Description

From Captain George Vancouver to Muriel Curve of Time Blanchet to Jim Spilsbury s Coast Spilsbury, visitors to Desolation Sound have left behind a trail of books endowing the area with a romantic aura that helps to make it British Columbia s most popular marine park. In this hilarious and captivating book, CBC personality Grant Lawrence adds a whole new chapter to the saga of this storied piece of BC coastline.

Young Grant s father bought a piece of land next to the park in the 1970s, just in time to encounter the gun-toting cougar lady, left-over hippies, outlaw bikers and an assortment of other characters. In those years Desolation Sound was a place where going to the neighbours potluck meant being met with hugs from portly naked hippies and where Russell the Hermit s school of life (boating, fishing, and rock n roll) was Grant s personal Enlightenment–an influence that would take him away from the coast to a life of music and journalism and eventually back again.

With rock band buddies and a few cases of beer in tow, an older, cooler Grant returns to regale us with tales of going bush, the tempting dilemma of finding an unguarded grow-op, and his awkward struggle to convince a couple of visiting kayakers that he s a legit CBC radio host while sporting a wild beard and body wounds and gesticulating with a machete. With plenty of laugh-out-loud humour and inspired reverence, Adventures in Solitude delights us with the unique history of a place and the growth of a young man amidst the magic of Desolation Sound.