Catherine King and Wayne Adams spent three decades living together in a floating home they built themselves.Courtesy of Catherine King
Catherine King and Wayne Adams hand-built a floating home together in Canada 31 years ago.
The home is located in Freedom Cove and made up of several buildings floating on Styrofoam.
As idyllic as it looks, the upkeep is tough work, which King is now doing solo after Adams’ death.
For 31 years, Catherine King and her husband Wayne Adams lived side by side on a floating island in Canada they built with their own hands.
Living off-grid was a dream the couple discovered they shared when they first crossed paths at a friend’s place in the summer of 1987. Back then, King — a healer, artist, and dancer — was working as a massage therapist in Toronto, where she grew up, and Adams — a sculptor artist — was working in Victoria.
“In those first conversations, we talked about having the mutual dream of living out in nature,” King, 64, said, adding that the desire stemmed from their childhoods.
Catherine King and Wayne Adams built their floating home 31 years ago.Courtesy of Catherine King
“We were unique kids, we were both small, we were both thin, and we got made fun of a lot and bullied a lot,” she said. “So we found that nature was healing. We had that in common.”
Following their first meeting, which King describes as “cosmic,” the pair quickly moved in together and began searching for a place to build a life together.
Finding Freedom Cove
King and Adams eventually settled on building their forever home on a small inlet nestled off the coast of Tofino, British Colombia, known locally as Freedom Cove.
As a spiritual person, King said she was drawn to the cove not only because it’s secluded and only accessible via a 10-mile boat ride, but because there is a “magic” to it.
“You can’t hide from yourself here. You have to be truthful to yourself,” she said.
The couple initially built the home using discarded pieces of wood.Courtesy of Catherine King
Upon discovering the cove, King said she and Adams quickly decided they wanted to build a floating home close to the shore so they could be part of nature “without interfering with it.”
Call it fate, but the very same summer they found Freedom Cove, a storm blew through the coast, leaving discarded planks of wood on the shore.
“We thought that was a pretty good sign that the universe was in favor of what we were going to do,” King said.
By February 1992, the pair completed work on the float house and moved it out into the cove.
The floating home changed drastically over the decades
In the beginning, their home — which floats using Styrofoam and is tied together using rope in a spiderweb formation — was simply made up of a house. But the couple quickly expanded it with new buildings to accommodate their hobbies and needs.
Adams gathered the materials by putting the word out in local communities. “He would get a pile and then look at the pile and say, ‘Okay, so what can we create from that?'”
As a dancer, King said having a space to move was important to her so the next part of the island that was built was her first dance floor.
Catherine King is a dancer, an artist, and a healer.Courtesy of Catherine King
Bit by bit, as they came across more wood and later discarded metal fish farm equipment, the island evolved to include several greenhouses, a chicken coop, and a large kitchen, as well as a water purification system.
At one point, they also had a candle-making factory, which burned down after Adams accidentally left a wooden stove on during a fire in 2011.
After that, King said Adams decided to build a gallery in its place. He then rebuilt the candle factory outside rather than inside a building, telling King, “If I ever made the same mistake again, we can just cut the ropes and push it off.”
Living on the island has come with its challenges
The fire was far from the only challenge King says they dealt with in the three decades they called Freedom Cove home.
Living so close to nature means they were often subject to it.
“We have winter storms every year, which create destruction,” King said. Each year, storms would destroy whole aspects of their homes and they would have to rebuild.
They also had to replace parts of the home built on old pieces of wood, which had rotted away over time. “I’ve had four rebuilds of the dance floor due to simply nature rotting things,” she said.
It became a maintenance lifestyle, King said. “We always just took that destruction as, ‘Okay, so that broke down. So what can we build from those materials and what do we need to build?
The island requires constant maintenance.Courtesy of Catherine King
Another challenge they faced was the modern world problem of making enough money to afford the upkeep of their home. Things like buying solar panels and replacing them from time to time required making payments.
Seven years after they built the island, they were also discovered by the municipal government and had to start paying yearly taxes. In 2013, they decided to join the rest of the world online by installing internet on the island, which she said costs more out on the island than it does in the city.
As artists, she said they pulled together to work on a “shoestring” budget, but added that they “went for many years where all we made was $6,000 a year.”
“Now that I’m a senior and I have a pension, I feel like I’ve got tons of money, which I don’t,” she added. “But it’s money that comes in regularly, which I’ve never had before in my life.”
Adams died earlier this year, but King has no plans to leave
This year has been a difficult one for King, she told Insider.
Not only did she experience the death of her mother, but also Adams, who died in March following an eight-year rectal cancer diagnosis.
“He stayed as vital as possible, as active as possible. Even right up until his last couple of weeks, he was still working on a major big carving, which I will finish for him,” she said.
Becoming the sole owner of the island has been an adjustment, she said. She’s had to take on the “chores” that once fell to Adams such as running the generators, fueling and changing the propane systems, doing boat runs to the nearby town (which can be perilous depending on the weather), on top of carrying out constant home repairs.
The couple and their pet Chihuahuas.Courtesy of Catherine King
“It’s been a steep learning curve,” she said. Thankfully, she’s had help from friends and family, who have been taking turns staying with King so she’s never alone.
Asked if she ever sees herself leaving, King said: “As I’m going through my grieving process, of course, there’s been moments where everything has just felt too hard, too challenging, but ultimately it always comes back to, no. This is where I want to be.”
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