Among the many luminaries who had the great good fortune
to fish with the west coast’s brightest fishing luminary, Jimmy Gilbert, was Dief
the Chief, as Prime Minister John Diefenbaker was known to Canadians.
Born in 1895, Dief was, after many attempts, first
elected to the House of Commons in 1940. He ran many times for the PC
leadership, too, finally accepting the mantle in 1956. He was Prime Minister from
1957 to 1963. While he made the wrong decision with the best fighter jet ever to
see the sky, the Avro Arrow, he made the right decision to go fishing with Jim.
Dief had a grand opinion of himself, and that shines
through in the pictures taken during and after his time learning from Jim. His
greatest good fortune, was to appear in Time Magazine, Jan 17, 1964 taking
tutelage from the Master himself:
This looks to me like the outside of Willis Point with
Sheppard Point in the background, en route to Mackenzie Bight. Note the rocks
on the transom of Gilbert’s boat, which were used for weights – inserted in
nylons – prior to downriggers. Note also the Peetz wooden reels, which look
loaded with monofilament line, rather than wire line used with planers.
As gregarious and bombastic as Dief was, he had to get
in on the act, and net a fish himself, something that a neophyte ought leave to
the captain’s choice. The easiest thing to get caught is what catches the fish
- the hook - and once in a net, you lose the fish and net the hook.
In this next one, you will note the net, safely in Gilbert’s
hand, and the fish in Dief’s.
I’ll bet that Jim held the net a number of times that
day, as Dief holds a prodigious catch of chinook at day’s end. (Note the black
mouths, suggesting that no blueback, Cowichan coho are on the ‘stringer’. The
letter from Diefenbaker, below, is January 1964, implying that it was a winter
day that was fished, with bluebacks being available in Saanich Inlet from late November to late
February).
A letter to Jim from Esquimalt/Saanich MP GL Chatterton
says:
I am enclosing a couple of photographs Doug Leiterman
took on the boat and sent to me. I thought you would appreciate having them for
your scrapbook.
The Chief has never stopped talking about the
wonderful days of fishing we had and I want to express to you my sincere
appreciation for the good company and expert guidance.
Yours sincerely
G.L.
Chatterton, M.P.,
Esquimalt-Saanich.
In fact, the Chief was so
moved by all the fish he caught, he wrote a letter to Jim Gilbert as well. I have enlarged the image so you
can read it yourself. As an image, it gives an
era-accurate example of a hand-written letter, that these days are called
emails or text messages. It also shows how Diefenbaker signed his name.
,
Final note: All these Jim
Gilbert images are from originals maintained by Joan Gilbert. Other well-known
types came to fish with Jim, too: George ‘Dub-yah’ Bush, Oscar Peterson, Lester
Pearson, Gordie Howe, and etc. We’ll get to them in future stories.
