As Mack Laing’s biographer, I must clarify the view expressed by some concerned Town of Comox residents that Laing’s house Baybrook, his waterfront and creek-side home in Comox, has “no heritage value.” The very opposite is true. Indeed, Baybrook is directly equivalent to the writer Roderick Haig-Brown’s house, Above Tide, in Campbell River. Both Baybrook and Above Tide were built in 1923, and Laing’s time at Baybrook (1923-1949) was his most productive as a writer.
But while Haig-Brown was known primarily as a popular writer about fly-fishing and as a magistrate in Campbell River, Laing in many ways had a deeper and more varied talent and influence as an artist, writer, collector, naturalist, and scientist.
Laing wrote his most important books at Baybrook. Five of them are actually set there: Baybrook: Life’s Best Adventure, My Neighbours of the Western Shore, Romance of a Stump-Ranch, Rural Felicity, and The Birds of Heart’s Desire.
But his books are only the start of Laing’s achievement. Baybrook was also home base for his important summer work as a field man for the National Museum in Ottawa, the Smithsonian, and Carnegie Museum, 1920-1939, when he collected tens of thousands of specimens of mammals, birds, and plants, several of which were new to science and were named after him.
While Haig-Brown’s remarkable books are well-known and appreciated, Laing’s primary achievement as a writer and collector has not yet been fully recognized. Like Haig-Brown’s Above Tide, I see Baybrook as an ideal base for preservation and restoration and for the exploration of the many facets of the work of this important twentieth century Canadian — and ultimately perhaps for a writer-in-residence programme.
Your sincerely,
Richard Mackie
Vancouver
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