Recording and initial transcript by Bill Weaver, but very much a collaboration in which Darshan Stevens photography and Cortes Currents all participated.
On the evening of Friday August 20, 2023, in the Cortes Co-Op Courtyard, 155 people arrived with their folding chairs to attend a 25th Anniversary Celebration for Marnie’s Books. First Marnie gave a history of her book selling, and the origins of the Courtyard. Then Shaena Lambert, Rex Weyler, Priya Huffman, Norm Gibbons, Ruth Ozeki, and Erin Robinsong read from their writings. For two hours these wonderful presenters held this large crowd spellbound. This event was co-Sponsored by the Cortes Island Museum and Archives Society.
The following transcript begins with an introduction by Melanie Boyle, from the Cortes Island Museum.
Melanie Boyle: Welcome everybody, can you hear me all right?
(audience applauding)
Melanie Boyle: Yay! Thank you so much, a warm welcome to everybody here for coming out this evening. It’s a beautiful gathering and for a very special occasion. And I would like to say that we acknowledge that this gathering of lovely people and community takes place and is held on the traditional ancestral territories of the Klahoose the Tla’aman and the Homalco First Nations. And we, with deep respect, we are here today and it’s just a wonderful celebration. So I’m going to turn it over. My name’s Melanie, I’m with the museum and (audience applauding) Thank you. And the evening belongs to Marnie and all her wonderful writers and readers today.
Marnie Andrews: Thank you, Mel. Wow, this is quite a turnout, you guys. This is amazing. It’s really, really heartwarming.
I guess everybody knows this event is co-sponsored by the Cortes Island Museum and Archives Society, of which Melanie, where she went, is the General Manager.
Wonderful, as you know, everybody who’s been to our museum, all the wonderful things they do, and there’s lots of cool events they’ve been putting on.
I am really excited about tonight. I really thank you all for coming and we’ve got some really wonderful readers that are gonna read. But I thought I would just give a short little history of the bookstore.
So we moved to Read Island in ’97 and before we left Haida Gwaii, my neighbor had this big truck and she was gonna make an eatery out of it, but she hadn’t. And I had this idea about a mobile bookstore.
And Mike said, “Why don’t you look into that truck? It’s made out of aluminum and, you know, it’s probably pretty good, even if it’s old and it’s probably cheap.”
So we bought the truck, we brought it down, and we were living on Read Island, but I rented a spot for it on Quadra at Heriot Bay, where I could plug in a heater, because it’s books, and we painted it white and put shelves up and put in skylights, and probably everybody’s seen the pictures over there of the book truck. And lots of folks here remember me bringing that. So that was from 98 to 2003. I used to bring the book truck to the farmer’s market.
And I didn’t know anyone here. When I first called some, I tried to find out who did the market. And they had me contact the Curtises, Jan and Frank, which a lot of you will remember, and Peggy O’Neill, who at the time were running the market. And they were over the moon, ‘Bookstore, bring it, yes.’ So they were very encouraging.
I was a little intimidated, because I’m not very big, and driving a big truck is something. I needed a lot of cushions by my back, and basically perched on the edge of the seat and trying to put in the clutch.
And I’d never driven, I’d never even been to, well, I shouldn’t say, I’ve been to Cortes once. In 1975, I’d touched down a little plane at Manson’s Landing briefly. But I’d never driven on Cortes. So it was something, because you get lost, and then you gotta turn this thing around. It was something, it was an adventure.
And so one story I want to tell is the first time that I came over, and I did get lost a number of times, but I got to the market, and then you gotta get back, and you gotta get on that ferry. I don’t know anyone here. Oh, sorry, one little story just before that. On my way over on the ferry, this ferry worker, this gal, Ruth Riddell, you all know her, but I didn’t at the time. She was so excited, bookstore! And she said, “Can I shop? “I’m on my break.” (laughing) Okay, so she did.
And really made a point of promoting the book truck and telling people about it and always coming in.
So that first day when I came over and I was nervous about this driving in, about getting back to the ferry and all that, and I’m driving back,(…) and there’s only so much time to get the ferry and this horrible noise. I mean, it is an old truck. And there’s a horrible clunk, and I try to pull over, and basically it stopped. And I’m at the side of the road and I’m thinking, “Oh no, oh no, yikes, pre-cell phones, all that stuff. “You’re just stuck in the middle of nowhere.”
But I hardly had a moment to panic before a little car pulled up behind me. And I see this guy get out, and he’s got a tool kit, and he’s running. He’s got the tech. (laughing) And he comes to the truck where I’m, I mean, I figured out at this point, I’ve got the hood up that the battery has leapt out and fallen right through the rotten inner wheel well onto the tire, and that’s what stopped the truck. And the battery, even some terminals are broken. Like, it doesn’t look good.
And this guy, no preliminaries, no who are you, nothing. He says,”Hi.” He says, “I’ve got my tool kit. “What have you got?”
And I said, “Well, I’ve got duct tape and rope.” (laughing)
So he just was telling me what to do, and quickly. Obviously, he was well aware that the ferry was leaving. And he do this, do that. I was helping him under the truck, over, under, doing this stuff. We tied it, we taped it, we tooled it.
And then he says, “Start it up.” And it ran. And he says, “Go, I’m right behind you.” (laughing) So I went, and I made it to the ferry, and he made it behind where I got a chance to talk to him and actually find out who he was. So a lot of folks here will remember Hank Shoulton, right?
Hank, amazing guy, and saved my bacon, holy.
And didn’t particularly like books, because I tried to give him books, but he was happy to get homemade preserves from Read Island, so that worked well. Okay.
(audience applauding)
So I did the truck, and it was fun, but it wasn’t all that viable a business, really.
And then in 2003, Mike got work here on Cortes, and he started by commuting, and then the fellow that he was working for really wanted him to move here, and the kids kind of wanted to. So we decided let’s move to Cortes, and I decided to retire the truck. And I kind of had a sale and got rid of books, but I still had books, you know. And I got here, and we met the Belcourts, David and Annie, and we met Scott, who had the tack. And Scott was already working out with Annie to have a gallery here.
And he said, “Marnie, why don’t you have a bookstore? Like get your husband to build a bookstore here, and just make sure these buildings are movable, because I’m just leasing this spot, but maybe it would work, and what do you think?”
And I said, “Oh, you know, I think I was done, but maybe.”
And he said, “Well, why don’t you put them down there, like where the parking lot is now?”
And so we got into this idea, both Annie and I decided to do this. And I said, “Well, I love this book, Pattern Language.” I don’t know, probably a lot of you folks know that book. Just love it. – A lot of from you. – Okay.
I sold it a lot.
And in Pattern Language, it talks about how communities need a courtyard, and they need a place where you can hang out, I think of the Zocalos (main square) in Mexico, and that a courtyard really works when you can recognize a face on a diagonal. It’s intimate enough then to just feel right. And I remember saying to Scott, because at that point the tack was oriented kind of north. There weren’t these doors, there wasn’t a deck. And there was kind of some propane tanks and some garbage here. Scott loved the idea.
I said, “Let’s build our two buildings and make a courtyard, and then we don’t have to socialize in the post office parking lot. We have somewhere we could hang out, right?”
And in Pattern Language, it’s very much about having edges. So we’ve already got an edge, and that’s an edge, and we make two more edges. The gallery’s gone, but it was just down there. We could do that and make this nice space.
And we got excited about it. We built the buildings that year. I think it was Scott’s idea to do the first stage, and you’ll see by some of those pictures there, opening day, it was quite a nice big stage. And we used to have music and readings and Ruth’s reading on it in the picture in 2003. So that was exciting, and it was fun to do the courtyard.
So now I just wanna tell a little story about Ruth Ozeki. So when I first had the truck, people were kinda nervous to come in. We had huge words on it, bookstore, but people kinda thought it was a library or didn’t really know what to think it was. And it’s a little personal to go through the door of someone’s vehicle and into a space like that, when you’re not really sure what it is.
But one of the first people to come in and was very enthusiastic was Ruth. Now Ruth, at that point, in 97, when I was running the library up in Charlotte, I had read “My Year of Meats.” It was brand new and I loved it. And I read that the author lived in Vancouver on Hastings Street. Really?And I grew up in Vancouver and I thought, wow.
But this woman, this was one of the first people that came in the store. This woman comes in, we’re chatting a bit. She’s excited about the book truck store idea. And I’m thinking, that’s the author of that book. (laughs) And it took me a while to get my nerve up. I thought, really? Like, you know, it’s been a little while since I’ve read it, but looks just like the inside cover picture in the library version.
And finally I said, ‘Are you?’
And she goes, ‘Yeah, how did you know?’
I said, ‘Well, I just read your book and I loved it. It was amazing.’
So that was a nice connection with Ruth. And Ruth always came in the truck and really liked it. So then when we had gotten to this point where we’re gonna build this store here, and I bumped into Ruth.
And she said, ‘Well, when’s that store gonna be ready?’
And I said, ‘Oh, this is 2003.
I said, ‘I really wanted to be ready for the summer, maybe middle of the summer. We’re trying our best, but it’s a job, right?’
And she said, ‘Well, you know, if you can get it ready, let’s launch all over creation at the same time.’
I’m like, ‘Wow, that would be so cool.’
So literally what was sweeping sawdust out ahead of, you’ll see over there, there’s a picture with a whole bunch of pictures of Ruth reading that day. There’s Lisa Jo in the courtyard. There’s Scott there. So all those old folks that used to be here. They’re not great pictures, but you get the idea. So that was really cool. And it was like this, lots of folks were here. It was well attended, it was fun.
So then 10 years later, Ruth is launching “Tale for the Time Being” and I’ve had the store for 10 years. So we did another event.
And again, I’ve got another whole series of pictures over there about that event.
So it was really nice when I only just realized in July, this 25 year thing, it can’t be, but it is, right? 2003, I looked it up, it is. So, and then, you know, Ruth hasn’t been here in quite, well, four years. And I bumped into Ollie at the free store and they’re here and Ruth would like to. And it’s like, oh my goodness, okay, for the 25th.
We seem to be in this pattern.
(audience applauding)
(Marnie chuckles)
Okay, I wanted a little shout out to Jan Curtis and Frank because Jan had her homespun wool in the little store for the first about 12 years. I think a lot of you folks remember her. They were amazing community people and then they moved away.
Okay.
(paper rustling)
Okay.
So with the exception of the COVID years, we’ve had readings in the courtyard every summer. And even one of the COVID years, we didn’t do the reading here, but we did launch Shana’s book Petra in a very COVID safe way, which was quite hilarious really. And it was great. It was a wonderful evening outdoors. Everybody had their little packet and their mask and it was really fun. And there’s a picture of that over there too. Just about every summer we’ve had readings here.
Erin, every year, except for if we missed a COVID year, we were trying to figure out if we missed one or two, but other than that, 20 years of, well, it must’ve been 18 or 19 years of Erin reading here. So that’s pretty cool.
(audience applauding)
All six of tonight’s authors have read here. Most of them more than once, all of them more than once, I think. And they’ve all drawn crowds that fill the courtyard.
I both really delight and am in awe of their talent. I think they’re amazing.
I’m gonna have out of concern for not running too late because we have six readers and it’s August and it gets dark a little earlier, I’m gonna have each reader introduce the next one. So I won’t be going back and forth and doing that thing. So I just wanted to say a few thank yous. There’s so many people to thank and it’s so exciting to see all of you out here. But I really especially want to thank Melanie, Gina, and Lily at the museum. They’ve been amazing. It was really lovely to work with them doing this.
Christina, Paul, Shana, and Priya, so encouraging, so just right there for me to make this event happen. Really appreciate it. My husband Mike, wherever he is. And all of my book enthusiast customers for sure.
I’ve always… (audience applauding)(…) I’ve always felt very supported in this endeavor in this community. Thank you so much.
(audience applauding)
Author’s Readings
Top image credit: Marnie Andrews describing the origins of her bookstore and the Co-op courtyard – photo by Darshan Stevens