Grant Lawrence Superfeed

Linda and Wayne discover a poacher on their oyster lease and a wild boat chase ensues. 

Linda and Wayne realize that the challenges of full time wilderness oyster farming has turned their lives and sleeping patterns upside down. 

Linda and Wayne face off against a huge cougar that has pinned down one of their goats. Everyone and everything involved in the confrontation suffers the consequences.

Linda and Wayne slowly created a life for themselves in Salubrious Bay, first building their cabin, then creating an elaborate garden. It was when they added goats to the mix when the trouble started.

Through some crafty negotiation, Linda and Wayne purchase the property of their dreams from... host Grant Lawrence's dad. The 5 acre plot is in the Desolation Sound Marine Park. There, they meet an assortment of characters including the Cougar Lady and Russell the (future) Hermit. 

Linda and the crew of the Felicius were drifting aimlessly, somewhere off the coast of Vancouver Island, in the storm ravaged seas of November 1974, when Linda thought she heard something coming out of the grey mist. 

Amidst the chaos of the constant life-threatening storms of the North Pacific, as their boat falls apart around them and a crew member's behaviour turns dangerous, Linda witnesses one of the greatest sights she has ever seen before or since. 

Linda, her boyfriend Wayne, and two strangers find themselves in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a decrepit sailboat with an endless list of potentially life-threatening problems, as they attempt to sail back to Canada against the current and the weather.

Linda Syms and her boyfriend Wayne Lewis agreed to a last minute invitation to join their friend's sailing adventure to Hawaii. It was the fall of 1974, and the couple only had $12 between them and no way to get home. 

Linda Syms spent her childhood constantly on the move across the prairies with her large family, until they eventually wound up on the West Coast in the 1960s. In the summer of 1969, a teenaged Linda attended a basement party in North Vancouver that would completely change the course of her life.

In the early 1980s, host Grant Lawrence's family attended a nude potluck in the hippie wilds of Desolation Sound, BC, during which the conservative family refused to grin and bear it. The potluck was co-hosted by a woman and her husband, a modern day homesteading couple living in a cabin just beyond the beach of the potluck. That woman was Linda Syms. This is her story.

Wild Pick: the life and adventures of Linda Syms, oyster farmer of Desolation Sound, is the latest true story podcast series from Grant Lawrence. Get set for another epic wilderness adventure that chronicles Linda's wild life. At a very young age, she fell in love with an older man who completely changed her life. She eventually became a modern day homesteader and oyster farmer, which led her on a...

This is a special Canada Day 2019 broadcast of the touring show "Grant Lawrence and Friends: Stories and Songs", recorded live at the Max Cameron Theatre in Powell River, BC. This show features musical performances from three Juno Award-winning Canadian artists: Said the Whale, Jay Malinowski from Bedouin Soundclash, and Kathryn Calder from the New Pornographers. Stories provided by Grant. Enjoy!

In this special addendum chapter to the series, Grant Lawrence details the shocking death of Russell Letawsky. 

The hermit would become intertwined in the Lawrence family's life one more time in an unpredictable way. 

The hermit's shack that had stood at the edge of the woods in the cove for twenty years is finally torn down in the early 2000s by a new Desolation Sound neighbour nicknamed Bernard the German.

After more than a decade of living way off the grid, the hermit Russell Letawsky returns to civilization.

Russell gets into a vicious fight in the notorious Lund Pub at the end of the road, the closest watering hole to Desolation Sound.

The Hermit Russell Letawsky constructed a tiny one room cabin to live in permanently along the shore of Desolation Sound with no modern conveniences, running water, or electricity.

Russell settled in a little cove beside host Grant Lawrence's family cabin. Russell would become an unlikely friend of Grant's staunchly conservative father. 

Russell and Audrey hitched a ride on a barge from Toba Inlet, getting off on a beach in Desolation Sound that was recently purchased by Audrey's sister. The area would change Russell's life.

After a month of following only a map and compass from BC's interior, Russell Letawsky and his girlfriend Audrey manage to cross the Coast Mountain Range, which was an incredible accomplishment, but it was still a long way down to the ocean, and they were out of food and starving.

Russell Letawsky and his girlfriend Audrey embark on an epic hike of a lifetime, with the goal of crossing the jagged Coast Mountain Range, from the interior of BC to the ocean, using only a map and a compass, and without the help of any roads or trails – straight up, through the bush, into an area infamous for its landslides and seismic instability. 

Something snapped in Russell Letawsky in downtown Toronto. He felt compelled to get out of the rat race, which led him on a winding road trip to the west. 

A series of events in the late 1960s and early 70s began to change Russell Letawsky from businessman to bushman.