The last of my travels in British Columbia: this is the route up the Sunshine Coast on the west coast of the mainland, north of Vancouver, which we took to reach Vancouver Island in 2005. It is a truly lovely drive along with a couple of short ferry rides across the fjords along this spectacular coastline. We were fortunate to be able to buy a CirclePac ticket from BC Ferries which gave us discounted fares on the routes up the coast and to and from the island. I believe we also got discounted fares travelling to the smaller islands such as Hornby, Denman and Cormorant Island (Alert Bay). Sadly this ticket was discontinued in 2011. However, it is still a route I recommend for the scenery alone. Continue reading A leisurely drive up the Sunshine Coast
Category: On the Road
Posts featuring my travels away from home
Alert Bay III: Origin of the ‘Namgis
Long ago when the world was young, after the great flood, a giant halibut (so big you could stand on it) lived at Xwalkw (the mouth of the Nimpkish River). One day he swam ashore and transformed himself into a human. He built a house and made huge beams to be placed on top of the vertical poles, but he was unable to lift them into place. As he worried about his problem he heard a noise and turned around to see a Thunderbird alight on a huge rock.
This supernatural bird offered assistance and grasping a beam in its talons, flew into the sky and put the beam in position. Then he descended and removed the Thunderbird mask and costume and ordered them into the sky saying “You shall never flap your great wings to cause thunder, nor flash your great eyes to cause lightning, only when death comes upon a prince or princess of my descendants.”
He then announced that he would be the brother of the first man and began to build a house for himself. This is why the ‘Namgis have the right to display the Thunderbird and the Halibut as their crests.
Thunderbird
Halibut
Telegraph Cove
On our first visit to Vancouver Island, way back in 2005, we moved northwards after spending a week in the Comox Valley area to spend a few days in Alert Bay, a small settlement on the Cormorant Island which lies off the northeast corner of the Island in the Inside Passage, a 40 minute ferry ride from Port McNeil. (See the map on the Victoria 1 post). Our main reason for going there was to go on a boat trip to look for killer whales (Orcas – the lovely black and white ones).
Before we reached Port McNeil though we decided to branch off at the Nimpkish Lake to the small community of Telegraph Cove which is about 130 miles northwest of Campbell River. Historic Telegraph Cove is British Columbia’s last boardwalk community. It grew out of a one-room station at the northern terminus of the Campbell River telegraph line in 1911 into a chum salmon saltery and later a small sawmill. It hasn’t changed much over the years. Its history is well-remembered and the homes reflect the original era. The sawmill closed in the mid 1980s and the only future seemed in tourism. Today its economy is primarily based on tourism with its proximity to the Robson Bight ecological reserve.
Whale watching, grizzly bear viewing excursions and kayaking are popular activities on the Johnstone Strait and Knight Inlet and most of the cabins on the picturesque boardwalk are holiday rentals or tourist shops and cafés. The Johnstone Strait and Broughton Archipelago are home to a bounty of nature’s magnificence including humpback whales, Steller sea lions, dolphins, porpoises, bald eagles and so much more. The sheltered cove and the chance to see a pod of killer whales have attracted many people to this delightful boardwalk village.
When we visited we encountered the Telegraph Cove Road Improvement project and had an interesting drive on gravel and unpaved diversions past logging yards and sawmills to reach the unique boardwalk resort. Now you will be pleased to hear it is a wide, realigned and paved road all the way. Although I actually quite liked the adventure of “off-roading”.
So here are a few pictures of Telegraph Cove and I will follow with a few posts about Alert Bay as it really is a gem of a find.
Telegraph Cove
The Butchart Gardens
Although we didn’t visit the Butchart Gardens on this trip, it would be remiss of me not to mention it as it is possibly the most spectacular floral display on the continent. It began as a limestone quarry in 1904 established by Robert and Jennie Butchart. They created a family home nearby with sweetpeas and rose bushes. As Mr. Butchart exhausted the limestone deposits his wife began to create a sunken garden in the abandoned quarry and went on to develop other areas such as the Italianate, Japanese and Rose gardens. Successive generations of the family have cared for the gardens which attract a million people annually. Continue reading The Butchart Gardens
The Saanich Peninsula
Our final day on the island and we awoke to rain – the first we had encountered during this trip and a forecast of worse to come. Well we’d done quite a lot – again – and not enough – again – so today would be a “quiet day”. We had contemplated a visit to the world-famous Butchart Garden, a must see if you have not been there and like gardens of course. Instead we decided on the little known Abkhazi Garden in Oak Bay, which has been designed around the glaciated rocky slopes and magnificent Garry oaks. Continue reading The Saanich Peninsula
TRAVEL WORDS 