The Darkening Archipelago (47 page)

The giant spruce, five hundred years old, was toppled. The earth shuddered when it crashed to the forest floor. A dozen other smaller trees — spruce, fir and cedar — fell with it. The Sitka spruce bridged the tiny headwaters tributary, its trunk not more than a foot above the water when the creek was in spring flood, its moss-draped branches stuck like daggers into the creek's surge, creating a natural seine.

Seasons came and passed. The giant spruce slowly sank into the earth. Its bark melted away in winter storms, the stout, mossy arms that punctured the creek became skeletal limbs. A dozen spruce and fir saplings grew along the great nurse log's bulk. Bears crossed the river on its back, stepping around the forest of its spine.

Twelve spring floods raged and fell, and the giant spruce sagged until its branches finally sank under the creek's seasonal surges. The water pooled behind it and pushed at the tree's deteriorating skin, and slowly the demarcation between tree and creek became imperceptible. Branches broke from the trunk during floods and jetted downstream. The pulpy centre of the tree gave in to water's patient tug, and soon it began to decay from within.

Seven more autumns came to pass. As if by some miracle, salmon continued to arrive. Spawned. Died. Their carcasses caught in the crooks and hollows of the great tree's decomposing. Bears ate the salmon. Eagles pillaged as they wished. Ravens chided each other, sitting on the back of the sunken log.

The flesh of the tree passed into the water. Salmon swam into it, breathing it in, mouths agape with exhaustion and the final spasm of life that was their mission — procreation. Then they died and drifted into a quiet eddy. The life-giving waters passed over the fry as they were born, the great tree's nutrients became the water, then the salmon, and also their spawn. It was their breath of life as they slipped from the shelter of the giant spruce and raced for the sea.

The life that was man, raven, insect, earth, and tree became salmon.

From the narrow banks of the headwaters' tributary, the salmon fry surged out into the open inlet. Waters so vast, the tiny smolts were like motes of dust in a galaxy of swirling dark water. As if programmed, the pink salmon pushed en masse westward, and those that survived the gauntlet of predators made the turn from the inlet into Tribune Channel and threaded their way toward the opening where the knot of islands ended and the Queen Charlotte Strait opened, its vastness startling to the pinks born into such tranquil waters.

Most didn't survive, but those that did could not know the perilous fate their ancestors faced, their journeys roughly punctuated by fish farms, now long gone. Where once disease, pollution, and the curse of sea lice sucked the life from their tiny bodies, now open water welcomed them.

Soon the coursing salmon broke the grip of the mainland cluster of islands, and the ocean surged and moved around them, the waters bottomless, the edges of the world dark green memories far beyond the reach of their growing bodies.

Past Cape Scott, the western tip of Vancouver Island, and then the Scott Islands, and then out into the vastness of the great open ocean, the life that was man, raven, insect, tree, and finally salmon, became, at last, the sea.

THE DARKENING ARCHIPELAGO

Stephen Legault on the evolution of a series

Back to the beginning

The Cole Blackwater mysteries were conceived during a rain-soaked trip to Costa Rica in the fall of 2003. Before the metaphorical ink for the plot of the first book had dried, I began to think about what other kinds of trouble Cole might find himself in.

Cole Blackwater is, in the words of his drinking buddy, Dusty Stevens, an environmental crusader — a champion of lost causes. But the greatest compliment anybody gave me after
The Cardinal
Divide
was released was that the environmental message was “subtle.” Because, first and foremost for me when writing the Cole Blackwater series is the plot. If the book is to be just a thinly disguised polemic on environmental and social justice issues, then I may as well just write essays. That said, the Cole Blackwater mysteries are an avenue for bringing important issues facing the future of our society, and our planet, to a new audience. As I continue to develop this series, I find no shortage of subjects to choose from.

In 2003, when I first pieced together
The Cardinal Divide
, I was working for a small national conservation organization called Wildcanada.net. One of the campaigns we championed was called “Farmed and Dangerous.” On behalf of the Living Oceans Society we helped people take action to ensure a future for wild salmon and stop massive new salmon farming operations from being developed along the bc coast. I began to wonder what the illustrious/altruistic Cole Blackwater might have to say about salmon farming, and how he could get involved in the effort to rid the province's coastal waters of these death traps for wild salmon.

Before I even had a plot, I knew the title:
The Darkening
Archipelago
. The archipelago in question is the Broughton — ground zero for the explosive growth of salmon farming in BC. From the very beginning, I knew that this book would relate an ominous story indeed.
The Darkening Archipelago
maps out a race against time and overwhelming odds to keep both human souls and wild ecosystems from falling into unending darkness. But it is also a story about redemption. The three protagonists in the story — Cole, Nancy, and Archie Ravenwing — all contemplate their belief at some point in the power of redemption. None of them reach any conclusions.

That is the “what” of the story process. Here is the “how”: during the summer of 2006 I received the gift of time from my friend Joel Solomon. He helped me spend a week at the Hollyhock Retreat Centre on Cortes Island, away from ringing phones and petty distractions, like the need to feed myself. There I sequestered myself in the tiny upstairs library. On massive sheets of butcher paper I drew out a twenty foot long storyboard for
The Darkening Archipelago.
In the afternoons I would sit on the beach and review what I had written, and work on character development and narrative. The whole story took shape before my eyes. The three converging plot lines featuring Cole, Archie and Nancy formed separate chapter “bubbles” which, two thirds of the way through the book, coalesced into one narrative arc.

Because of this preparation, I was able to sit down and pen the first draft of
The Darkening Archipelago
in January and February of 2007. During a paroxysmal period of scribbling I wrote 310 pages and 90,000 words in 28 days. As winter slowly ebbed on the “wet coast,” I took advantage of the pivot towards spring and the burst of energy it brought, and sometimes rose as early as 4 am to write.

There are many factors that contribute to such voluminous outbursts. It would be another six months before I heard from NeWest Press that the first book in the series,
The Cardinal
Divide
, would be published. The creation of a second book in a series that was yet to have its first volume accepted for publication was an act of pure faith.

But having just received some excellent feedback on
The Cardinal
Divide
from Victoria bookseller Frances Thorsen, I spent the first couple of weeks of the new year editing for the eight or ninth time the entire manuscript. That got me pretty excited about the characters — Cole and Nancy in particular — and I wanted to see what might happen to them in the second book of the series.

While the first draft of
The Darkening Archipelago
took shape very quickly, it took two more years to finish it. The version I finally submitted to NeWest for publication was draft number nine or ten — I lost track. But every single time I sat down to work on the manuscript was a pure joy.

From writing procedures to police procedurals

One of the highlights of writing
The Darkening Archipelago
came towards the end of the process. I met with Corporal Darren A. Lagan, Strategic Communications Officer for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Island District. I wanted to learn more about police procedure to provide additional realism to the investigation of the disappearance of Archie Ravenwing.

During our discussions Corporal Lagan would say things like, “Well, Cole would likely have to do this…” and I found myself thinking, wow, he's referring to a character in one of my books as if he were real! And while I have taken some liberties with those police procedures, it was a great experience, and I think it makes
The Darkening Archipelago
a more credible novel. My thanks go out to Corporal Lagan for his generous assistance. I take full responsibility for any errors and divergence from actual procedure in the book.

Mysteries in multiples

As I mentioned above, I'd always imagined the Blackwater books as a series. Once I had settled on the theme for the second one — salmon farming — and worked through the who dunnit aspect of the plot, I spent some time considering the broader narrative arc of the books. I began to reflect on the various sub-plot possibilities for three novels, because as I was jotting down the initial notes for
The Darkening Archipelago
, I was also considering a third book called
The Lucky Strike Manifesto
.

Mystery novels should come in threes. One book is just long enough to resolve a murder mystery, but it takes three to really explore the intricacies of a character's neurosis. I'm not saying that Cole Blackwater is doomed at the end of
The Lucky Strike Manifesto
, but there should be some resolution to the broader themes in the novel in order to make the series satisfying. I'm just not promising what shape Cole will be in after that resolution.

That Cole Blackwater had a less than cheery relationship with his father was made clear in
The Cardinal Divide
. In the epilogue of that book, I tried to make it apparent, without being overtly explicit, that Cole was somehow entangled in his father's violent death. My intent was to leave the reader guessing as to the cause of Henry Blackwater's death, and what role Cole played in it.

In
The Darkening Archipelago,
Cole's unfortunate part in this tragic event becomes clear, and with it we begin to glimpse the depth to which Cole has been damaged. His violence, his rage, his myopic drive to prove himself to the world and to those around him, start to make sense in the face of his abusive relationship with his father.

There are other elements to the narrative arc of the Blackwater series. Cole's relationship with the
Edmonton Journal
reporter Nancy Webber is crucial to the development of his character. The mistakes he made that lead to their mutual exodus from Ottawa, and the tentative steps they took in
The Cardinal Divide
to rebuild the trust between them, nearly come undone in
The
Darkening Archipelago
.

These sub-plots, of course, become intertwined as Nancy pursues her insatiable curiosity about Cole's past and begins to openly ask, “did Cole Blackwater kill his father?” If you take Cole Blackwater for his word,
The Darkening Archipelago
answers this question. However, two significant elements of the plot remain to be resolved: first, how will Cole deal with the reawakened trauma born from reliving the final moments of his father's angry life, and second, will Nancy's role in rehashing that suffering impact their relationship?
The Lucky Strike Manifesto
, in addition to introducing readers to an antagonist that frightens even me, will address these loose story threads.

A critical point in history: the end of wild salmon

This book has been published at the best and worst possible time.

The Darkening Archipelago
arrives in the spring of 2010 — at a critical juncture for the wild salmon of British Columbia. In the fall of 2009, a judicial inquiry was called into one of the worst disasters in fisheries management in Canada, if not the world. The vast schools of sockeye salmon that return annually to bc's Fraser River have disappeared. Of the projected 10,000,000 fish that were expected to swim up the Fraser River in 2009, only 600,000 returned. That's six percent.

As the Fraser sockeye disappear, so also do hundreds of other salmon populations from Alaska to California. After more than a decade of the salmon's decimation, the Canadian federal government, charged with protecting this international miracle of life, has finally acted on their behalf.

The inquiry will take two years. In that time, many more salmon runs could vanish.

As a reader, what can you do? Get involved. Sign a petition. Send a letter to or call your Member of Parliament. Talk about this with friends. Attend the hearings. Follow up. Don't take no for an answer. As my friend and mentor Brock Evans of the us Endangered Species Coalition says, only “constant pressure, constantly applied” will ensure that the wild creatures we love, and the wild places they need to survive, will be protected.

Thank you for reading this book, and thanks also for anything you can do to protect wild salmon and the wild oceans that are needed for them to survive.

A
cknowledgments

My wife, Jenn Hoffman, for her support and love, which makes all things possible. NeWest Press, and in particular Lou Morin, Natalie Olsen, Tiffany Foster, and Don Kerr, for their faith in me, and in Cole Blackwater.

Alexandra Morton, who has brought the issue of salmon farming and the real-life disaster of sea lice to life for me. I thank Alex for taking the time to review early drafts of this book to ensure I got the facts straight. Also, to Kate Dugas, who years ago introduced me to the issue of salmon farming and captured my attention and imagination with her passion. Her work with Jennifer Lash and Oonagh O'Connor at Living Oceans Society to protect wild salmon inspired the plot of
The Darkening
Archipelago.