About this Episode
Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Her singing career appeared to be a thing of the past, when Kim Paulley came to Cortes Island in 1992. The release of ‘Straight From The Heart’ had been promising, but she turned to Classical music. While there had been ‘fantastic’ moments between 1985-90, there was also the toil of auditions (and sometimes not getting the part). Her career was on hold when a friend recommended the retreats at Hollyhock, where George Sirk was a naturalist guide.
“He was ever engaging, charming and I went out on his outings. We became friends. There was an attraction there for sure, too, but I was still married at the time,” Pauley explained.
Then she asked, “George, I want to go swimming at the lake. Can you tell me a good place on the lake to swim where you don't need a swimsuit?”
“And he said,' you want to go to the nudie rock? So, great, okay, and he gave me the directions and everything.”
“Next day, I see him on the deck, and I'm all covered with red spots. ‘The lake itch,’ we used to call it. You don't hear about it much anymore, but he looked at me and said, 'Oh no, I sent you to the wrong place and you've got the lake itch. Did you dry off really quickly afterwards? That's what you're supposed to do.’"
“I said, well, 'I didn't know that part.’"
“He felt really badly.”
“I was only there for about four or five days,and only saw him a few more times. We went out on that morning row with a little picnic of muffins and tea, and sat out on Long Tom.”
“The day I was leaving, I just said goodbye to him, and he said, 'Well, I owe you dinner. I gave you the lake itch, so when I'm in Vancouver sometime maybe we could go for dinner. My mom lives there.’"
“I said, 'yeah, but I am married.’"
“He said, 'oh, okay, we'll see you around.’"
“A year later, David, my husband at the time, had gone off to Arizona to be a production manager there with the opera company there. That was a trial separation. We did try things one more time in Vancouver, but we ended up ultimately splitting up.”
“So by the next summer, I was on my own and I looked George up again. The call of Cortes was very strong. I absolutely fell in love with the place, as many of us do after we've been here the first time, but I also really liked George, too. So I got in touch with him, and he said, ‘well, this is a perfect time to come visit, it's my birthday.’ It was July 25th, and he said, ‘I'm having a huge party,’ which indeed it was. It was a barbecue. Everybody was all over the ten acres of his property.”
“That's when our romance got started. We spent about a week hanging out together. He'd already told me I do have a girlfriend here on Cortes but she's away and decided that we can see other people. So I fell in between the cracks there during that. So when I was leaving, he said, you know, I've got my girlfriend here. So I was like, Yeah, great, but I had gone into it eyes wide open.”
“He stayed in touch and by Christmas, he said, ‘I split up with my girlfriend. It didn't really work out for us, so I'm wondering if you'd like to come for lunch with my mom and I?’”
“Okay, we've gone quickly from us not being a couple to me meeting his mother, But I was interested enough that I said, 'Yeah okay, let's go for lunch.’"
“We really became a couple from there on. We officially say our anniversary is Valentine's Day because that's when we were really committed.”
“I was still working, we were having a long distance relationship, but by the following summer, so that would have been summer of 94, I decided to do a trial move to Cortes. Took a leave from my job, and I stayed.”
“George was very encouraging for me to sing again and it was great, because I don't know if I would have started again otherwise."
“I started singing again with Singing for the Queen. We had our big moment there that ended up on the national news across Canada because Bill Weaver filmed it.”