Last week, I spent a few days patrolling the playground speed zone in front of my house in Sandspit. I’ve lived there for many years, and I watch drivers, mostly people coming off the daily flight, speed through the school playground zone to catch the ferry. I watch Sandspit locals and island residents alike travel too fast and endanger the lives of the children I teach. I have been one of those people travelling too fast, and my mom, the original speed zone patroller, has scolded me harshly enough times to change my behaviour.
Alliford Bay Road, from the post office to the community hall, and School Road, from the school to the firehall, are both a school zone and a playground zone. I know that people get confused by the difference between the two speed zones, but the playground zone (yellow sign with a kid running) is 30 kilometres per hour every day of the year from dawn to dusk. Pretty easy to remember and to obey.
This week, I want to say Haw’aa to the RCMP that parked by my house and pulled over about five people travelling too fast. I am sure the drivers were warned and sent on their way, but I do hope that one day they catch the drivers that race for the 3:30 pm ferry through our town, endangering not only children but everyone living and using our community streets. If you are one of those people, please make a better choice.
On the theme of community safety, this week I interviewed one of the good guys. Peter Grundaman has lived in Sandspit since I was a teenager, and I am sure I speak for most when I say that I have always enjoyed his calm presence and appreciated his contributions to the safety and enjoyment of our community. Whether you see him walking, biking, or driving his little right-hand-drive SUV through town, you know that Sandspit is a better and safer place because he is here.
Besides his contributions to the ambulance, fire department, and Canadian Rangers, Peter recently bought and refurbished a small Cessna 172H aircraft. He equipped it with a marine VHF radio and turned it into a suitable air search aircraft. He has trained three navigators and four spotters, all local Sandspit and Daajing Giids residents. Fuel, maintenance, and recertification fees all factor into Peter’s search and rescue work for the Civil Air Search and Rescue Association (CASARA), but he hopes, at age 64, to help find a young pilot or two to get their private pilot’s licence and build up some hours to be future CASARA pilots. Peter also hopes to leave the airplane with the community so that it continues to function as a search and rescue plane when he finishes his flying career.
If you know Peter or have the pleasure to meet him, you are a better person for it. Please enjoy my interview.
What can you tell me about your Origin Story and your career path?
My parents were immigrants from Germany, and they immigrated to Canada in 1957. I was born in 1960 in Vancouver and lived there for a while. I actually grew up on a blueberry farm for quite a few years, right up until the age of 27. I worked on a farm there, which was in East Richmond on Number 6 Road. After that, I got into a number of different careers: woodworking and flying. I went to an aviation college in Langley, Trinity Western. I worked as a woodworker for 10 years, and then I got back into flying and flew from 1990 right up until the beginning of COVID. Since then, I’ve been just working on ambulance.
I started flying for Harbour Air in Vancouver. After flying in the Northwest Territories and northern Ontario for a while, Harbour Air sent me up here to replace a pilot who, unfortunately, was killed on the west coast. So I took over, and I flew for probably about 21 or 22 years here, first for Harbour Air, then for South Moresby Air, and finally for Inland Air. Harbour Air sent me up here in 1996, just as a summer job. I was only supposed to work here during the summer, but in the meantime, I liked it up here so much that I decided to stay. I phoned Harbour Air and told them, “I’m not coming home. I’m staying up here.” I made that decision right away.
The funny thing is, I made that decision before I even landed in Haida Gwaii for the first time. I was on a Convair charter plane coming up here, sitting by the left-side windows, and I saw this beautiful archipelago of islands east of Moresby Island. I just knew I was going to live here, build another sailboat, and spend the rest of my days here. I just knew that before I ever set foot on Haida Gwaii. The decision was made in May 1996.
It was a bit serendipitous that right around the time flying tapered off with the beginning of COVID and no tourism being allowed in Haida Gwaii for a couple of summers, the company (Inland Air) sort of lost all of its infrastructure over in Daajing Giids. Right about the same time, all of our ambulance people left, which left me as the only person working for BC Ambulance (in Sandspit) for the next summer—well, for a whole year or so. Then finally, we hired Tyler (Sieb), so there were two of us, and now we’re up to three people, with one of them being just a seasonal worker. We’re slowly growing back.
What would you do at your parents’ blueberry farm growing up?
Over the course of the year, there were quite a few different things to do. There was pruning over the winter months, and there was fertilizing in the spring. There was always grass mowing around all the buildings and everything, up and down the rows—there was always grass mowing. The busiest time was the harvest season when we would have a lot of workers out in the field, South Asian immigrants for the most part. My job was to bring them empty buckets and water, assign them to their area on the farm where they were to work, bring their buckets back, weigh them, package the blueberries, and deliver them to the blueberry co-op at Number 6 and the Westminster Highway.
What do you love about Sandspit?
Just everything. I love the beaches, I love the big skies you get because we’re not in the mountains here. We get the big sunsets, the sunrises, the walks on the beach, the quietness, the slow traffic—except when the rush is going to the ferry. The freedom to do things, to build your house the way you want to, which I did.
What do you wish was different about Sandspit, if anything?
I’d rather just go with “if anything.” I don’t really want to change a whole lot. I guess it would be good to have a little additional housing for people that do want to settle here. I guess what they should have done when they put in all the underground water system is put in a sewer system and a treatment plant at the same time when they had it all dug up. Might have been an idea, but I’m no expert.
Yeah, I don’t think I’d change very much. I like the population the way it is, to some degree. It would be nice to give some other people the opportunity to live here. It would be nice if a lot of the vacant houses were maybe not vacant—rented out, or sold, or something like that—just to give a few more people a chance to live here if they really want to.
What can you tell us about your family?
They’re all not here (said with a chuckle). I’m the only member of my family that lives up here. They all understand that I’m a lifer here. I bought the plot right next to where Nancy (my late partner) is buried in the graveyard, so I know where I’m going to end up eventually. My family is actually quite happy with me being up here.
Every Christmas, rather than sending them all kinds of gifts and stuff, during the year I take lots of photographs of all my endeavours, things that I do, and I print them off and write on the backs of them. I write quite a long story about what each photograph is about, and then I package them all up with a Christmas card and send them to all my friends and relatives down south. They really like that. They know what I’m up to and what this one person’s side of the family is actually doing.
I’m also still in very close touch with Nancy’s daughter and brothers and everybody in Ontario. I’m part of their family now too, and that will stay that way. The house that Nancy and I built, that she really worked hard on for seven years—a lot of manual labour—I felt it was only right to will it to her daughter, which I did. Her daughter is going to end up with it.
Can you tell me more about your relationship with Nancy?
We met at the north automatic door at the Sandspit airport terminal. She used to keep quite an extensive flower garden there at one time. It was quite nice. She used to do all the weeding and planting and everything—tending the flowers and watering over the summer months. She’d be out there in her coveralls, down on her knees, digging away. I kept coming and going from the (airport) terminal all the time, because at the time, Harbour Air still had their office in the airport terminal.
So I guess Nancy was kind of watching me the whole time, and she just came over to my house one day and introduced herself. We got together and spent our lives—the rest of her life—together. It was a wonderful relationship. It wasn’t one that was ever planned, but sometimes things just happen and people click.
We shared a common love for animals, and that was what really kept us together. We were looking after injured eagles and owls, and whatever people brought us or told us about. We would do our best to nurse them back to health and release them. Other than that, we really didn’t have anything in common, but we both kind of trimmed our lives so that whatever was left was compatible with each other.
She took on characteristics of what used to be my life, and I took on some characteristics of what used to be her life. I got very closely involved with her family, and she with mine. It all worked out very well, despite that we were such opposites. I don’t think either one of us was the person that the other person ever would have sought out. We just sort of got together by accident, and stayed together by accident (said with a chuckle). But we were together for 27 years.
Who are some of your favourite Sandspitians (Sand-Spee-Shuns)?
I think there are a lot of inspiring people around. A lot of people do a lot of things in the community. One person that comes to mind right away is Joni Fraser because she does the administration and call-taking for the fire department, and she’s involved with emergency programs and things like that. She’s sort of in the background with a lot of stuff, but she’s always there when there’s a crisis, you know. She’s quite amazing. She’s always raising issues and asking people’s opinions. She does a lot of stuff.
What is your favourite Sandspit Event?
A lot of different things. Around Christmas time, all the community dinners and things like that are quite nice. Logger Sports Day is a lot of fun. The Christmas concert—the Winter Concert now—that’s always great. I really enjoy that, especially because it brings people together in a very dark part of the year. We hardly have any daylight, and people kind of just stay at home a lot of the time, so it sort of brings people together.
It’s not just the actual event itself but also the preamble—the chatting, the catching up: “I haven’t seen you for years”—and afterwards too. The fact that there are snacks and drinks available, that’s really nice. You can hang around. It’s just an excuse to socialize a bit. I think that’s right up there with my favourite events in Sandspit.
Are there any words of wisdom you have to share?
Yeah. Maybe one thing. On ambulance, with events that have happened in the past and also seeing the way people live sometimes, the fallback I get from some of the ambulance calls I get is this: I kind of wish and hope that people who are living alone—seniors and everyone else—could keep track of each other a little bit. Just for safety reasons. So they have the ability to socialize and don’t get too withdrawn, but also just for safety.
So, just make up some sort of a phone network or something. Choose another person and maybe phone them once a day: “How are you doing today?” Just have a little chat. Take turns phoning each other. Go for a little drive, go pick them up, drive to Alliford Bay and back.
If I had my way, I think the Sandspit Inn should turn into a seniors’ centre and residence. They could still rent out some of the hotel rooms, but they could set some of the rooms aside for seniors. Because the pub there is such a big, wide, beautiful space, you could have daytime events, games, and meals for seniors. Then, in the evening, when the seniors tend to retire to their rooms, they could open up as a pub, as it always was, you know.
It could serve a dual role. It’s such a safe place for seniors because it’s such an easy walk to Super Valu without any traffic. They’d have the oceanfront, the trails around the spit for fitness walks, and they’re really close to the airport for meeting up with family flying in to visit them. There would be so much going for that idea. I think that’s what I would like to see. I’ve been telling everyone I know about that.