My Coffin Cove mystery series is set in an isolated fishing town of the same name. The town is an independent municipality with it’s own Mayor and City Council, RCMP detachment, pub, café and Government dock. Years ago Coffin Cove was a boom town. First coal mining, then forestry and fishing made Coffin Cove attractive to workers all over the country. But where there’s money, there’s usually trouble, and Coffin Cove had the reputation of being a rough town. These days, the economic boom is over. The resource industries have dwindled and although the pulp mill and the sawmills are open, they only employ a fraction of the staff they used to. There is one road in and out. The town is struggling to reinvent itself, but is pulled between those who look to the past for answers and those who yearn for something new. So where exactly is Coffin Cove?
Well, Coffin Cove doesn’t exist of course, except in my imagination, but the description could be applied to many small coastal communities on Vancouver Island. One reader who left a review of “Coffin Cove” commented that they had visited the city of Victoria on Vancouver Island, and it was “nothing like any place they visited on the Island,”.
Yet these small struggling communities exist, kept going by the resilience of their inhabitants.
Coffin Cove is a mixture of places I’ve come to know since I moved to Vancouver Island nearly twenty years ago.
“It must be Port Alberni,” a reader said, because of the pulp mill reference. Or maybe Bamfield – because of the isolation and access on one road? Or Ladysmith? Because of the coal and mining references and proximity to Nanaimo? Or Sayward, because of the demise of the forestry industry?
They are all correct – in part. Tight- knit communities, spectacular scenery, well-kept secret and the ability to survive in changing times. All these places have these things in common with Coffin Cove.
Except the murders. At least, I hope so.