Around a hundred years ago, a widowed woman and her five children spent 15 summers on a small boat cruising the coast of British Columbia. This memoir describes their adventures and places they visited with lots of details about biology, geology, and the history of the area. There is very little info about the family itself, which I found refreshing. If such a book was written today, the focus would be all on the author, and used for self-promotion.

It is so fascinating especially because the parts Blanchet traveled with her children are still very wild and were even more desolate at that time. There is a particular type of person who can thrive in such an environment. I always admired those who had the courage to explore the frontier, moreover with five young children in tow. This is not the old trope of a man against the wilderness; Blanchet and her children are a part of the landscape. She was such an extraordinary woman and it is remarkable how she raised her children with such passion for nature and exploration.

I particularly loved the descriptions of the people they met during their summers. It reminded me of a real-life Northern Exposure. A nostalgic look into another era, a lot more authentic and wholesome. A truly great book. ( )

rabck from Vasha; a wonderful find when I finally picked it up to read it. Because of the age of the copy, I tried to get another copy - and that's when I found out how obscure and expensive a copy of this could be! Hoopla this month added an audio copy, so I listened to that some of the time to save wear and tear on the train on the book. The story about Henry the Whale is delightful & I actually copied it to take to my granddaughters, hoping that we can transcribe and illustrate it into our own book. Little is listening on wikipedia for the author, but a decent family written bio is here: http://www.dbsparks.com/MurielLiffiton.pdf ( )

This is what we did on our summer vacation? This reads more like a blog than a book. It would be more interesting if I knew the author, but she tries hard to keep the writing matter-of-fact and impersonal. Some of the writing is still good. ( )

Put a mother, five children, and a dog in a twenty-five foot motorboat to cruise the British Columbia coastline for four summer months before having to return home before onslaught of the bad weather in fall. They got to know some of the homesteaders that lived in the various inlets, explored First Nations winter villages, searched for a seahorse one of the children was sure they saw, had close calls with bears, and visited the inlet where Henry the Orca had gotten stuck in because he hadn't listened to his mother. Of course, there were also the times when they were sheltering in a cove off Mistaken Island and Capi was working the fore and aft anchors to keep the Caprice with just enough water under her keel to keep her from grounding or up an Lewis Channel when the engine died and Capi had to tow the boat with the dingy five miles to so she could anchor Caprice before working on the engine.
Fishing for dinner, the food they'd stored aboard, traded or bought along their way. They were a family that adventured together both afloat and ashore ( )

I was lucky enough to have grown up on Vancouver Island and had parents that took me and my siblings on many picnics, hikes and camping trips giving us all a love and curiosity about nature and this corner of the world. The Curve of Time by M. Wylie Blanchet is a memoir written by a widow, who with her four children spent the summers of the 1920’s on a 25 foot boat, exploring the coastal waters of the Pacific Northwest.

Acting as both “captain” and mother, she and her children enjoyed their summers of freedom. Although there were dangers from bad weather, rough water and wild animals there were also great rewards. They met some interesting people who chose to live away from the rest of mankind but were happy to act as hosts to this small family, they were also helped and guided by the commercial fishermen and the loggers who were working in the areas that they travelled. They spent their summers discovering beautiful beaches, secret coves, and deserted Indian villages. This type of vacation travel was unusual to say the least and the fact that she was a women caused many people to sit up and take notice.

The author’s love of nature and her family comes across on every page in this book. Her memoirs read like a chatty letter from a favoured aunt, light and informative, but any deep understanding of her motives and inner thoughts she keeps to herself. I found myself reading this book with a chart of the coastal waters at my side so I could visual the routes she took and the places she visited. The Curve of Time was a charming and enjoyable read but I couldn’t help feeling that if the author had been a little more forth coming and had fleshed out the characters a little more fully, this would be a true Canadian classic. ( )