MOUNTAIN LIFE - Coast Mountains | Winter Spring 2019

WINTER/SPRING 2019 MLCM 89 words :: Danielle Baker When I close my eyes, I can see her house. I can trace the swirling patterns of her Battleship linoleum and take in all the turquoise: cupboards, counter, and rotary phone. Her arborite table runs the length of the room and the fridge—an afterthought—sits next to the couch. Looking straight across from the entrance, I can see her photo albums: full of stories, full of life. Pristine in their presentation and complete in their knowledge. My great Aunty Babe was an avid photographer. In a time before cameras were a common item, she was rarely seen without one dangling around her neck. She only had one focus: to document her life, and in doing so she recorded a whole community and their way of being. For decades, she captured the essence of life in a remote fishing village on the very west coast of Vancouver Island. And her albums—each one carefully curated— were her pride and joy. They are uniform in style, but with differing patterns adorning the covers and wrapping over the spines—some floral, some plain, some geometric. Each has a carefully handwritten label describing its contents. They are neatly lined up in order along three shelves top to bottom and deliberately placed at the furthest edge of the room—within sight of guests, but out of reach of careless spills. Opening those albums was entirely magical. The pages and pages of images—all places and people I knew, but in a time before I existed— transported me beyond the fabric of my own memories; it was time travel. When allowed, I would sit with those albums for hours; fishing alongside my uncle, swimming in the ocean with my mom, laughing joyously next to my grandma and the minister from the down the road. (LIFE)TIME CAPSULES Aunty Babe’s photo albums contain more than just memories CHARACTER THELMA "BABE" HEGSTROM