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Life of Oyster River Hermit Charles Brandt Celebrated
Stephen Hume
Volume 30 Issue 10, 11 & 12 | Posted: December 31, 2016
Bedraggled rain clouds raced away over grey horizons, torn into streamers by a stiff southeaster, while combers worthy of any Tofino surfer came rolling in from Cape Mudge.
Off Campbell River’s beach, a wonderfully un-manicured jumble of drift logs and sea oats, one sea lion cruised, his wedge-shaped snout rising, then vanishing in steady rhythm, followed by the seamless roll of that enormous body, oblivious to the swells.
Beyond the mighty sea lion — we don't call them lions without reason — a pod of porpoises, I counted 18, furiously worked the edge of a current, purple dorsal fins suddenly appearing and disappearing. Above them, riding the wind, gulls wheeled and dipped, occasionally plunging for bait fish, white wings gleaming in the wan November light.
Bedraggled rain clouds raced away over grey horizons, torn into streamers by a stiff southeaster, while combers worthy of any Tofino surfer came rolling in from Cape Mudge.
Off Campbell River’s beach, a wonderfully un-manicured jumble of drift logs and sea oats, one sea lion cruised, his wedge-shaped snout rising, then vanishing in steady rhythm, followed by the seamless roll of that enormous body, oblivious to the swells.
Beyond the mighty sea lion — we don't call them lions without reason — a pod of porpoises, I counted 18, furiously worked the edge of a current, purple dorsal fins suddenly appearing and disappearing. Above them, riding the wind, gulls wheeled and dipped, occasionally plunging for bait fish, white wings gleaming in the wan November light.
The radio on my old truck warned of flooding in the Alberni Valley and the Comox Valley with alerts of more heavy rain. B.C. Hydro was spilling water at the maximum rate on the Campbell River. When I went out to look, the ground trembled as the torrent thundered past. The Quinsam River boiled, too.
The ancient natural world asserting itself, imposing its own rhythms on the bleeping, blinking, tweeting, programmed regularity of 21st-century life, with its carefully constructed illusion of permanence and predictability, seemed like an auspicious omen.
I was in Campbell River last Saturday to attend a special mass at St. Patrick’s Parish. It celebrated the 50th anniversary of the ordination of Frater Charles Brandt and his consecration to the hermit’s life, one of the first monks to be formally acknowledged in this austere monastic tradition by the Roman Catholic Church in a thousand years.
Charles Brandt, 93, greets the audience at a dinner celebrating the 50th anniversary of his ordination and consecration to a hermit's life of solitude and contemplation on Vancouver Island’s Oyster River.
Brandt, soon to turn 94, is much revered by almost everyone for his tireless work on behalf of the natural world, a world he sees as infused with divine purpose. He sought and succeeded in creating reconciliation between factions that thought themselves opposed; built consensus about what needed to be done to restore the natural world in sustainable ways; prodded authorities in government and industry to take up the cause of stewardship he saw as their duty.
He was granted permission to take up life as a hermit by the Vatican half a century ago on the recommendation of then-Victoria Bishop Remi de Roo, who himself came from retirement to deliver the homily. Current Victoria Bishop Gary Gordon gave the blessing. Father Jan Grotkowski presided over the mass itself.
And that mass was standing room only. So was the celebratory dinner afterwards in the parish hall. There were scientists, community leaders, environmental activists, the devout, the lapsed, the agnostic and the irreligious, which tells you a lot about the love and respect in which Brandt is held.
A popular misconception assumes hermits withdraw to a solitary life of contemplation, rejecting the hurly-burly of living in society. That idea descends to us from early Christianity when hermits — the Desert Fathers — did withdraw to the wilderness so that they could dedicate their lives to the service of God without distraction. But that was never the hermit that Brandt was. True, he first went to live alone in a hermitage on the Tsolum River near Courtenay and then later moved, building and all — with assistance volunteered by the Knights of Columbus — to the Oyster River.
While he did indeed practise the reflective life of meditation, supporting himself by repairing and restoring old books and manuscripts from the small bindery and conservation studio in his hermitage, Brandt was also deeply engaged both with the natural world around him — the society of plants and animals — and the human community with which that natural world was inextricably entangled.
He’s a hermit who took a science degree, ornithology, and uses social media to distribute his stunning photographs of wild creatures — a cougar visiting his hermitage, wild swans in flight, a red-winged blackbird.
He writes, ministers, preaches, teaches, leads and does so with a gentle humour and humility. One of the jokes he tells of himself was shared at the dinner.
He had come into Campbell River and was looking for the post office. He asked a young man on the street, got directions and, as he went on his way, invited the young fellow to visit him at the hermitage and “I’ll show you the way to heaven.”
To which he got the reply, “You can’t even find the post office.”
Maybe the young guy should have taken him up on the offer, though. Many have discovered that Brandt's teachings are really about self-worth — about how sacredness infuses the natural world and that to disrespect, degrade and destroy it is to disrespect what is divine in us.
Stephen Hume