Revelation in Telegraph Creek, June 14, 1994

Mystic Mystery

What happened to the eccentric Bible thumper who once roamed Vancouver streets in a truck festooned with Christian commandments?

I first saw the Seventh Day Adventist crusader, parked adjacent to Devonian Harbour Park, at Denman & Georgia across from Nippon Cycle, where I worked in 1978. Somewhere, I have a photo of the scene. That was one of Ernst Ruf’s favourite parking spots to “spread the Word,” as illustrated by other photos I’ve seen since that time. Certainly, the steady stream of traffic heading to the Lion’s Gate Bridge might have seemed to Ruf a location rich with potential converts.

Sometime in the 80s, I saw an interview with him on the evening news. The thing that stuck with me was his unnerving assertion that a revelation from “God” had saved him from the clutches of “fallen women.”

Deliver us from Facebook

I’ve made no secret of my uneasy membership in today’s Church of Social Media. I’m a confirmed agnostic and occasional apostate. Still, like most people, renunciation means isolation from the rest of the global congregation: family, friends, and strangers with common interests.

Last week, at the recommendation of a friend, I applied to join a Vancouver nostalgia group on Facebook. Within moments of acceptance, I stumbled on a photo of Ruf’s Godmobile “Anyone remember seeing this goofy truck?” the poster asked. Indeed I do.

Which brings us to the day in June, 1994 I cycled into Telegraph Creek, a story excerpted here last month.

Gold or God

The condensed magazine version does not include my explorations the day after my epic 9-hour pedal into of the remote village, gold rush town and home of the Tahltan Nation. The following passage is cut and pasted from the (unpublished) book with a working title As Good As Gold.

All about the environs of Telegraph Creek, during my explorations this morning, I find the remains of more recent abandoned dreams. Most intriguing is the discovery of a decrepit truck, overgrown with weeds and, around it, nailed to adjacent fences and buildings, large placards bearing biblical commandments. I swear that this is the same vehicle—a commonplace sight in Vancouver, a decade or so ago—that belonged to a colourful “born again” character, who claimed he had been delivered from his sinful ways, in particular, his penchant for “fallen women,” by a revelation. I recall the towering wagon, plastered in its apocalyptic advice, lumbering around the city.

Revelation 14: 6-14

I wonder if this is where the eccentrics’ vision had finally brought him: to the end of the road? On the tin-clad door of a nearby deserted house, I discover a plastic-wrapped copy of selected verses from the Bible’s Revelations, Ch: 14. The book of Revelations is a fascinating document by any standards.

If I remember the strange story correctly, the narrator’s name is John. He is divine. There are a multitude of stern angels; a dragon or two; a rather unpopular Babylonian woman, riding a nasty seven-headed monster with ten horns; a much nicer lady, dressed appropriately in white. She gets married to a very popular lamb. There is a loud, white-haired guy; lots more sheep; a few horses and naughty people and a very, very bad beast of indeterminate lineage. I’m just as inclined to accept the poet Robert Graves’ theory that the numerological mystery of 666 is all a cover for the reviled Emperor Nero. Anyway, throw in some more sheep, add a cacophony of harpists and trumpeters somewhere off-stage, and amidst the racket you have the setting for the drama.

The only catch is, that only those “not defiled with women” will be able to figure out what is going on—no sex, please, we’re angels!—and get a crack at escaping this awful production.

Under the weathered plastic I read the dialogue of one of the angels who is: “Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgement is come: and worship him that made heaven and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.”

Although I am not inclined towards serious study of the convoluted writings of the early Christian fathers, it is easy to understand a certain reverence for the “fountain” of waters that rage past me, as I walk along the banks of the mighty Stikine.

Hallelujah!

Though late to the Facebook thread dated April 25, I rushed to scan and post the picture above, along with the excerpt you’ve just read. Closer examination of the comments revealed, after all these years, the name of our mystery Bible Man.

However, as I compared photos posted by group members to the jalopy in my photo, its commandments relocated to neighbouring structures, it became clear that the trucks were not the same. Colours could be explained by Ruf’s paintbrush — it was obvious he repainted one truck more than once — but the models differed. What were the chances of another Trucker for God, obsessed with the misogynist verses of Revelations, ending up in Telegraph creek? For one thing, the sign-painting skills clearly came from the same experienced hand.

Wading through nearly 500 comments on the original Facebook post, I came upon a possible explanation. If Ruf had a “fleet” of these apocalyptic billboards, and I gathered from other comments that he was known to travel to the far ends of British Columbia to warn of the Judgement, then it was entirely plausible that one of those trucks might give up the ghost at the end of the world.

Then, returning to those comments, just this morning, I came across several claiming that Ruf met his maker in the Bella Coola Valley — Hagensborg to be exact.

I’d briefly considered adding Bella Coola to my Three Borders Tour. What a gruelling side trip that would have been! Having driven down tortuous Highway 24 in 2013, I’m convinced I’d have never have made it back out of that valley on my bike. After all, my wife and I decided to pay the $750 ferry fare back south rather than brave the return trip on the unpaved “Freedom Highway.”

Evidently, Ernst Ruf, or Ernie Ruff* found his Garden of Eden in the beautiful Bella Coola Valley, a setting not unlike Telegraph Creek, albeit less isolated. Meanwhile, social media synchronicity has intervened to answer another question arising from my photographic archive.

*In my title, I’ve used the name from a Nov. 10, 1987 Vancouver Sun story (posted by a Facebook group member) — surely journalists’ research is to be trusted! — chronicling the disciple’s run-ins with city bylaw enforcement officers. You can see, he is more often identified as “Ernie Ruff” in the Facebook comments.