Sunday, August 13, was Sandcastle Day at Smelt Bay on Cortes Island. There were about 20 entries, made by sculptors whose ages ranged anywhere from 18 months to 81 years. Some of participants live on Cortes, but others are visitors from as far away as Campbell River, Victoria, Vancouver, Langley, Quebec City or even England.

It was a hot, but very windy day and you can hear the breeze pushing against my mic throughout the broadcast.

Three of the entries were actually castles, ranging from fairly basic to highly sculptured designs. 

The most elaborate was made by a team calling themselves ‘Those Damn Schwarzes’

“We started building sandcastles 10 or 15 years ago, and we’ve won first prize many, many times. Last year, we won best in class.and show, so now it’s a challenge to see if we can do it again.” one of the women said.

“Our category is castles and we have family from Campbell River, Cortes, England, all over, and we’re all here working on it.” 

CC: How many of you are from Cortes? 

“The lady that’s from Cortes is not here because she’s 90 this year, and can’t walk the beach, butt we’re filming it for her. Tonight we’ll show her all the details of what we did.”

CC: Can you give me a breakdown on names and the ages? 

Woman: “John is  81. Heiner is 73. I’m 66. I’m not sure about the other ages. You’ll have to ask the people.”

“I’m 17,” someone said. 

Woman: “Lauren, how old are you?” 

Lauren replied, with a distinctly English accent, “24.” 

Woman (to another participant) “What was that, 39? And then we have an 8 year old, a 7 year old, a 6 year old and an 18 month old. They’ve all contributed.” 

CC: What makes this special? 

Woman: “Being together as family, being on Cortes, having fun.” 

One of the other sandcastles was a model of an actual fortress from Roman Britain.   

CC: How are you guys related? 

Benji: “Deva’s my partner and these are good friends of ours who are coming to visit. And we’re just having a bit of fun.” 

Benji explained, in an English accent,“We are a collective of people with enthusiasm for Medieval/Roman/Viking structures from Northern England.” 

CC: Who’s the friend?

“Freya Zazu,” a young woman replied. 

“I’m Nick,  Freya’s my partner,” a man standing close to her added.

 CC: Are any of you from Cortes?

Benji: “Yes, Deva Brataan.”

“(From?) Mark and Madhurima,” someone said.

“Yes, their daughter,” another woman (Deva?) added.

CC: How long have you been interested in Vikings? 

Benji: “Well, I grew up in York, north of England. It was the Viking capital and Roman capital of Northern Europe four times. I grew up around castles and that sort of thing.”

One of the judges passing by exclaimed their castle “Is fabulous. It gets rated on all kinds of things. Use of material, your presentation. So tell me a little bit about it.” 

Benji: “The Calippus Tower in York was originally a Roman fortress. It’s basically a large mound with  a round cylindrical tower. So it would be a great place for defence, like the last line of defence for the city.  Then once it became more secure and the new city walls got built, it just became a place of entertainment.” 

“It’s a very simple structure and we thought, well, we’re simple people, so …”

The Canadian and English flags at the top of this castle seemed out of character.

Freya: “Benji asked me if I could bring some flags. I brought them from the flag shop in Victoria. I am the manager there. I’m spreading the flag love.” 

A number of the other entries were made by children:  

There was a fairly elaborate diorama with two volcanoes. I suspect the seaweed placed on top of them represented lava. The artist was about 3 years old and he placed a number of amber coloured trucks along the road that stretched between the volcanoes.

A little girl named Gwen made two sculptures. She said one is “an octopus and his name is Oliver,” the other “is his friend Frank, and he’s wearing sunglasses.”

There is a picture of her cuddling up to Frank in the written version of this story. 

Pema and her grandmother, Joyce, made a cake. 

“We called ourselves the cake bakers, right,” explained Gramma. 

“Yah,” a little voice responded.

“Yah, and what’s the name of our castle, Pema?”  

“Blowing Candles,” Pema replied.  

“That’s right,” said Joyce  “We haven’t put the candles on the top of the cake just yet, but this is our layer cake.” 

When I asked Pema to touch her cake while I took a picture, she rose up on one foot and leaned over to touch the top with one hand. 

A very good sculpture was close by:  

“My name’s Bruin, and this is a dolphin. We’re having a bit of trouble, the tail’s a bit small, but we’re working on one of the fins. We made a snail and an octopus, but the octopus got ruined.”

A couple of sculptures were made by teenage, or preteen age, girls. Two of them made a bed and another pair made a sea snail. They were interested in interviews, but posed for a picture.

Three boys laid out a meandering trail of seaweed that connected with itself, so there was no beginning or end. There were trails of shells inside the perimeter.

“I’m Maddox. We had an idea to build a map of Cortes. We have all the mountains, the seaweed is the water. Then we have shells as roads.”

CC: Can you introduce me to your team? Or do they want to introduce themselves? 

“I’m Malek and I speak French,” one responded.

“I’m Victor and I speak a little bit of English,” added the other.

The trio came from Langley and Quebec City respectively.

Their grandmother approached as we were speaking, “We have a house. My name is Anna, and I’m Hans and Maria Tretton’s daughter. We’ve had the place for 50 years. Every summer we come here, less when we were working. Now we come for two or three months with the grandkids.” 

One of the neighbouring exhibits consisted of a series of small sculptures spread out over a relatively large area. 

“I’m Seth with my beautiful sidekicks, and we made a skate park together. Of course, I did all the work.” 

A smaller boy objected to this, “Liar!”

Seth continued, “We had a lot of fun. We started off with the bowl,  and then we moved our way up. We just started making things, and then my dad decided to start smoothing it out a bit early, he’s a good smoother outer, I don’t know how to explain that, but I’ve pretty much lived my whole life here. My mom lives in Campbell River, but my dad lives here, of course.” 

CC: Is this your first time? 

Seth: “No, this is my second time.
CC: Last year? 

Seth: “I made a catamaran.”

Not too far away a giant crab had one claw resting on a treasure chest. 

“My name is Sean Arden, with my daughter Alaura, our friend Alice Thacker and Dev Moray. We live part time here and part time in Vancouver. We’re creating a sand sculpture called  the Guardian of Cortes’s Treasure. We concocted a story that when the Europeans came and discovered Cortes, they had a wizard on their ship, and they had a treasure, and so they left the treasure here, but in order to protect that treasure, they cast a spell on one of the local crustaceans.  Over the hundreds of years,  because they never came back to gather the treasure,  this giant crab has just gotten bigger and bigger.  Its only mission is to protect  this buried treasure. This is the crab that we’ve depicted here today on Sandcastle Day.” 

The largest family group was working on a disaster at sea

One of the moms explained, “I’m Trish and we are building a ship being taken down by a kraken (a legendary sea monster of enormous size).”

CC: “Whoa!” 

Trish: “Yah, we’ve got a bunch of ten year old boys that came up with the idea. They’re helping a bit, the dads are on it.”

“We all work at Beach Fire Brewing in Campbell River and my mom lives here. So we come over for the weekends and hang out.”

Lynn Whitehead, the mother, has been living on Cortes Island for five years. 

I asked her, “How are you related?  Who are these people?

Lynn: “My daughter,  nephew, that’s my nephew’s wife and my son in law’s around here – Oh, there he is.” 

CC: Could I get you to do that again with names? 

Lynn: “Okay. Adam. Trish, Darren, Louise, and who else is here? Michelle, and… (Annika?) my grandson, Liam and then we’ve got Aidan.” 

CC: Is this your first year in the competition? 

Trish: “No.”

“Not mine,” added one of the boys. 

One of the Dads responded, “First year in the competition.” 

 Trish: “We’ve done it before. You just missed it because you’re at work. These kids have done it a few times before.” 

CC: Is it the first year for Beach Fire Brewing? 

Trish: “I would say this is the first time we’ve had a team with all of us. Yes, this is the first time we’ve had it with all of our senior management over here for the weekend.”

According to one of the judges, there have been Sandcastle Days on Cortes Island for most of the last 30 years. You have been listening to a report from the 2023 event.

Top Image credit: View of the Beach on Sandcastle Day – Roy L Hales photo

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