed him on the next ferry.

 

I’ve spent many hours in my father’s company: as a child in the front seat of his car on the way to the boat, as a youth and adult in the wheelhouse of his boat travelling the coast, and as an older man sitting with him at his kitchen table. Then finally sitting with him as he left this world. Often, he would talk about his life -mostly about his work as a commercial fisherman, but occasionally about his youth and his family. Some of his stories had a clear arc, others were fragments that only made sense with a lifetime of listening to him. I will miss these moments with him.

 

 

Dad was born at home in Prince Rupert. My sisters and I grew up in that same house. My memories of our childhood home is interwoven with his stories and photos of my father’s own childhood there.

Sister 'Babe,' Dad, mother Elizabeth.

On thing my father liked to do was talk with people. He would learn about them and share stories of his own life all at the same time.

 

Dad’s life was defined by fishing. Not only did he work on the water, but he also took us all on holidays on the boat. We would fish, set crab traps, and explore coves and creeks all around the coast. When he and mom found themselves with grandchildren they took those children on the boat as well. Other grandparents take the kids to Disneyland, my parents took the grandkids jigging for rock cod.

 

During the 1930s depression my father’s family supplemented their meagre income with venison, seafood, and wild plants and berries. One of my favourites of Dad’s stories involved him and a cousin fishing salmon in McNicol Creek. They stood up to their chests in the creek holding a gillnet. Their two fathers rowed back and forth picking the salmon out of the net. “It was cold,” Dad would say. Relief came when his mother and aunt came rowing down the channel yelling at the men to take the boys out of the water.  

 

Dad and I spent a lot of time talking about family, who they are and how we were related. These stories were often framed by events – like his childhood gillnetting earlier mentioned which is story about Uncle Lee, cousin Vic, and Aunt Nettie in addition to fishing. 

Shirley and Basso Menzies.

My first remembered version of this story began in another story about Dad having been invited to beach seine at his grandfather’s fishing camp in Lowe Inlet. While an anthropologist like me might create an abstract chart connecting people, Dad told family as stories, moments, and events that explained the importance of the connections.

 

Another of Dad’s favourite stories dates to when he was second engineer on the Cape Perry in 1950.  They were collecting fish a couple of hundred miles south of Prince Rupert. An American bomber had crashed. Dad delighted in telling the story of rescuing the flight crew in the middle of a cold and windy night. Dad was interviewed by CBC radio when he was 87. They spun together a feature with modest editing. In another life Dad may well have been a radio commentator.

 

What made Dad’s radio story so powerful is its authenticity. He talked with the radio host the same way he would speak to any of us here. He draws us in, includes us, makes us feel valued. This was a strength of his, to be able to connect with all kinds of people.

 

I will miss my father. I know that you will also miss him in your own way.  On behalf of my sisters and our families, thank you for being with us as we remember Harry Basil Menzies. 

Dad on the wheel, FV Miss Georgina.

A memorial reception will be held in the First United Church Hall, Prince Rupert at 2pm on Saturday September 28, 2024.