Cougar Annie was taken out of her garden feet first, but not before she had convinced [Peter Buckland] to buy the place and preserve it. Buckland, a broker from Vancouver, is one of the many dozens of men who over her lifetime had appeared to "help out" and befriend the eccentric old lady. After the last of her husbands (advertised for in the press) had died, and her children fled to places where there was actual plumbing, various men stopped to ask after her well-being, and were immediately pressed into service in the garden.

[Willie Rae-Arthur] was incapable of working outside, and people up and down the coast worried about [Annie]. One government agent's report meant that her three eldest children were taken away from her because they were "living worse than wild Indians." The younger children learned from correspondence courses, but they too, admitted Annie, were often neglected in the service of getting the market garden up and running. As well, they were often hungry, and sometimes starving. One former mayor of Port Alberni remembers Annie setting out for the lighthouse in the middle of the night because of the tides, a baby on her hip and a toddler clutching her skirt, determined to hunt some of the wild cattle rumoured to live around it.

In the garden itself, people who know these things gasp in amazement at the size of certain bushes, or the incongruity of tropical trees in the northern rain forest, and the sheer effulgence of her work. Buckland has added his own refinements: many more paths, outbuildings and found driftwood sculptures. He bought the property in 1981, but it was years before he could give it his full attention. Then year round in the late '80s and '90s, he worked in the garden every day, clearing out and cutting back the invasive species, unearthing what Annie had planted, letting it see light and breathe. He was astonished by the diversity he found.

(Copyright National Post 2002)

BOAT BASIN, B.C. - "Opium," said Peter Buckland, one eyebrow raised. "Mostly."

We had asked why the beauty that was Cougar Annie as a young woman, would choose, in 1915, to live in a place so remote that it took an entire day to row to a settlement of under 500 souls off the West Coast of Vancouver Island. Her husband liked opium. And booze. Willie Rae-Arthur was a handsome remittance man, son of Lord Provost of Scotland who had been pensioned off to the furthest reaches of the empire and married off to a strong, young woman, who figured that a day-long row through difficult seas might be enough of an obstacle to make him sober for at least part of the time.

Cougar Annie is well on her way to becoming a Canadian legend, and not just for the 100 or so cougars she shot in her lifetime on Boat Basin Harbour, or for the husbands she buried, some of whom she may (or may not) have killed. Or for the hardships she endured. Or for the battle she waged to run a post office in the furthest reaches of nowhere. Her legacy is her two-hectare garden carved out of the temperate rain forest, which took every day of daylight, Annie, her assorted husbands and nine living children had, and then some.

Cougar Annie was taken out of her garden feet first, but not before she had convinced Peter Buckland to buy the place and preserve it. Buckland, a broker from Vancouver, is one of the many dozens of men who over her lifetime had appeared to "help out" and befriend the eccentric old lady. After the last of her husbands (advertised for in the press) had died, and her children fled to places where there was actual plumbing, various men stopped to ask after her well-being, and were immediately pressed into service in the garden.

Buckland now runs the garden as a foundation, and offers twice weekly day-long boat trips to avid horticulturalists from all over the world who have heard of the legend that is Cougar Annie's garden.

In the last few years he has been building a Field Study Centre on the cliff overlooking the garden, which he sees as the ideal place for studying the temperate rain forest. There is no other such centre in Canada for studying it, apparently. We fund, as Canadians, studies in the Amazon, but do not study our own, equally diverse, equally important forest. About this, Buckland is passionate.

Throughout our visit, my friends and I puzzle out the possible reasons that would keep Annie here, and settle on, initially anyway, true love. Annie must have loved Willie Rae-Arthur beyond measure, otherwise the work would have driven her back to civilization in the first year. Scattered through the house -- still existent, but falling down -- are novels that preach about how a man is saved from the demon rum by the love of a good woman.

Buckland is more pragmatic. "Those years were like the gold rush, but in land." First, you pre-empted about 65 hectares, then, if you had made improvements, within a few years, you received it in a Crown grant.

The odds against farming in Hesquait Harbour were overpowering. But the dream of creating English meadows, fields and flourishing market gardens beckoned tens of thousands of Europeans up and down this coast.

Clearing the land alone took years. One of Annie's daughters remembers stumps burning all through the night, all through her childhood. There were 12 children, eight of them born alone, in the wilderness, with occasionally an Indian midwife in attendance, and a Catholic missionary near by.

As soon as the first earth could be turned, Annie planted potatoes. And soon, her garden became her obsession, and livelihood. She experimented with as many plants as she could obtain, and brought in rhododendrons and azaleas and heathers and dozens of flowering shrubs. Fruit trees and filberts and walnuts, and many decorative species from Asia. From nurseries and seed houses all over Canada, she purchased flower bulbs. Eventually she had two hectares under intense cultivation and today cuttings from the original plants are craved for their uniqueness.

Then there were her critters. Annie loved animals, plus they helped feed her often hungry children. So she sent for rabbits and goats and chickens and ducks and geese and pigs. Then, in order to protect them from predators, she built fences. Cougars, in particular, were attracted by her goats, and over the years, she devised ingenious ways to catch them, by baiting traps with kid goats, and waiting, sleeping in a shed nearby, gun in her hand, until the kid began to bleat from fear. She was a crack shot, motivated too, by the fact that cougar skins brought in money.

Willie Rae-Arthur was incapable of working outside, and people up and down the coast worried about Annie. One government agent's report meant that her three eldest children were taken away from her because they were "living worse than wild Indians." The younger children learned from correspondence courses, but they too, admitted Annie, were often neglected in the service of getting the market garden up and running. As well, they were often hungry, and sometimes starving. One former mayor of Port Alberni remembers Annie setting out for the lighthouse in the middle of the night because of the tides, a baby on her hip and a toddler clutching her skirt, determined to hunt some of the wild cattle rumoured to live around it.

Today, this drama haunts Annie's acreage. Peter Buckland has preserved her sheds and cabins and house. Even some of her preserves are shelved in odd places, the contents cloudy. The evidence of her half-century and more of brutal work are everywhere, in the rotted wooden path from the beach where she brought in supplies, to the raised walkways, ditches and bridges.

In the garden itself, people who know these things gasp in amazement at the size of certain bushes, or the incongruity of tropical trees in the northern rain forest, and the sheer effulgence of her work. Buckland has added his own refinements: many more paths, outbuildings and found driftwood sculptures. He bought the property in 1981, but it was years before he could give it his full attention. Then year round in the late '80s and '90s, he worked in the garden every day, clearing out and cutting back the invasive species, unearthing what Annie had planted, letting it see light and breathe. He was astonished by the diversity he found.

"I've been captivated by this place and controlled by it," he said. "It's unique. No one could ever feel they're in control here or that they own it. It's the other way around. The place owns you, and takes over your whole life."

So in the end it was love that kept Annie here. But not love for a handsome junkie, or even her clutch of children. It was the garden.