Fumiko Watanabe was ten and had lived in Deep Bay, on BC’s Vancouver Island her entire life. Her grandparents had emigrated from Japan in 1899, coming for the herring fishery, after spending two hard years in the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush. Her younger brothers Kaito and Hinata had also been born in Deep Bay and she spent many days exploring the forests and beaches with them. But today she was by herself doing one of her favourite things; daydreaming about her life and what lay ahead.

She would walk down toward the spit at Deep Bay, past the fish cannery where her mother worked packing the herring which her father and others caught each day. It was a beautiful sunny summer day, the light wind caressing her face as she walked. She could see Denman Island off to her right and a logging camp across the bay on the harbour side, men busily working to load the huge fir logs onto trains. She had no idea where the logs went but thought one day she would get onto that train and go where ever it took her. As she walked slowly down the spit a beautiful waft of fennel distracted her. One of her chores was to tend the fennel each spring and take care of the plants as they grew. Some of the bushes grew to be taller than her and she loved standing among them all and looking up to the sky through the canopy of light yellow blooms. The aroma of licorice always reminded her of the treats her mother would put out on the table after Sunday dinner. That was when Fumiko and her friends would gather around a campfire on the beach and listen as the grown ups would tell stories about their lives and times gone by. Sometimes the stories would make all of the children double over laughing, other times they were so scary they would hug each other for comfort. They never knew if the stories were true or not, all they knew was that they all looked forward to hearing them.

When she was younger Fumiko’s mother had taken her to play in some tidal pools which formed when the tide went out each day. They were so much fun. Fumiko and her brothers would spend endless hours playing in the pools. On a summer day as the tide went out, the ocean water left behind would warm up and they would splash each other and look for fish and play until dark.  She recalled how Mr. Tanaka, her favourite story teller, had told them how the tidal pools came to be. He said that Indian people had lived in Deep Bay five thousand years ago, setting up camp each summer to fish in the waters of the bay and that there were so many fish back then that you could actually walk across the water. Fumiko found that hard to believe but Mr. Tanaka told the story with so much enthusiasm she found herself believing it and looking out on the water and trying to imagine what that must have been like. Mr. Tanaka was a great story teller.  

The tidal pools were a short walk along the shore away from the spit, in the direction of a village called Bowser and when she turned ten Fumiko’s mother told her she could take her brothers to play in the tidal pools, without a parent having to be there. She remembered how excited she felt the first time they went off by themselves. She would shut her eyes and imagine a young Indian girl just like her, playing in the same tidal pools so long ago, minding her brothers as well. Sometimes she felt like she could just stretch out her hands and touch that young girl across time. 

Mr. Tanaka had told them how the tidal pool had been made so long ago. And she could see the winding weir of rocks that had been piled up to create a kind of dam to block the sea water left behind when the tide went out. It was shaped like a winding ‘S’. Fumiko and her brothers would sometimes grab heavy rocks and throw them on top of the weir. Around midday, when they were back on the shore she would take out the lunch their mother had packed for them; their favourite herring she prepared made in her fennel sauce with some rice and a piece of licorice for each of them to finish it off.

One day Fumiko asked her brothers if they wanted to hear how the weir had been made so long ago. They had been too young to be allowed to stay up to listen to Mr. Tanaka’s stories around the campfire after Sunday dinners. Fumiko gave names to the children in her story, just like Mr. Tanaka had. And she told them that children just like Kaito and Hinata had helped to build the weir with heavy rocks just like they had been doing themselves. Fumiko told her brothers that young Indian boys would step into the tidal pools and catch really big salmon with their bare hands. And the boys loved it, getting more excited with each new description. And Fumiko loved it. She loved to think and reflect about this place they called Deep Bay, wondering if girls like her had been here hundreds of years ago, trying to imagine what their lives would have been like. And she wondered what Deep Bay would be like in another hundred years and if any young girls would walk on the spit and dream about their lives, just like she loved to do. 

One thing Fumiko knew for sure; she loved listening to stories and and telling stories and thought quietly to herself that maybe one day that’s what she would do. Maybe she would even write stories for people to read.