Author name: Bennett_Owen
Bennett Owen: Salt Water in My Veins, Dirt from the Cowichan Valley Under My Nails I’m Bennett. I live in North Cowichan now, on Vancouver Island. It’s a long way from where I started. I study people. Specifically, I study the messy, beautiful, and often completely illogical intersection of sex, money, and love. Spent two decades as a sexologist and relationship therapist. These days, I write. For the CamoWallet project, I document the hidden stories of this place—the logging roads, the diners, the quiet corners where people build lives. It’s a different kind of intimacy. I was born in Seattle. August 26th, 1981. A Wednesday, I think. My mom always said the nurses at Group Health Hospital were flustered because a heatwave had melted the ice cream machine in the cafeteria. That’s my first memory, if you can call it that—the idea of a city sweating, machines failing, and me arriving in the middle of it. We lived in a cramped apartment on Beacon Hill, and the drone of planes heading for Boeing Field was my lullaby. The world back then felt industrial, grey, and very loud. I don't remember it fondly, not really. It was just... noise. We moved to the Island when I was twelve. My dad got work at the Crofton pulp mill. So, my real growing up happened here, in the shadow of Mount Tzouhalem. I was a weird kid. More interested in why Cheryl Lam forgot her lines in the school play when she saw Jesse across the gym, than in the play itself. The big events here weren't just the usual teenage stuff. It was the summer of '99, when the big fire broke out up on Maple Mountain. I remember the sky turning that sick orange-grey, the ash falling on the cars like snow. We were all on edge. But I also remember sitting on the dock at the old Kinsmen Beach with Sarah McKinnon, the whole world feeling like it was ending, and her just casually saying she’d never been kissed. That contrast—the apocalyptic and the intimate—that's North Cowichan for you. That was my classroom. I graduated from Chemainus Secondary, not knowing I'd already enrolled in a lifelong study of human connection. You know, people trust you with their secrets when you don't flinch. And I've heard it all. The CFO who pays for domination, the couple who can only connect after a fight about a credit card bill. I spent years in cramped offices in Vancouver and Victoria, nodding, taking notes, trying to find the thread. It taught me that we're all just fumbling in the dark, looking for a switch. It wore me out, honestly. The constant weight of other people's shame. I got good at it—really good—but it cost me. There’s a reason I live alone on a quiet street like Beverly now, with just the deer and the owls for company. I'm not broken. Just... saturated. I learned that to be an expert in this field, you have to first admit you're just as lost as everyone else. Maybe more so. That vulnerability, I think, is what made them trust me. That, and I never, ever judged. Still don't. I don't do therapy anymore. Can't. But I write. For the CamoWallet project, I'm crafting pieces about this place. Not puff pieces. Real things. Like the history of the pool hall on York Street, and the deals struck there. Or the stories of the Filipino nurses at the Chemainus Hospital who keep the place running. It's still about connection, see? Just a different medium. It's about mapping the emotional economy of a town, not just the financial one. The same rules apply. Trust. Vulnerability. Transaction. Whether you're talking about dating apps or a municipal budget, it's all just people trying to get their needs met. So now my office is my truck, and my research is a conversation with Bill at the coffee shop on Trans-Canada Highway. It's a slower pace. More honest. Living here... it’s not just a location, it’s a state of being. My mornings start with a drive down the Old Chemainus Road, past the farms, the mist hanging in the valleys. Sometimes I'll park at McAdam Park and just watch the dogs lose their minds. I know every bend in the road up to the lookout on Mount Richards. The way the light hits the water at Sansum Narrows in the late afternoon—it can stop you in your tracks. It’s a place that demands you pay attention. And it’s small. You can't hide here. The guy at the grocery store knows your beer order. The woman walking her dog on Kingsview Road knows you drive too fast. But that's the point. After years of dissecting the most intimate details of strangers' lives, the anonymity of the city felt like a void. Here, the intimacy is different. It's community. It's accountability. It's knowing the name of the person who plows your driveway. This place, North Cowichan, it taught me that connection isn't just in the bedroom or the bank account. It's in the shared silence of a foggy morning on the Chemainus River. And that's a lesson I'll keep learning for the rest of my life.
