Cougar Annie and the Art of Survival
Cougar Annie was a legendary character on the west coast. At the end of a five-day hike around the Hesquiat Peninsula with friends, we received a tour of Cougar Annie’s garden led by Peter Buckland, who now oversees the property at Boat Basin and found out why.
I had heard of this illustrious woman before but had no idea where she lived exactly – just that she had a large garden in some remote location on the west coast, killed cougars and outlived numerous husbands.
It turns out, she was a bit of an unlikable character. She trapped and shot any animals that breeched her garden fence; including cougars, bears, mink or even jays. She knowingly catered to problem drinkers, stocking boxes of vanilla or lemon extract in her little store. She did not like to part with a nickel and deceived people into buying rotten eggs – she even deceived Canada Post into thinking Boat Basin needed a post office. Not to mention, she may have shot one of her husbands.
Despite some of these unsavory stories, I still can’t help but be curious about her character and even admire her. She was very “punk rock”. She beat the system with her DIY ethics and established her own personal freedom – living how she wanted. Many people, including the local loggers, admired and respected her. She was said to have been “a good businesswoman”.
There’s an excellent book by Margaret Horsfield, “Cougar Annie’s Garden”, that gathers all the information and photos we have of her. In it she writes:
“Being a good businesswoman and keeping the place going meant, for Cougar Annie, taking no nonsense from anyone, never giving an inch, always being alert to the smallest opportunity or advantage, and playing many a wily game. Being in charge of this working garden meant labouring every day, dawn till dusk, making her own chances, following her own rules and thinking first and foremost of herself and her garden. Indulging other peoples’ whims was inconceivable, giving in to their demands or toleration their weaknesses, unthinkable.”
Peter guided us through pathways he had, over recent years, uncovered through Cougar Annie’s garden. He told us how he first came to the Hesquiat area looking for minerals and later decided it was “the best place on earth”. In Cougar Annie’s later years, he ended up making monthly visits from Vancouver, to help her with various jobs including bringing firewood up from the beach or fixing fences.
A bit of history helps one grasp how this garden came about. Ada Annie Jordan (her birth name) grew up with a father who liked to travel and follow business prospects. For some time, she lived in South Africa where her father, who treated her no different than if she was a boy, taught her how to shoot and defend herself. At this time, she also became a proficient horticulturalist. Eventually the family ended up in Vancouver where her father, in his fifties, decided to become a veterinary surgeon and set up a clinic. This is where Ada assisted and became familiar with all types of animals. These early experiences: learning to shoot, garden and how to care for animals are major skills that she carried into her next existence.
In Vancouver, Ada Annie married Willie Rae-Arthur, a man known more for his sociability than his work ethic. I think the couple really loved each other, only Willie had alcoholic tendencies and was also starting to explore the opium dens in Vancouver. Willie’s dad was part of a wealthy society and a little concerned about his son’s growing addictions. At the time the government was giving away large tracts of land to those who would develop it. This was when people still thought it was a good idea to create English fields and meadows out of an impenetrable west coast forest. It was with this hope and optimism, that the family was dropped off by boat onto an empty beach at Hesquiat Harbour in 1915. It sounds like what now would be an episode of the reality TV show “Alone”, being left to fend for yourself in a remote, inhospitable wilderness (except with three young children).
Since Willie Rae-Arthur was not much of a handy guy (though he was very entertaining and funny), over the next fifteen years, Cougar Annie cleared most of the land herself – and had eight more children. Her children remember constantly working while having to breathe smoky air from the burning stumps.
Against all odds, the Rae-Arthur family carved a farm out of the dense west coast bush. They had goats, chickens, a vegetable garden and an orchard. They canned much of their food, including cougar meat. Their presence attracted much of the local wildlife and Cougar Annie became a well-known and respected hunter – she claimed to have killed seventy-two cougars (earning her name). Even her oldest son would leave the shooting to his mom. She received a substantial bounty for these cougars, which she would lure into her garden with a tied-up goat and a leg hold trap. An animal wasn’t in one of her traps for long. However, as ruthless as she was to any unwanted wildlife, she loved and took good care of her goats and chickens.
There is nothing written by Cougar Annie, no journals or correspondence that would leave any idea of what she thought. I wonder, did she like this existence, enjoy the natural beauty of the area or dream of a different life? How did she endure? Was she a mostly a good or a bad person? It could be that these questions were irrelevant in the face of purely trying to exist with eleven kids in the unforgiving bush (she lost three in infancy). I think she embraced the challenges in front of her, and there probably wasn’t room for any thoughts other than strategizing her next plans. As a woman, she may have relished living outside the constraints of the traditional roles of a woman in society. Again, in the present day, her life would have made a captivating reality tv show.
Many years later, when Cougar Annie was gone, the garden was left to its own devices. Bears eventually destroyed all the fruit trees, by climbing in them and breaking the branches. The hundreds of varieties of plants she collected from nurseries (ordered by mail) were left to compete with the native vegetation. Many varieties became unnaturally leggy to compete for light. The original house is still there, though the roof is caved in and even some old books are exposed to the elements. It doesn’t feel like a garden anymore, more like a clearing in the forest, layered with thick moss and heather. It hints at a history that has faded beyond recognition.
Another part of this history was that Cougar Annie convinced Canada Post, with a petition of possibly some invented signatures, to have a Post Office at Boat Basin, instead of at the Estevan Point lighthouse (which made way more sense). The monthly stipend helped with the essentials. To give Canada Post the impression that this was a busy post office, Ada started a dahlia bulb business, advertising bulbs for sale in newspapers and then packaging and shipping them all around the country. She also ordered plants from nurseries all over North America.
After her first husband, Willie, tragically died in a boat accident, she also used newspaper ads to attract future husbands to her property, advertising, “BC Widow with Nursery and orchard wishes partner”. Eventually she outlived four husbands, including one who suspiciously shot himself in the groin while cleaning his shotgun.
In her later years, Cougar Annie, who was already a tiny woman, started going blind and had lost most of her teeth. She could no longer so easily snap a chicken’s neck, so some ended up running around with crooked necks. She had barely left the property in over sixty years. Finally in 1983, when she was 95, despite having a couple caregivers off and on, her daughter decided it was getting very unsafe for her to be living basically alone in the middle of nowhere. She left her property for good, apparently against her will, and died in Vancouver a couple years later.
What we saw in our tour was a result of Peter’s (who is now in his 80’s) “chainsaw gardening”, hacking away years of encroaching bush to expose some of the original garden. This started after he moved permanently to Boat Basin in 1987. Peter has built some impressive buildings (such as a Central Hall, several cabins and the “The Temperate Rainforest Field Study Centre”) and also his own home, using large cedar planks he split himself. He has set up the “Boat Basin Foundation” and welcomes people who want to learn more about the garden or study the surrounding rainforest. However, with no road connection, the best access being by float plane and literally five permanent residents in the area, it is remote to say the least.
It feels like a lifetime of Cougar Annie’s work has pretty much left with her (though Peter has done a valiant job of adding new life to the property). I think she was the product of a time when people were a lot more rugged. The property at Boat Basin was a blank slate upon which she could imagine a fruitful garden if she was willing to work from day to night every day, without the comforts of home insulation, a new dress or a grocery store. How to survive in an unforgiving rainforest, was her art form. Maybe the reason she took such an interest in acquiring as many varieties of plants as she could, ordering from nurseries all over North America – was so she could see what would survive with her. Then she protected it all with a shot gun.
Photos from top to bottom: Famous photo of Cougar Annie; Peter looking on Cougar Annie’s old house; looking into a building housing some old artifacts from the property – including a few leg-hold traps, old egg cartons and even her bed; one of Peter’s structures overlooking Rae Lake – you can see the split cedar construction; and lastly, Peter’s impressive eagle woodshed – a design he thought of after seeing an eagle drying its wings.
