From May 1st to September 30th each year my wife Mac and I live in a small conclave of about one hundred senior citizens, about an hour north of Nanaimo, BC, some of whom have been coming here for over sixty years. It is nestled along the shores of Bayne Sound, directly across from Denman Island and it’s only open in the summer months. It is also the summer home to the wildest congregation of characters I have ever known. It’s where Schitt’s Creek meets a seniors home. It took me a while to figure it out. So many people from so many backgrounds, many of them unlikely to have met at any other stage of their lives, over the decades. Serendipity I am certain plays a role in our lives. This would be proof of it.

As I write I am looking out at the bay, flat calm, herons silently stroking the air with their long wings,. Eagles descend from the high trees lining the shore to pluck the unsuspecting breakfast from the tidal pools, seals bark, birds paddle along as they follow a delicious school of herring. Chrome Island floats due east backlit by the early morning sun. It is beautiful beyond words. Not a soul stirs. It is a place that is good for the heart and we know we are lucky to be here.

And I think there is something else that joins us, a common awareness in this odd caravan of characters. We have lived most of our lives, worked hard, succeeded and failed, raised our children, lost friends too soon, our faces quietly reflecting our stories. We are joined by one sharp reality; we are running our last furlong. Now that I suppose can be read as sad but it is not why I am saying it. I think that awareness has something to do with why this place is so special.

To know we are running out of runway is indeed a disappointment but it is also remarkably freeing. We don’t have to sweat the small stuff anymore. Things which consumed us just a few short years ago are long ago forgotten, stuff that infuriated us just a few years ago are dim in our memories (although that may have more to do with dimming memory! ). I think we love this place simply because it is so uncomplicated and we are among others who are in the same place. Literally and figuratively. We’re at an age where we can now ‘spit at the Devil’. And hit him. He’s that close.

David Sedaris, the great humourist says we don’t need to find inspiration to write. He says inspiration is right in front of us, hiding in plain view. The trick is to see it.

Well, dear Reader, welcome to the Deep Bay RV & Trailer Park.

We were greeted warmly from the moment we arrived.

“See that campfire over there?”

It was our neighbour Bob Butler from two doors over.

“When that campfire is on come on over. It’s our ‘welcome’ sign.”

So friendly! We weren’t to know at the time that the campfire was always on and we were always welcome. And no ordinary campfire was this. Around this campfire friends, family and visitors visited all summer long, regaling each other with stories and howling with laughter at retold memories. This is where I met most of the characters, the residents of Deep Bay RV & Trailer Park, all unique, all of them coming from many different places, somehow arriving at this most remarkable location, sharing the same moment in time. Friendly just gets you a seat at the campfire but there is more to this place than that. It was as though I had dropped into an English farce, a place where reality is suspended and the choreographed confusion of improbable story telling takes hold; a place where humour is celebrated and serious debate is seriously frowned upon. A place where a murder mystery might flourish.

THE GOAT PEOPLE OF DEEP BAY

‘Mac’ was missing. Pat ‘Mac’ Peyton was the loving wife of Tony Peyton, the boisterous, bloviating, loudmouth who somehow succeeded in sucking the oxygen out of most rooms and she was missing. She’d been gone for two days before Tony said anything which naturally led to some questions, but that is getting ahead of the story. There would be plenty of time to deal with him later. He was one of those overly friendly ‘hail fellow well met’ kind of characters, you know one of those guys everybody likes but nobody knows. He was definitely suspicious.

But that was getting ahead of things. Mac was a grown woman and perfectly free to take off for a spell, seeking out some peace and quiet, perhaps some escape from her Tony, something no married woman would begrudge her.

Lori Kirby, Mac’s great friend from their high school years, was not about to wait for an answer. Mac was missing and she would get to the bottom of her disappearance, or she wasn’t Italian. Which it turns out she wasn’t.

But questionable heritage aside, Lori was vivacious, quick with a laugh, a kind hearted woman, generous of spirit, wearing her emotions on her sleeve. Her husband Burt loved her well, warmed over by her effervescent uncomplicated easy manner and insatiable spirit. She was what the word ‘Bella’ was meant for. But too good to be true, perhaps; she was too quick some would later observe, too quick to sound the alarm, a classic tactic of the guilty.

With Mac still missing 24 hours later this was about to get serious. This needed an investigator and it needed to be someone beyond reproach, someone with impeccable credentials. As it happened Bob and Jodi Butler had just returned from their annual trip to Mexico.

What about Bob Butler, he could head up the investigation; both he and Jodi were beyond suspicion – they weren’t even in Deep Bay the day Mac disappeared. After all Bob had been a PI, a private investigator and had cracked many a case. Well that’s what he told everybody, standing around the evening campfires as he liked to do, all lit up, regaling his guests with tales from his glory years. They called Bob ‘Stand Up’ for good reason. He always stood up when he told his tales.

And Bob was always cooking something up, literally. He had a smoker, two barbecues, an outdoor kitchen and pot, lots and lots of pot. In fact, he was a pot smoker from way back, preferring the generational baby boomer distrust of government, always hiding his joints in the palm of his left hand, the burn marks on the palm of his hand the scarred testament notwithstanding pot had been legalized years earlier.

Bob declared that Deep Bay was the perfect place to spend summer although his close friends knew that it was in reality the perfect place to grow some of the finest pot on Vancouver Island; ‘Bobby’s Bud’ was the most sought after marijuana in BC, and the reason the Mexican cartel flew into Deep Bay. Upon reflection, it made some sense when one thought about it, after all, why did Bob and his blond sidekick Jodi winter in Mexico even during the pandemic? Of course they did. They could expense it as a business trip for Bobby’s Bud Ltd.

But Stand Up was the right guy to get to the bottom of Mac’s disappearance. His sharp mind had not been blunted by the blunts and he understood the dark underbelly of human behaviour.

There were some obvious suspects. He would have to rule them out one by one.

He liked Burt Kirby for sure, easy to like and the natural starting point in his investigation, knowing as he did the rich cultural history of Deep Bay. Burt was Lori’s husband and an interesting character. Quiet, observant, quirky, Burt was the model of Deep Bay Decent. He was a retired elementary school teacher, a family man and a devoted grandfather with his ruddy cheeks, disarming ‘look you in the eyes’ manner, his mischievous twinkle and an easy smile. It was as though Norman Rockwell himself had painted him.

Of course, Burt would have you think he was the nicest man in Deep Bay. Sure! But Bob Butler PI knew better. Maybe, just maybe Burt had spent a lifetime crafting this perfect cover, a hiding place for the darkness that lurks in men. Burt had been coming to Deep Bay for most of his 65 years and he knew where the bodies were buried. No really, he really did.

And he had been seen mounting a goat! He could not be ruled out. It was Burt who was seen each spring earnestly mounting a goat onto a high boulder out in the bay. The goat, as it turned out, was conveniently placed two hundred yards offshore as the golfers who gathered to sharpen their game from the Butler’s deck would soon learn.

Tony looked at everybody sitting around the campfire. He loved storytelling but he knew one thing for sure. If you’re going to spin a yarn, you have to let people in on it. You don’t want them to feel silly, you want them to enjoy it. The best yarns always had a ring of truth but they didn’t have to be true, they just had to be fun and believable. Tony always said the story is the responsibility of the story teller, the truth falls to the listener.

“Everybody good with this?” Tony asked.

“Oh get on with it for God’s sake man!”

It was New Bob, the Grumpy Old Bastard of The Bay.

New Bob, Bob McKenzie, “Baby Face Bobby Mac’ to his friends. Well let me rephrase that, ‘Baby Face Bobby Mac’ to his friend. oh no wait a sec, if memories serves me correctly that person left some time ago. Never mind, nobody calls ‘Baby Face Bobby Mac’ anyway. He had the perfect beard. Well actually if you take a look at him you’ll see he has never had a perfect beard, nor any beard. In his life. And thought Bobby B PI, ‘Who can actually trust a man who shaves every day, even here in the Schitt’s Creek of RV parks?‘

No, New Bob’s perfect beard is his wife Mary McKenzie; a crack golfer, she could have turned pro. Easy with a smile and easier yet again with a gin and tonic, her tipple of choice.

Mary was delightful company but perhaps a bit too Goody Two Shoes to be real, thought BB PI, nobody is that good. And she was one of those snooty Nanaimo Golf and Country Club members, something which had always quietly wrankled Bobby B., a man who preferred to play a course like Arrowsmith on discount coupons clipped from the Bowser Clarion. And that she could school Bobby B. on the golf course had nothing to do with his natural dislike of her. This Mary character would definitely remain on his Top Suspects list.

Bob, New Bob, was a good man. Quiet and resourceful he enjoyed a sharp analytical mind and had taken a liking to Mac, with a natural empathy for someone who had put up with a man like Tony, her loudmouth husband. If Mac was missing, Tony had something to do with it. New Bob knew that in his aching bones.

And of course Stand Up would have to address the one hundred and twenty pound elephant in the room; his wife Jodi. If he wasn’t to be accused of favouritism toward his own wife he would have to interrogate her.

“Jodi, honey, sweetheart, do you have a moment?”. I have to ask you a couple of questions.

“What?!”, asked Jodi as she fixed Bob with her penetrating eyes, made ever the more so by her eyeliner and eye makeup that was her Deep Bay signature look, her penetrating gaze a quiet compliment to her impeccably manicured nails.

He had always thought that makeup could be some sort of secret code between women, like the Sisterhood of the Travelling Eyes kind of thing. She was too friendly by half, surely a sign of something to hide.

“What?!” Jodi repeated.

Bob looked away, then back again and finally said, “Oh, nothing honey, nothing that can’t wait.”, summoning the discretion side of that old saying about valour. Besides if Jodi was responsible for Mac’s disappearance he had bigger problems than that to worry about. He would have to rethink his sleeping arrangements.

Pat and Harold had to be looked at closely; oh so friendly, quick with a laugh, generous with hospitality and No Fixed Address. No, these two owned trailers, in fact they owned two in Deep Bay which seemed strange indeed, too many by one for just one married couple thought BB PI, not leaving any suspicious rock unturned.

And they had been seen watching Mac and Tony the previous summer from their birds nest patio view above #33; watching and watching, obviously covert surveillance of the Peyton’s, Pat singing country songs late, late, late into the night. And a contrarian if there ever one, this petite former Miss PNE Rodeo Queen, the woman who planted the most magnificent plastic flower garden this side of Butchart Gardens.

But no, thought Bobby B PI, these two shared too much with Mac, they all loved the 16 litre boxed wine you could get and the $12 propane fills at the Courtenay Costco. They had no time for Tony but they really liked Mac. They would be struck off the Suspects List.

And then from out of nowhere big Ross Angelucci showed up, all larger and louder than life Ross Angelucci, “Don’t be crazy, nothing has happened to Mac, she just needed to get away from Tony for a while. I mean who among us hasn’t wanted that at some point!” he laughed at his own joke. Ross Angelucci was definitely a main suspect, thought Bob to himself, “I mean who strides in and lays down a defence for his buddy when he hasn’t even been told what he’d done wrong?”

Everybody knew Ross and Tony were bosom buddies. They both liked bosoms and they both drank whisky. I mean what more do two men need to forge a lasting friendship?

But this Angelucci would stay at the top of Bobby B’s list of suspects for sure. He had learned through his Patented Interrogation Techniques Which Never Failed, that Ross had once offered to sleep with Mac. Actually Ross had just told him before Bobby B. had even had a chance to interrogate him with his Patented Interrogation Technique Which Never Failed. It was after Tony had said, “So who does my wife have to sleep with around here for my son to get a job at the Nanaimo FD?”. Well wouldn’t you know Ross was a firefighter and was the first to offer his assistance. (After he’d muttered something about a long hose). He would definitely stay on the List of Suspects in this investigation into Mac’s disappearance.

Bobby B. PI liked this character Angelucci’s wife Chrissy and he couldn’t even bring himself to put her name on any suspects list. No, of all the women in this camp who might understand wanting to get away from her husband for a few days, Chrissy Angelucci would be one of them.

She and Mac had been seen talking, privately, away from the Kirby’s patio fire but BB PI had learned long ago never to intrude on what strange things grown women say privately to one another: Fact is Bob mused, most men ‘can’t handle the truth’ of those conversations.

Dave Campbell, his wife Lisa had to be given a close look.

She kept things close in her life, always keeping her Daschund Max on a tight leash, not unlike her husband Dave. Although Bob quietly told himself off, “What those two do in the intimacy of their marital boudoir is none of my business. Although I suppose I could ask ….”.

I mean who could blame Lisa? Dave was what virile looked and sounded like with his deep husky voice, a leather tool belt always at the ready and if there was anything in short supply at the Deep Bay RV Park it was virility. Fact is Bobby B knew he resented Dave. He was the only man in Deep Bay who could sleep through the night.

Always assume the unassuming. Bob stopped for too long trying to complete his clever alliteration but soon remembered he had a culprit to identify. All he knew was that it was too easy to overlook people like the French’s. That was on BB PI’s mind as he turned his attention to everybody’s favourite couple in Deep Bay. Barb and Mike had the perfect cover story. Met at high school, love at first sight, happily married, lovingly holding hands, happy hour a daily tradition. Barb with that phoney Audrey Hepburn accent, “Who could suspect us of anything sinister?” I could, thought Stand Up. They don’t fool me for a second. Nobody is that nice. Perhaps it’s a stretch to include Barb but there was something fishy about this Mike character. He stays on my list.

Of course there was Marilyn, thought Bob. Yes, now there was an interesting character. But Marilyn had no guile, no deceit, none at all. No if this woman knew anything about Mac’s mysterious disappearance she would have blurted it out long ago.

“Damn it’s cold! Check it out, check it out, these are my grandkids. I can’t get my cable connected. I was on the phone with Shaw for three hours today. I killed Mac. Dwayne’s coming up today.”

Marilyn’s husband Dwayne was a mystery and in any whodunit, the ‘mysterious’ ones demanded close attention. He was one of those velvet voiced radio guys, who learned at a young age how to unhook a woman’s bra with his sonorous, seductive voice. And that was back in the day when unhooking a woman’s bra was harder than breaking into Fort Knox. Of course Marilyn would have none of that nonsense, she didn’t do her hair every day for some man to talk her out of her underwear. Bob would have to take a closer look at this Dwayne guy.

And of course BB PI had to consider former residents of the Deep Bay RV Park. Dianne with Two N’s had spent time at dinner with Lori Kirby and her husband Burt, pretending by some accounts to dump her friendship with Lori to favour Mac, a ruse no doubt to deflect suspicion in Mac’s disappearance. In fact, Dianne with Two N’s encouraged her new BFF to read her favourite book, “The Wife Who Disappeared”. And Mac’s husband Tony paid no mind, distracted as he was with generous servings of rhubarb and strawberry crisp offered up seductively by Dianne with Two N’s. She would have to be added to his list of prime suspects.

Guy Joly and his wife Trish needed close scrutiny. They called him ‘Doc’, which Bobby B thought was suspicious until someone told him that he really was a doctor. He was actually a nice guy by all accounts, although people kept on saying ‘gee’, which confused Bobby B PI. He was a nice guy, not a nice gee! Seems he had French Canadian heritage. “Uh huh!” Bobby B quietly noted.

But to look at Doc you’d never suspect him of anything malevolent. He had kind empathetic eyes and a gentle manner. Exactly, thought BB PI, hiding in plain view that one. And his lovely, gracious, charming, pretty wife adds cover. Sure I may have a crush on her but I am a professional investigator. I won’t be drawn in by a beguiling woman. And then he took a quick glance over at Jodi, “Okay, maybe I would.”

Then out of nowhere Don and his wife Gail showed up. They’d been hiding out in North Vancouver. Don was hard to miss with his bald head, big moustache and even bigger smile. In fact, he was always smiling, a sure sign of a guilty mind. Come to think of it, Bobby B PI reflected quietly to himself, everyone in Deep Bay smiles, a lot! Maybe they’re all in on Mac’s disappearance. Don had even confessed that he’d worn Gail’s orange wig in disguise so he could go out in public, unable he said to resist the call of the bagpipes. Sure! Whatever floats your boat. I’m sure he looks fantastic. But one thing BB couldn’t ignore; this Don character kept on calling Mac’s husband Tony, ‘Terry’, which was another obvious sign of a guilty mind. But Bobby B cautioned himself, you don’t mess with people like Don, one wrong move and he’d have you all bucked up and fed to the fish in the tidal pool, his broad smile, his easy ways and sweaty pate hiding the darkness that lurked within.

And newcomers. Bobby B. knew he had to keep an eye on these newcomers, total strangers that would appear out of nowhere. Like Terry and Debb McMullen, a couple of gypsies arriving at Deep Bay, out of the blue. Debb, with two ‘b’s’ as she insisted, was distracting and disarmingly straightforward to be sure but not enough to avoid suspicion. As for Terry, the one with the practiced nonchalance, well he was just not ready for the withering cross examination of an experienced PI such as Bobby B, the tell tale sheen of the anxious glistening on his upper lip, begrudgingly admitting that he had Romanian blood and no fixed address. Two tell tale signs for sure, thought Bobby B., although of what he was not quite sure. In any event, ‘Debb with Two B’s’ and her Romanian husband Terry would definitely be added to the list.

But for Bobby B., the investigation was just about over. Besides, it had gone on long enough. People had changed and had become less willing to come by and chat, smoke pot and stuff. They kept on telling him it was because of the pandemic thing and social distancing but that explanation rang hollow. And he was painfully aware that even before the pandemic he’d oftentimes been left talking to no one in particular around his campfire. No point being a stand up guy, Bob reflected, if there is nobody to stand up in front of.

And in any event, he had been thorough and exhaustive and he had identified the culprit, the person responsible for Mac’s disappearance and he would bring everyone from the Deep Bay RV Park together to reveal their identity. He had cracked an unsolvable case.

His reputation would grow yet again although Bob knew he had a problem and it was a big one. He had lost his notes. Truth is he had used them to start one of his campfires and without those notes he couldn’t for the life of him remember who he had identified. He was hoping beyond hope that seeing everyone together would trigger his recollection and he would have the culprit arrested.

He stood and surveyed the group. The group went quiet as Bobby B fought to gain some verbal traction, silently chiding himself for smoking a bit too much of his famous Bobby’s Bud.

“Well hello everybody”, said Mac in her gentile Southern voice. She wasn’t from the south but she did enjoy sounding as though she was, or perhaps Tony her lover just liked to imagine her in a floppy hat, mint julep in hand, wearing perhaps a corset and garters, her sweet southern voice caressing the storyteller. Let’s just call it the storyteller’s liberty shall we. And move on.

“How good it is to see y’all.”

She seemed fine. In fact she appeared to be in very good spirits.

“You’ll never know what I have found out. Now y’all know how my husband Tony pulled Dear Burt’s leg all last summer after he spotted him mounting that poor goat.

Well, I do love my Tony but I also know he does say the most terrible things. I mean what man would mount a goat?! Well, in full view at least? And if you did see your friend mount a goat, and I do confirm that I too witnessed dear Burt mount that goat, who would ever say such a terrible thing out loud. I knew in my heart of hearts that there had to be an innocent explanation.”

She continued, by now holding the rapt attention of everyone present,

“Well I spent the last three days down in Victoria at the Royal British Columbia Museum and you wouldn’t believe what I have found out. Mounting goats is a Deep Bay tradition that goes way back, hundreds of years. We are descended from the Goat People of Deep Bay. Wittingly or otherwise we are simply continuing the ancient traditions, the most important of which has always been the annual Mounting of the Goat.”

She could tell the group was in the palm of her hands.

“And Burt, poor Burt who I do love so dearly, he never stopped to think about what he was doing. I mean just think about that, who among us wouldn’t just stop right then and there if we thought about it, when we were mounting a goat. Burt you see, was just driven to mount that poor goat, driven silently by the voice of his ancestors, the Goat People of Deep Bay.”

Burt sat silent. He had learned as a young boy sitting at the knee of his Elders that The Goat was sacred to the people of Vancouver Island and that whoever had The Goat was The Leader of the people of Deep Bay, and to confirm their status as leader whoever had The Goat had to mount it once a year in full public view.

And so it was. And so it shall always be.

Bobby B. PI gathered himself. That’s exactly what he, the famous private investigator, had planned to tell the group had Ms. Mac not stolen his thunder with her unexpected return. Bob though knew one thing, if he knew nothing, which as it happens had been the subject of some conjecture over the years.

Stand Up, stood up and announced to no one in particular and everyone in general, “Well, let’s go back and gather around our fire. I’ll cook something up and we can tell some tall tales. Spin a yarn, if you will. If anyone has one that is.”