Back to the Land - Peter Seixas

Powell River, the town, was a mill town, um, and the mill at that time was run by MacMillan Bloedel, and other than these eighty acres, all of the land surrounding, was either owned by MacMillan Bloedel, or was provincial tree farm licence. So, this was sort of a unique piece of land. The town—and—we—in going there, and doing this, we thought in some ways we were providing—we were not only doing this ourselves, we were providing a model of how life should be lived. I mean, we saw—in—some ways this—this is still right. There’s a—there’s a thread of me that still sees this as a, as a believable response to the conditions that we face today. I mean, we saw the, uh, problems—global warming wasn’t on the horizon, but environmental problems certainly were. The alienation of the social organization, domination of corporations, and so on, and this was a way to step outside it. Of course, we stepped outside it knowing nothing about how to do it. Um, none of us—I hadn’t done any work, even in a garden, much less a farm. I had done no carpentry work. A few people who were there had little bits and pieces of skills, but no one was an expert, and I had never done anything with an animal, other than feed a—a dog. (laughs) So having goats and chickens and, milking them and killing the chickens, uh, for—for meat, these were all—every piece of this was a new skill that we needed to learn.

Oral History 14.02.27PS with Peter Seixas
Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21