The Curve of Time

“The Curve of Time” is a nonfiction Canadian classic that my husband gave me as a gift quite a while ago. In fact, he gave me two copies, the paperback edition and the first Canadian hardback edition published in 1968. I knew that since I live here in western Canada, I had to read this West Coast gem. It’s such a treasured touchstone, and one of Canada’s most enduring bestsellers.

“The Curve of Time” was written by an independent woman, a widow, Muriel Wylie Blanchet, who lived an adventurous life. Every summer for 15 summers starting in 1927, she piled her five home-schooled kids into their 25-foot power boat The Caprice and cruised with them along the coastal waters of British Columbia. “The Curve of Time” is her account of the summers they spent living on the water and ashore in very remote places for that time.

It’s a book that draws on your imagination, letting you experience their adventures on the small boat motoring along in a world rich with islands, inlets, sounds, forests and mountains. You can only imagine the natural beauty they saw, the lushness of the landscape, and the elements such as the tides, fog, rocks, and storms they contended with. Capi, as she was called by her kids, traces the voyages of Captain George Vancouver to the area in 1791-95 and also the discovery claims of mariner Juan de Fuca’s.

She’s incredibly brave as a mother alone out there on the remote West Coast with five kids. Along the way, they befriend loggers, explore Native villages, and have run-ins with bears, cougars, and killer whales. At times, Capi has to fix the boat’s engine and battery, which strands them in precarious situations. The weather often turns bad and I sometimes feared whether they had enough to eat.

Capi is great though with her kids and is able to teach them so much about the natural world and life situations; it’s better than being at any camp. She’s a born naturalist who is able to describe her surroundings — the fish, the trees, and the water – everything in such wonderful detail. It makes it easy to imagine what they experienced. The kids reminded me ever so slightly of the Box-Car Children (if you recall those books). They come off as curious, industrious, eager to be a part of the boating adventures, and helpful as crew members. They’re not consumed by today’s iPhones, Xboxes, and computers. You got to admire their childhood long ago in the Pacific Northwest.

“The Curve of Time” is broken up into the various episodes the family has and jumps around in time over the summers they spent. There’s no real chronological order to it. You can pick it up at any point and read an episode and not miss a lot of background. It’s difficult to track exactly the boat’s course and all the inlets and places she describes. You’ll confound yourself if you try to read it for places you need to pinpoint. It’s best just to lose yourself in the whole experience of their seafaring. After all, it’s a place she describes as if time did not exist.

I enjoyed “The Curve of Time” a lot, even if at times I got lost about exactly what or where she was talking about. I was drawn to Capi and her kids from the very start. She narrated with an admirable sensibility and made journeying with their troupe interesting and fun, if not, at times alarming, such as the time one son took a bad fall and she had to get him to a doctor quickly although they were in the middle of nowhere. She prevailed though, and I was sorry to see her go by the book’s end.

Capi Blanchet is a real-life heroine I’ll have to add it to my most-admired list. Unfortunately she passed away the year her book was first published in 1961 and she did not get to see the success of “The Curve of Time.” It is great though that the book’s popularity has endured, and that it has become an iconic Canadian classic.

It should be required reading for anyone remotely interested in boating on Canada’s west coast, or as a glimpse into how things once were and how maybe they still are for a lucky yet adventurous few. I envy them.

How about you have you read or heard of this book? And what did you think?