the lost streams of mt pleasant

Tracing the shadows of fallen giants we follow the buried trickle of Brewery Creek- a stream bound and diverted under a litany of condos, cafes, asphalt and concrete. Once a spring nourishing a food source for flora, fauna and a thriving native culture, the Creek was briefly renowned as a site for a host of breweries, distilleries and god-fearing confidence tricksters. Adorning the bottles of one such brewery was the image of a red hand held up as both a warning and an offering. We are told of a race between two lovedumbstruck lads rowing their punts towards a rocky shore. The first hand to touch the shore would win the prize, an ashen faced lass who simply could not choose between her courters and so put them to the test. In a fit of desperation and using what must have been a power saw, the trailing oarsman severed his paw and threw it ahead of his rival, claiming victory and supreme idiocy in equal measure. For whatever reason the red hand made it's way into the imagination of Mt. Pleasant's early entrepreneurs (and perhaps inspiring the severing of three right feet that have recently washed ashore in Georgia Strait) as an apt symbol of a long and storied tradition of hops, hooligans and methodist hucksters. (rb)