Interview with Charles by David Brown of Shaw TV
Quotes:
“… how would I define contemplation? As an empty imageless prayer in which the naked act of the will reaches out to God not as we imagined him to be and not as we see him in his works but as he is in himself…”
“We think of the people are not making a very good salary, but one of the philosophers, a Thomas Berry says that the poor people are really the culturally disparaged people and what he means by that, we say to one group of people you have no value, you have no dignity. We have been saying that to women. We’ve been saying that to First Nations people. You know you have no value. You have no dignity. So if we have preferential option for the poor, then we have to restore their dignity. We have to restore dignity to women, to the First Nations people, to other people who have lost their dignity the other poor – the earth and then especially replies to the earth itself and you know. We’ve taken away the dignity of our rivers, our forests, our mountains. So we have to restore that dignity.”
“So we have to make a transition from our society which is having a disruptive influence on the earth to a society that has a benign presence to the earth and we do that by falling in love with the natural world. How do we fall in love with the natural world? We have to experience the natural world and to go out and look at it and we only love something if we think it’s sacred. So in a sense, only the sense of the sacred will save us.”
We do that by experiencing creation with a sense of wonder and delight rather than a commodity for our own personal benefit….”
A Conversation at the Hermitage – with David Brown – Shaw TV – Transcript
DB Good morning my name is David Brown and I’m here on the edges of the Oyster River with Father Charles Brant and we’re going to have a conversation about some of the things that Charles has done in his lovely long life and he’s just an amazing man.
And so, Charles your business card, I you know that I’ve looked at a number of times. Your business card talks about you being a paper restorer, an ornithologist, a photographer and so many other things.
That’s just amazing the things that you have done in your life and what’s most appealing if you like or such a part of the story is that you’re a hermit. Now can you tell me a little bit about being a hermit and how that started and where you came from?
CB Okay David, I came from a very large Benedictine monastery back in Dubuque, Iowa and this was the time of Vatican II which was from ‘62 to ‘65. Everybody was trying to discover their roots. Where do we come from? …and monks were also trying to discover that. We discovered that the first monks were Hermits in the desert south of Alexandria all the way down to the Thebes, six hundred kilometres and after the Peace of Constantine which was in 613. Sorry 313, there were about 5 thousand Hermits living in this area. So they were really the first monks and so during Vatican II were looking at our roots and we discovered that we came from the Hermits who led a very simple life along a Nile River. Living very simply and so there was a big strong movement in Benedictine circles to re-establish the Hermit life and so there was a Benedictine monk from Belgium, Jacques Winandy and he got permission from Bishop of Victoria to make a foundation of Hermits.
DB And what year?
CB This was in ’65 and so I heard about them. They came in ’64 actually, the very time the Mount Washington mine went in, in August of ‘64. I came in ’65 now six months later. I got permission from my Abbot to come out and visit them because we were interested in the hermit life and so that’s how I arrived on the scene, on the Tsolum River on Vancouver Island.
DB There’s so many questions that came up to my mind just as you were saying all of that. I’m. I’ll come back to the Tsolum River in a moment.
How did you establish your Hermitage there and then also, how did you get into paper conservation and bookbinding and all those marvelous things you’ve done?
CB Okay then, once I came out here then, I discovered that I had to build my own hermitage which I did. We’re living in the same building that we moved it up from the Tsolum to the Oyster River, just this very building. I tore down a house and got a lot of the lumber of the shiplap and studs and so forth. The cedar came from a mill out on the dyke between Courtney and Campbell River and then I moved up here. Before I moved, we had to make a living.
So I had a little bit of background in bookbinding. I had learned bookbinding when I was coming into the Catholic Church in Oklahoma. I spent a year in a Benedictine monastery there and I’d learned a little simple book binding. So I thought that would be a good way to make a living. So I wrote to some monks and Lafayette, Oregon and they sent me some simple equipment like a guillotine, a sewing frame and So I was in business and then, once I had set up my Hermitage bookbinding at the end of the ‘65 , I was looking for clients and there was a David Muir who was a warden, fisheries warden.
DB Not the David Muir?
CB Pardon?
DB Not the David Muir
CB No and he used to come out and we have these chats and so I said oh I’m looking for bookbinding clients and he said, well there’s this Roderick Haig Brown in Campbell River he has this huge library. So eventually I went up to visit him at the Old RCMP station.
DB mmm.. I want to… no I want to stay with the paper conservation idea or the oldest book that you’ve ever bound and restructured that you can remember because you’ve done some amazing stuff.
CB Well, I did the Nuremberg Chronicle. That goes back to about, what 1750 or so. That’s probably the oldest book.
Probably a most important book was Audubon’s Ornithology which was more recent. That would be about 1839, but that would be of great value. This is um, I have a number of his prints around. Not original prints but Audubon’s Ornithology. When I worked on that, it was worth about $5,000, and then by the time it was finished it was worth about twelve million dollars. This was worldwide market for Audubon’s Ornithology.
DB So you weren’t able to collect any of that part of it in and live a non-simple life on the Oyster River.
CB Yeah, no just, just the binding of it yeah.
DB Now what about the paper conservation because you talk about conserving paper it doesn’t…
CB Well when I got into book binding, you know books are mainly paper. I discovered that I had to learn… I didn’t know very much about paper and so I had to learn something about paper. So, I had a sister friend, sister Katherine. She told me about the New England document Center in Massachusetts and a Dr. Cooliard (sp?) was there and he was a paper specialist. So I wrote to him. Could I come and study with you and I would do some book binding and you would teach me paper conservation. So, he invited me. So, I went there. I was still living the Hermit life. Only in a little bit different life and then I was there for two years and then I also wanted to learn more about fine binding (designs?) binding and so I had to go to Europe for that and so I ended up in Ascona that’s in Switzerland and while I was there a year and a half, I received a letter from the National Museums of Canada would I like to be interviewed as a book paper conservator?
So they flew me back to Ottawa. I was Interviewed. So I got the job. Then so after I finished the work in Ascona, I went to Ottawa and then I went to Moncton, New Brunswick. That’s where they had one of their Subdivisions. So I did a lot of work with paper.
DB So let’s make kind of a quantum leap from that. Here we are today on your Oyster River. Talk to us a little bit about what’s it like to be a hermit or by yourself and living here in this spot for what 15 years now? How many years now?
CB Well actually I moved here in, in ‘70. So that would be 50 years almost.
DB…and years ago to this spot
CB yes this spot from from , plus what, What is that 46 years?
DB Something like that. So what does that tell us? Tell us a bit about your life and your thoughts and your….
CB Okay the eremitic hermit life is primarily a life of contemplation. What is contemplation? It’s very difficult to define. I mean all of life is beautiful to look at and you step out on that porch and look at the sound of the river and look at the forest and so there, there are two communities. There’s a human community which you and I belong to you very much and then there’s the other community. More than the human community, greater community, which is made up of the plants and the soil and all sentient beings. So that’s all around us is more and more than the human world.
So contemplation is maybe partially looking at that and rejoicing in it and then I would define contemplation as an empty imageless prayer in which the naked act of the will reaches out to God not as we imagined him to be and not as we see him in his works but as he is in himself. So soon it’s the naked act of the will reaching out to God.
So very simply that’s what contemplation or contemporary prayer is. So I spend maybe couple of hours a day doing that, just maybe sitting on the porch or at my desk and you know quietly looking at God as he is in himself. Now what good does that do? Well…
DB Obviously, it’s done pretty well for you.
CB I think it does good for everybody and the whole human community. You know we’re moving at such a very rapid pace, pace you know… Society more and more hectic and more and more television, more and more computer and meetings and so I think for a few people to move off into the wilderness, into the desert and just to be alone with God that helps everybody because we’re all connected. We’re connected to the natural world. We’re connected to the human world. We’re connected to every other being on the planet.
DB Absolutely
CB David Muir, the other Muir says, you break a twig and that affects the most distant star. Everything is connected you know and… Even this meeting we’re having right now is connected with every other being in the universe.
DB I’ve read that Bishop Remy de Roo has said, Charles Brandt is on a continuum from contemplative to articulate.
CB okay
DB …and I like, I kind of like that that description. I think that says so much about you.
CB By the way he was here yesterday and he left those books on the desk there. He has this one little book. It’s kind of a, with his notes in it and they go all the way back to Vatican II ’62 to ‘65. He was in Rome for that and he’s really an outstanding person. A very brilliant man.
You know I’ve had four bishops since I’ve been here. Remi ordained me and ordained me to the hermit life, into the priesthood and then I had another bishop from Manitoba – can’t think of his name right now, then Bishop Gagnon and then the present Bishop. So four different bishops they’re all different. Bishop Remi was a scholar and Bishop Gagnon was more of a classical person, scholar and the present Bishop is very pastoral. He has kind of a truck that he carries with him his dog. He came from the Yukon where he was Bishop and his dog saved his life twice. So he takes care of that dog.
DB I make sure I brought the dog with me all the time then that’s a good story.
CB That’s right. Yes so the dog is always with him you know wherever it goes.
DB So I said I’d get back or go switch back into the Tsolum River and Mount Washington Copper and you and a number of the other people of course in Courtenay were just doggedly determined to do something about that and I remember reading a letter I think you said into the minister saying, the Tsolum River is dead.
CB That’s right.
DB So pick it up from there.
CB Well in ‘83 ,’84 it was, only nine pink salmon returned to the Tsolum River to spawn and so the manager of the hatchery said, oh I don’t have any brood stock with only nine salmon. That’s not enough brood stock two years from now. So the Steelhead Society, the local chapter and under the inspiration of Rob Bill Irving, you probably remember him. He was a provincial chairman. He encouraged us to do some work on the mine site, to reclaim the mine site and to enhance the Tsolum River.
DB What was killing everything? What kind of mine was it?
CB It was copper from the mine. To get back, there were only nine pink salmon return. So they had a meeting in Campbell River and Wayne White was there and several other prominent biologists and at that meeting that Francis Bula(sp?) wrote this up in the Green Sheet Paper and that was that the Tsolum River is dead and the reason it was dead was because of the copper from the mine polluting the river. There was over a hundred micrograms per liter of copper in the Tsolum and so the salmon pinks just couldn’t abide in that ….
DB What would normally kill salmon in either pinks or fingerlings?
CB Well it’s down to less than seven now and they could live with seven micrograms. So we wanted it above seven and so gradually it’s been coming down from 100 to 50 to 25 to less than seven. It’s probably around three micrograms per liter and that isn’t bad. That’s fairly healthy.
DB So I just thought of this Question. How much money did the Mount Washington Copper Mine make out of this and how much money has gone into the restoration of their completely irresponsible part of mining?
CB It was a sort of a Japanese development and I think I can’t remember how much. I think they made very small profit from the ore they hauled down the Island. But the government with the Steelhead Society put in a million dollars and then later, the provincial government, a little later put in about four and a half million dollars. So altogether ten million dollars has gone into that copper mine to reclaim it.
DB and here when you’re at the top of Mount Washington in the summertime and look down on this still huge bare patch. It’s not that big.
CB That’s right yeah just so it wasn’t the whole mine. It was just the northern part of the mine that was causing the pollution. So what they did they put a cap on it. A membrane over the top of it and so that prevents any rain water getting down into the ore and then on top of it, they planted it with soil and plants. So it’s two years ago it’s a nine pink salmon returning over 130 thousand pink salmon returned to the River, hundred thirty thousand.
DB That’s amazing. So I want to shift a little bit in our conversation and you you’ve said before that you were good friends with Roderick and Ann Haig Brown and she was a good friend of ours because she was the librarian at Carrie High and Measure of the Year is one of his very favorite books visit – he writes about family and months of the year and this is May and he has this lovely description about the carpenter ants coming out in May, right on cue. So tell us a little bit about your friendship and how you met Rod Haig Brown and Mrs. Haig Brown.
CB I think I may have said before that I was looking for clients for bookbinding and Father Cunningham drove me up in Campbell River. Muir had told me about Roderick Haig Brown’s library and said he’d be a likely candidate. So I went into the RCMP station and said I would like to speak to Roderick Haig Brown and he was in doing some kind of a trial. So he came out he was wearing his magistrates robes and had a very fierce look about him I thought and I told him what I was up to I was a book binder and I just moved here and been here about a year and I was looking for clients and we didn’t really discuss that very much but one thing he did tell me was that he was a professional writer. That’s what he wanted to be known as, a professional writer.
DB Well he ended up with 28 books and well about only about five of them were about fishing.
CB I didn’t realize.
DB Yes it was amazing.
CB Okay so I, I had never read any Roderick Haig Brown. I didn’t know he was a writer. I didn’t know he was a fisherman. I just knew that he had a library and so later later, that day I went to the high school Carry High where you used to teach and I said I’d like to speak to the librarian so they brought out Anne Haig Brown and we had a just a hilarious time for about an hour talking and laughing so relaxed much more so than Roderick. You know much more so I would say. That could have been my fault. She invited me around ah to the house that evening which I didn’t go because I had to get back and then later I thought well another client might be a lawyer. So I went to a law office and I didn’t know which law office it was and it turned out to be that it was a law office of Valarie and her husband they ran it together. I remember Valerie she was I’ve seen her since a number of times. She was quite skinny. She was wearing a red dress and they didn’t have much of a library in the law office and I thought they’re a little bit hard up you know there, I felt they were. Just because of the lack of books. So I met in that one day sort of not accidentally with Roderick but the other two, kind of accidental all the people who were really book people in Campbell River Rod and Valerie and it’s all in one day. What an amazing day and I was going to spend the night in the church. They had facilities above them in the chapel but then Ray Cunningham drove me home.
DB We’ve got a few minutes left and I just want to sort of add in about we used to have Carry High staff meetings in the library at the house. Those are the wonderful heydays of Anne Haig Brown and John Young and it was so stimulating and it formed my philosophy of education so much. So it’s not about me it’s about you and so I want to end with a quote here that you’ve talked about. It says, look deep into nature and you will understand …..understand everything better. Can you finish up with that?
CB Okay well you know the Catholic Church and other Christian groups have what they call preferential option for the poor. You know that’s what Jesus was concerned with, the poor people. Primarily it was concerned with the poor people and so the church has a preferential option for the poor. So who are the poor? We think of the people are not making a very good salary, but one of the philosophers, a Thomas Berry says that the poor people are really the culturally disparaged people and what he means by that, we say to one group of people you have no value, you have no dignity. We have been saying that to women. We’ve been saying that to First Nations people. You know you have no value. You have no dignity. So if we have preferential option for the poor, then we have to restore their dignity. We have to restore dignity to women, to the First Nations people, to other people who have lost their dignity the other poor – the earth and then especially replies to the earth itself and you know. We’ve taken away the dignity of our rivers, our forests, our mountains. So we have to restore that dignity.
DB I love that dignity
CB So how do we do that? How do we restore their dignity? We do that by experiencing creation with a sense of wonder and delight rather than a commodity for our own personal benefit.
DB … and interestingly enough we have just under a minute left in this conversation. Can you sum up your 97 years in 45 seconds?
CB I can. Okay. So we have to make a transition from our society which is having a disruptive influence on the earth to a society that has a benign presence to the earth and we do that by falling in love with the natural world. How do we fall in love with the natural world? We have to experience the natural world and to go out and look at it and we only love something if we think it’s sacred. So in a sense, only the sense of the sacred will save us.
DB That’s a perfect ending. Thank you so much.