Disappearing Names and Objects

The All Point Bulletin brought us the news this month that the Whalen camp site over on the northeast side of Point Roberts has been sold to someone who needed a lot of land for an estate and all the people who have had trailers there over the years were given a month to get out. Not friendly, but it’s business, you know? And the needs of and for estates are considerable.

I’ve been thinking the last few days about this. It seems like a loss. Well, it is a loss of trailer space and part of the mystique of the Point is all these families, generations of whom have been coming here for years in the summer for a few weeks, a couple of months even, to partake of the local amenities. For some, it’s a tradition that should be not only acknowledged but honored and maybe even made sacrosanct (and give us back our trailer park!). And maybe that’s true. Like going to the same summer camp every year. On the other hand, maybe it’s just an inexpensive vacation place for Canadians and not a part of national (international?) cultural values. I don’t know.

The Whalen trailer park also has some economic value for the Point, I assume, so its shuttering will mean some economic loss. Those summer visitors are people who won’t be here buying food and hardware goods and beer and tourist objects, or going to restaurants and bars. And there are a decreasing number of trailer facilities here (although for many people who are full-time residents, that would be considered a feature, not a bug). So, it’s something of a mixed bag, I suppose. Change; never easy.

One significant loss involved, I think, will be the historical loss. Whalen is one of those names on the Point that is to be reckoned with, which is to say, old time resident. When we were constructing the outbuilding where I work on my quilts, we hired a nice guy named Gary who also ran the Whalen trailer park to work on the framing. I can’t remember his last name now, but I do remember how people would say to me, “Oh, sure, Gary. He’s married to the Whalen girl.” Who was, of course, no longer a girl, and hadn’t been one for many a year, but that’s how it is with the old families. They sold the trailer park a couple of years ago to someone from California who was going to run it as it had always been, but then the Californians ran into some family illness and that was the end of their plan. (Another instance of Point Roberts being a place where dreams go to die, I’d say.)

After Gary and the Whalen girl sold the trailer park to the Californians, they moved away, I think, and I don’t know if there are even any Whalens left here now. But there are still Whalen artifacts. About five years ago, somebody gave me a heavy window frame with glass intact because I was, at the time, putting some of the abandoned house quilts into window frames. “It’s from the old Whalen house,” I was told. Nothing more needed to be said. So I take care of that frame because in some not quite explicable way, it is a piece of Point Roberts history that is now my burden.

The Whalens are gone, the Whalen Trailer Park is gone, but the Whalen window frame is available for viewing upon request.