Living off the grid on the Sunshine Coast
ROBERT DICK HAS BEEN LIVING OFF THE GRID ON B.C.’S SUNSHINE COAST FOR DECADES
Rob Dick fumbled in the dark for his vintage rifle.
Days earlier he had shot dead a bear on the doorstep of his cabin, but that was in the daylight. Now, it was the middle of the night, he was barefoot in his long johns and this new intruder had just thrust a paw through his window.
As much as Dick “hated as hell” to fire into the darkness, he felt he had no choice. He struck the bear in the head.
“He stayed dead there,” he said of the encounter last fall. “I couldn’t sleep after that, stayed up all night long … smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee.”
After living almost three decades “off the grid” next to postcard-worthy Clowhom Lake on B.C.’s Sunshine Coast, Dick, 66, has seen his fair share of challenges: fending off wild animals and brutish weather; trying to preserve a sense of purpose when his dream of building a wood-salvaging operation went bust; becoming estranged from his family; and grappling with the occasional bout of loneliness.
To get to his home, you have to take a 40- minute ferry to Langdale, a half-hour drive to Sechelt, and then a one- hour boat trip to the end of Salmon Inlet. From there it’s a one-kilometre drive along a dirt road to Clowhom Lake.
The only traffic are loggers and workers who manage hydro power projects, and maybe the occasional hunter.
“We make jokes that we should do a reality show with Rob on survival,” says Bear Creek Hydro’s lead operator James Florance, who checks in on Dick and gives him a lift to town for supplies.
On a recent visit, Dick emerged from his cabin and took a reporter and photographer down to the shore where a log was smouldering. (Dick always has a fire going; smoke is his “perfume,” Florance jokes.)
Though he doesn’t get paid, Dick has made it his life’s work to clear the lake of floating wood debris so it doesn’t clog the BC Hydro dam nearby.
Since he arrived in 1989, it’s been his goal to salvage the good stuff, cut it up and sell it. But despite “trying my darnedest” to get an operation going, he never found a partner.
The one-man sawmill he built — “I have an architectural flair,” he boasts — is decaying. Frankly, “it’s been a disaster.” Technically, he is trespassing on Crown land, but the province’s forestry department lets him stay put. No one has complained about him, an official confirmed.
“The attitude is: ‘Leave him there until he dies,’ ” Dick says.
The wood cabin he built is a cluttered affair with barely enough room for two. It has no electricity or plumbing. Unwashed spatulas and plates are on a shelf over the wood-burning stove; open slices of watermelon are left by the door; a pile of clothes sits next to his bed in the back, which is blanketed in darkness.
The only semblance of organization is a shelf lined with plastic containers labelled “sesame,” “flax,” “pumpkin seeds” and “sunflower.”
Sitting in a worn recliner and rolling a cigarette, Dick confides he couldn’t get enough of city life in his younger years.
Born in Grand Forks, B.C., the son of an RCMP officer, Dick was barely out of his teens when he bought a one-way bus ticket to Seattle. From there he hopped freight trains to Oakland, Calif., then hitchhiked to Los Angeles.
He took whatever jobs he could find: at McDonald’s, at
THE ATTITUDE IS: ‘LEAVE HIM THERE UNTIL HE DIES.’
a liquor store, as a taxi driver, then a truck driver.
Brief stints at carnivals led to a gig with a circus that took him to the East Coast. He drove a truck and was in charge of raising and lowering a sideshow tent.
A girlfriend brought him to South Carolina. When that didn’t work out, he ended up back in Canada — this time working in a zinc mine in Snow Lake, Man.
But California beckoned. He returned to Los Angeles, starting an underground taxi service.
By his late 30s, he grew tired of all the moving and decided to settle down in Clowhom Lake.
“I soon found myself totally off the grid without communication with the outer world,” he says. “I had no radio. And in the winters I had no flashlight, no candles.”
For long stretches, he had nothing more than bowls of “bloody beans.” One time, he inhaled a ham not realizing it was infested with maggots. He still “ate the whole damn thing.”
For a brief period, he got some work cutting timber for a bridge project. But the work was not satisfying.
A 1992 article in the local newspaper highlighted his quest to salvage the lake’s waste wood for a variety of uses, such as building sheds.
“There could be a crew of three or four in there working steady,” he said at the time. There were no takers. After putting it off for years, Dick went on welfare. He now gets a monthly pension cheque of $1,200.
His diet is basic: homemade cereal and powdered milk in the morning and mushy-bean burritos and salsa at night. There was a time when he grew his own vegetables, but he got lazy.
He is still consuming meat from the first bear he shot; BC Hydro loans him the use of a freezer.
He listens to CBC on a portable radio and is a voracious reader. He rifles through some of his favourite books: Enlightenment 2.0: Restoring Sanity to Our Politics, Our Economy and Our Lives; The Watchman’s Rattle: Thinking our Way out of Extinction; and Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.
Asked what his relationship with computers is like, he says he cringes simply using a pushbutton phone.
Asked if he feels he’s missing out when he hears people talking about the Internet and social media, he pivots to his “wonderful” collection of dictionaries.
At least once a month, he’ll drop in to Sechelt to get mail and supplies. Inevitably, he’ ll end up at Gilligan’s Pub, where owner Brian Inkster says Dick will order a couple of pints and steak and eggs. Sometimes he’ll use the pay phone.
In recent years, communication with his mother and sister in Grand Forks has ceased, he says. They got on his case too much.
“‘Oh, why don’t you do something else?’ ” he says they would say.
There are times when loneliness creeps in, but Dick makes it clear it’s not companionship he seeks. He just wants a helper who can, say, tend to the weeds while he splits the wood.
“It’s not lonely for the sake of somebody to talk to; I could go for days and not talk to anybody,” he says.
Asked what advice he would give to someone considering going off grid, he pauses.
“You’ve got to have a purpose … appear to be doing something that is beneficial,” he says.
He reflects on his own situation.
“I can’t say that I’m necessarily fulfilling (my purpose), other than cleaning that wood up as I have been doing,” he says.
Where does that leave him in 20 years?
“Dying, I suppose. I don’t have a plan B.”