The navel-gazing capital of Canada (not even Toronto comes close) has deepened its narcissistic gaze still further with the publication of Chasing Crackpot, by eccentric Tofino author David Pitt-Bulle.
Going at his topic with the furor of the eponymous canine, Pitt-Bulle chomps down on the jugular of every marginally interesting aspect of Crackpot Sound and shakes it till it falls to the ground, bloody and shredded. Nothing is too small to escape his pedantic nose, no adventure insignificant enough not to be chewed over in excruciating detail.
Indeed, despite its name, this breathless paean to the wonders of everything Crackpot does not even restrict itself to Crackpot Sound. P-B wanders far and wide — all the way over to Ukee’s own Barkingmad Sound for one chapter, and 25 miles offshore for another. Though he somehow neglects to mention it, one wonders what P-B’s smoking on his navigation breaks, anyway.
Coincidentally, one also tends to notice that every landscape or human activity turns evil, exploitive or guided by ignorance the instant P-B leaves the Crackpot Sound watershed. But no matter — Tofino, always gracious, is willing to take under its own mantle of achievement anything good or interesting that happens anywhere on the coast.
But hey — let us not be harsh with our northern brothers, here at the Ukee Tattler. The bottom line: Chasing Crackpot is a definite must-read for Ukeeites and others who still, after all these years, have no idea why Tofino is a shining beacon in the world’s eyes and Ukee lies somewhere between a truck stop and a pit toilet.
