Perri Gorrara and Louis De Ernsted

Dear Denman Island community members,

I would like to write a series of mini-articles about how we all landed on our  beloved rock – Denman Island. Hopefully, this will develop into a document that will be housed in the Denman Museum and Archives and possibly turned into a book that we could all  purchase in support of the museum. I will start with the silly story of how Louis and I found Denman.

Perri Gorrara and Louis De Ernsted

In 2003, Louis and I were living and working in Montreal. Louis, as a Cinematographer and myself as a Production Designer. Louis was fed up with the film business and I started to look about for another place to live in Canada. I found an ad for a fishing lodge for sale in Tahsis and, after many conversations with the owner, Louis and I flew out to BC and drove to Tahsis to see the lodge. On that very day, a “cowboy” from Calgary, who, apparently knew the owner, bought it while we were there. A very disgruntled Louis and I returned to Courtenay before our flight back to Montreal the next day. As we were driving up Vancouver Island, I spotted Denman Island and persuaded Louis to take the ferry over for a  visit.. He agreed, ..”as long as we do not look at real estate”. Needless to say, we did and the rest is history. We live on the first and the last house on Denman and are, forever, happy that we made the choice to move to Denman. As a Londoner, after all, I just moved to a smaller island!

Please contact me at: perilou@mac.com, if you would like to get together and share your story of what brought you to Denman Island.

Cheers, Perri Gorrara