Next morning, when we were down at the wharf at Westminster, there came in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s steamer _Labouchere_, and the Union Pacific Navigation Company’s steamer, _Shoebrick_--the latter carrying supplies for the overland telegraph line, which was to unite the continents by way of Alaska, which enterprise was broken up by the successful laying of the Atlantic cable. The men on the wharf wanted to know from the captains of the ships why they had not come yesterday. “Oh!” they said, “it was blowing a terrific gale on the Gulf, and we couldn’t cross.” “Ha, ha, ha!” taunted the bystanders, “Parson White and his crew crossed in a canoe, and you couldn’t come over with your large steamships.” But they little knew what a trip we had had. And now our old Dutch sailor had to have his say. He went boasting about the town that he had had his eye on Parson White’s gold watch--a present to him as he left New Westminster some time before--and that if we had upset he was going for that. Poor, miserable fellow, he was the greatest coward in the crowd. This was one of the many terrible canoe trips we had to take while at our work, when to all human appearances there was every possibility that we would never reach shore. Once after I made the journey in the opposite direction in a small canoe, with a single Indian as my companion, and again we were nearly swamped before reaching the shore. To-day, as always, I sympathize with the hundreds of fishermen who go out to the mouth of the river and venture into the Gulf, braving the awful storms which so often sweep down across this treacherous arm of the sea. Nearly every year reports have reached us of those who have risked their lives, and of some who have lost them, on this part of the coast. “SPUL-QUEET-SA!” (“A GHOST! A GHOST!”) We usually travelled in a much smaller canoe than the one in which we made the trip narrated above. On several occasions, when on my missionary tours, I took Her Majesty’s mail to Victoria from Nanaimo. On one occasion Dr. Evans and I made a trip along the east coast to look out ground for an industrial school, where we might educate our young native men, with the hope of preparing them for teachers or missionaries. This was in 1868. We selected a fine place, on an island, but the Missionary Society could not see its way clear to undertake this work. Strangely enough, this was the very spot where afterwards the Dominion Government built Kuyper Island Industrial School. As the Methodist Church did not see its way to undertake this charge, the Government placed the school under the direction of the Roman Catholic Church.