Salt Spring Photographer John Cameron
The kind of view that makes Salt Spring Island the place it is. I prepared this image for printing yesterday for a client south of the border.
Love this image? Gallery quality prints are available starting at $95 for a 12 x 8 size. Just note the image title or post address (URL) above and get a quote here.
This image appears in a just-released book by Gary Doi: In the Moment, Real Life Stories of Hope & Inspiration*. The image illustrates a Salt Spring story about a couple visiting the Island on Christmas Eve during a big snow, the ensuing steep hill problems and help from a local.
This photo shows the road at the top of the hill we live on. Four wheel drive only that day. Who wouldn’t love a snow day that looks like that?
Snow doesn’t seem to happen much on Salt Spring, at least not in the last few years. And not like 1996 where we had more than a meter on the ground. Or the year we built a two meter ‘green ninja turtle’ snowman at the end of the driveway for Halloween.
* book proceeds are donated to Children’s Wish Foundation of Canada.
Hal Wright in Sandon: A Salt Spring Island Connection
Way back in the mid-1980s I worked with Hal’s parents in the Gulf Islands School District. I remember him driving the grade seven class from Fernwood School up to Mount Washington aboard his real bus (not school bus). It was a great trip and one in which Hal didn’t just drive the bus but kept involved with the kids.
I remember all kinds of sliding devices in use at night once the lifts had closed. Not one to be left out of the fun, Hal hurried back to the bus and returned with a big aluminum shovel…and proceeded to race the kids down the hill aboard his shovel.
While heading from New Denver to Kaslo, we stopped in at Sandon, where Hal operates the Sandon Hydroelectric Station. This is the oldest continuously operating hydro-electric plant in western Canada (since 1897). Sandon is now a ‘ghost town’ but Hal and area residents seem to have great plans for restoring the town and the great many collected items (somehow Hal’s acquired and moved a 1908 CPR Locomotive (261 000 pounds) and many Vancouver electric buses).
We missed Hal the day we visited Sandon as he was on the road to Idaho. What we didn’t miss though was a crazy mountain road leading to an exhilarating great hike to Idaho Peak. Lots more on that tomorrow.
