West Vancouver may be his hometown and downtown may be his home base but Desolation Sound is definitely Grant Lawrence’s home turf.
It wasn’t always that way, though. As a child he came to resent the winding road to nowhere and dread the solitude that always seemed to await him at its end. Slowly but surely, however, Desolation Sound began to claim him as one of its own and now it’s hard to keep Lawrence away from the place. He’s even found a way to incorporate it into one of his newest assignments at CBC Radio, where he has been an on-air personality since the 1990s.
Lawrence’s brand new show, the Wild Side, began airing on CBC Radio One in June and chronicles the not-so-average stories of average Canadians in their own backyard wilderness and beyond. From outlandish adventures to nail-biting mishaps, the weekly half-hour interactive program covers it all.
“It was a bit of an untapped niche at CBC radio,” said Lawrence of his show’s outdoor theme. “We live in one of the largest countries in the world...with a great deal of it being wilderness, yet most of us are all grouped together in cities and a lot of us don’t venture beyond the concrete that much but are fascinated by the people that do. I felt [CBC radio] was getting more and more urban and I really wanted to kind of take it back out into the woods with this show.”
So take it out into the woods he did. In between trips back to the place that inspired it all, Lawrence has been recording episodes of the show at CBC Vancouver. And while he can’t exactly phone it in, so to speak, when it comes to his hosting duties, his guests are more than encouraged to do so. People from across the country have been calling the story hotline to deliver their amazing and often unbelievable tales from the wild, including Lund resident Ben Bouchard.
On February 2, 2012, Bouchard and his son Lukah were on a diving holiday with friends in Cozumel, Mexico. They were returning to the mainland to do a bull shark dive, cruising through a 12-mile crossing, when the seas got rough. A rogue wave shattered the Lexan panel in their glass-bottomed charter boat and within 20 seconds the vessel had filled with water was slipping below the surface.
“I had my [diving mask] so for the first 10 minutes a friend and I dove on the boat and got gear out,” said Bouchard. “After about 10 minutes I’m still in the boat getting stuff out and all of a sudden I felt my ears squeeze and I looked up and my friend was at the surface. The boat was now sinking and I could see the surface going away.”
Bouchard pushed out of the boat, inflated his buoyancy control device and floated to the surface where he found the rest of the passengers treading water and clinging to debris. After a distress call was put out, the dive master advised the group to start swimming for shore.
Knowing that a passenger ferry ran every hour between Playa del Carmen and Cozumel, Bouchard figured the group would eventually cross its path. What he didn’t know was that there was a three-knot current running north that was rapidly pulling them further from the path of rescue. “I thought we were going to get spotted,” he said. “In the end, we just swam and swam.”
Five hours after they entered the water, Bouchard and the other divers were spotted by a mega-yacht and pulled to safety. By then it was closing in on nighttime and they were 30 kilometres to the north of where they sank, now just outside Cancun.
“About 20 minutes prior to this the Navy had literally called off the search for us figuring that there was no debris and that it was probably a false alarm,” he said. “But these guys refused to call off the search. They kept looking and spotted us in the water.”
And so ended a harrowing five-hour journey with no shortage of physical or emotional waves, and began a healing process for everything from sunburns and saltwater intake to post-traumatic stress symptoms. Bouchard has since returned to the deep seas and will dive into the story in more detail on a future episode of Lawrence’s show.
Of course, Lawrence himself has a few wild stories of his own. His memoir, Adventures in Solitude, documents his relationship with Desolation Sound from his days as a young child right up to his rediscovery of the area as an adult. Since its release in October 2010 the book has received many accolades, including number one on the BC Bestsellers list, number two on the Canadian National Nonfiction Bestsellers list, the BC Book Price for the 2010 book of year, and most recently a spot on the shortlist for the Hilary Weston Writers Trust prize and for the Edna Staebler Award. An audio-book version was also released last month and Lawrence continues to fill his schedule with book tours and writers’ festival engagements.
His main gig, however, remains at CBC radio. In September he will return to his regular chair as host of the CBC Radio Three Podcast but until then the Wild Side will keep him wildly busy on CBC Radio One. The show airs weekly with a new episode every Tuesday at 11:30 am and repeats every Friday at 7:30 pm. Its final episode will air on August 31.
The show is still accepting stories and a contest is underway for listeners. The winner will be drawn during the Tuesday, August 28 episode, receiving a Powell River gift pack that would have even the most seasoned of locals scrambling to find an entry form.
“One of the biggest comments that I get on my book tour across Canada is people saying ‘Oh, I wish I could see Desolation Sound,’” said Lawrence, who teamed up with Sunshine Coast Tourism to put together a locally-themed getaway for two.
The prize includes round-trip airfare from anywhere in Canada to Vancouver, round-trip airfare from Vancouver to Powell River, accommodation in Desolation Sound, a full day guided sea kayak tour, a souvenir book, a guided tour of the Sunshine Coast Trail, a sampling of the local brew, as well as lunch and dinner at the area’s restaurants, including a meal with Lawrence himself.
“We’ve had this amazing response to it where people are just filling in entry forms from all over the country,” he said. “It’s really a great opportunity to showcase the Sunshine Coast on a national level.”
For more information on the Wild Side and the listener contest, interested readers may check the website. As for local tales from the wild, “We’d love to hear from anyone in the Powell River area,” said Lawrence. The show’s story hotline is 1.866.630.3686.
