Traveling Johns

Our first stop of the day was the Quw’utsun’ Cultural Centre in Duncan. The Quw’utsun’ people, whose name was Anglicized to Cowichan, were the first residents of this area and they still are a strong presence. We were a little hesitant to go to the center fearing it would be not be dog-friendly and would be nothing but a tourist trap. We were wrong on both counts. They were quite happy to let the dogs in with us, and we had an interesting guided tour which helped us understand a little of the culture of this First Nation.

Our guide was Josh, seen in the picture below. He was a little stiff as tour guides go, but he was friendly to the dogs and quite knowledgeable about his culture.

 

The dogs did not seem to notice the fine Northwestern native paintings, but the humans liked them.

 

The humans particularly appreciated the the remarkable carvings, too.

 

The dogs had been gazing fondly at the river from the moment we arrived at the center, and the people there suggested a point just upstream where they could dip themselves into the Cowichan River. It was not particularly scenic spot in some ways. There were a couple homeless guys hanging out there and quite a bit of trash that we left out of the picture. The water was surprisingly clear and clean however, and both dogs and one of the humans took a dip. Eli jumped in excitedly after his ball; Edie had to be taken in and dumped since the dainty girl only likes to get her paws wet.

 

John found this critter in the stream.

 

We had not had any breakfast, and by now we were ready for lunch. The Cowichan Valley is the best wine region on Vancouver Island and the guidebooks suggested a couple vineyards as a good place for lunch. We found the Cherry Point Vineyard and had a really fine lunch there.

 

While we were waiting for our food, John walked around and explored a bit of the farm. He liked the way that the vineyard seemed carved out of the forest. And those Canada Geese are just everywhere in Canada.

 

Driving down to Victoria, we spent most of the afternoon at the Albert Head Lagoon Provincial Park just west of Sooke. It was a pleasant place to toss the ball in the water and read a book. But even we are tired of taking pictures of Eli retrieving the ball, so you will just have to take my word for it that it was nice.

We were scheduled for the 7:30 sailing from Victoria to Port Angeles. Since this is an international trip, the requirements were stiffer than just an ordinary ferry sailing. We were informed that we had to be there at least 90 minutes ahead of time or we would be denied boarding. We arrived at the ferry terminal even earlier than that, so after we picked up our tickets we had a last wander around the lovely waterfront of Victoria.

The ferry information said that the dogs had to be on deck and could not remain on the car deck. The people working on the boat told us we could ignore that, but I decided to take them up and let them bid Canada goodbye. The whole experience seemed to make the dogs a little nervous, and they became very anxious anytime John walked away, even if he was only going to take a picture.

Eli did finally take some time to look at the land disappearing from the stern of the ship.

 

It got pretty cold as we were crossing the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and John decided to warm himself in the cabin. I stayed on deck with the dogs. I was very affectionate with Edie because she was a remarkably good leg warmer.

At last, our boat approached Port Angeles.

It wasn’t easy to get affordable, dog-friendly accommodation in Port Angeles, and we are at the Days Inn tonight. It beats sleeping in the car, but just barely. Tomorrow we start to explore the Olympic Peninsula. 

Today was BC Day. Until this weekend, we were completely unaware of this holiday, but the folks in British Columbia take this opportunity to celebrate their history and culture seriously. There aren’t any parade or fireworks, but all kinds of places close for a three day weekend. This was also our BC Day when we drove from one side of Vancouver Island to the other and a bit of all sides of life in this province.

We began our day in Tofino. Much as we liked our condo there, we were irritated by a 10:00 am checkout and a list of things to do when we left that rivaled the work assignments in any youth hostel. We packed the car and started out of town. As we were leaving, we decided to give the dogs one last shot at the Pacific beaches. So we stopped again at Chesterman Beach, the larger of the “town” beaches. The sand all along this coast is both very soft and very firm. John was fascinated by the way people can ride bikes up and down the beach. We never had a chance to do that. Maybe another time….

 

I am pretty proficient with the “chuck it” now, and I really gave Eli and workout chasing that ball.

 

We also found a cool little sea cave a bit down the beach. John, of course, immediately that I pose. Edie seemed to find this whole thing weird. Eli was busy thinking about his ball.

We left Tofino and drove to Ucluelet, Tofino’s more working class sister town 30 kilometers south. It was even less charming than we expected, and even though we were ready for lunch, we decided to push on. We stopped at the tourist information booth on the highway and asked Paddy, the young man at the counter, where we could take the dogs. He suggested going to Kennedy Lake, about six kilometers inland. We bought some overpriced sandwiches from a nearby store and headed there for a picnic.

The fog, even in August, only clings to the beach and you don’t have to go far inland to find sun. Kennedy Lake is the place where the local go for warm water and probably to escape the tourists. The beach was not quite as soft as the sand on Chesterman, but the water was pleasant and the sun a glorious change from two days of solid fog. Eli again had a great time chasing his ball. He was not supposed to be off-leash here as it the Lake is still part of Pacific Rim National Park, but when the ranger arrived we were packing up and they were not running around.

 

We again took the winding road from the coast through the interior. John drove this time, so we took less time than we had when I drove. We were ready to stop for some coffee in Port Alberni, but discovered that most stores seemed closed for BC Day. The guidebooks did not have much coverage of Port Alberni, an old lumber town where there are still several paper mills, but one suggested climbing the clock tower on the wharf. Port Alberni is at the head of a long fjord that goes all the way to the ocean at Ucluelet. The view was nice, but nothing extraordinary.

 

Returning to the main Nanaimo-Victoria highway, we headed toward the Cowichan Valley and the town of Duncan where I had made hotel reservations for the night. Along the way, John discovered that Canadians can do dumb roadside attractions almost as well as Californians can. While not quite as wonderful as the dinosaurs at Cabazon, this gnome is pretty great.

 

All the guidebooks recommend Duncan, though they are somewhat vague about what exactly you should do and see there. It calls itself “The City of Totems” and indeed there are about 40 totem poles scattered throughout the downtown area and a pathway of painted feet to lead you from one to another.

Had we come to Duncan on another day we might have liked it better. But they take BC Day very seriously in Duncan and not a single shop or restaurant was open. Most had, in fact, been closed for the entire weekend as well. I don’t usually quote John Denver, but this song did come to mind:

Saturday night in Toledo, Ohio is like being nowhere at all.
All through the day how the hours rush by, you sit in the park and you watch the grass die.
Ah, but after the sunset, the dusk and the twilight, when shadows of night start to fall.
They roll back the sidewalk precisely at ten and people who live there are not seen again.

Rather than returning to our hotel room by the highway – which we weren’t thrilled with either – we decided to explore the area. And I am glad we did because we found the pretty little town of Cowichan Bay just down the road a bit. There is a small harbor there and a lot of shops and restaurants in old buildings on the water’s edge. John was fascinated by this unusual use for a surfboard he saw there.

 

There was also quite a lovely sunset.

 

We had a lovely, if overpriced, meal at a nice restaurant there. John liked the visual presentation of his crab though he had the toughest time getting some of the meat out of those legs.

This is our last night in Canada. Tomorrow, we catch the ferry from Victoria to Port Angeles. We will leave with great memories. As the Quebec license plates proclaim, “Je me souviens”, “I remember”. And so we will.

At daybreak, Tofino was once again wrapped in thick, wet fog. We have been pretty lucky with lots of sunshine on this trip, so these cool, cloudy days don’t really bother us. And they do not make going to the beach a disappointment when you are there to throw a ball to your dog.

Eli loves his tennis balls, but he also chews them up in short order. So far, no tennis ball on this trip has lasted more than a day. So we decided to invest in some rubber balls, and these came with one of those wands which help you throw it farther and faster. We took the dogs down to Long Beach, part of the Pacific Rim National Park. This is a wonderful beach, several miles long, and at low tide it seemed to stretch out just as far into the ocean. Dogs are not supposed to be off-leash here, but there was nobody around except another couple who were playing with their dog in the surf, too. John and I had a blast tossing the ball and having Eli chase it. Edie joined in by trying her best to distract Eli so he would not find it.

 

When Edie successfully distracted Eli, I’d run and see if I could get the ball before he finally figured out where it was. He usually got these just before I did, but a couple times I beat him. And then the two dogs knocked me over on their way to get the ball once. I was soaked and covered in sand, as you can see below, but having such a good time that I hardly cared.

Our dogs met up with the other couple’s dogs, and they all had a good time chasing each other.

 

This Long Beach is not at the edge of condo towers and motels, but juts up against the deep green of the northern rain forest. Walking back to the car, we found some enormous banana slugs.

 

We returned to the condo so that I could get into some dry clothes, and then we set out on a big adventure of the day, a trip to the hot springs. Vancouver Island is adjacent to the Cascadia Subduction Zone, so geothermal activity is hardly surprising here. The hot springs are about 20 miles north of the town, but there is no way to get there except by boat. Several companies sponsor trips there. Since none of them will take dogs along – a good idea since I do not think that the dogs would understand 100 degree water until it was too late – we picked the one which had kennels and would take your dogs for a walk while you were gone. So, after signing all the usual waivers of liability, we took the dogs down to the basement. Edie immediately sensed that she did not like what was about to happen, and made a valiant bolt for freedom. Eli just happily walked into his cell.

The trip to the hot springs by boat takes a couple hours. As we were leaving the dock, we caught sight of our condos. As Josie, our guide yesterday commented to us, the Eik Landing condos look much better from the water than they do when you’re there.

 

There were about a dozen of us on a small powerboat. The pilot took us through the sound where he showed us a number of animals. Our favorite was this pair of bald eagles nesting in a cedar on a small island.

We then went out into open water where we saw at least a dozen whales. Of course, it’s hard to get a picture of a whale because by the time you grab your camera they’ve already gone under again. But John did manage to get a bit of gray whale tail in the picture you see below. The bodies encrusted with barnacles – those pictures will only be printed in our memories.

The hot springs are located about a 100 meters from the shore – see, I’m trying to be Canadian here – and the water cools somewhat as it flows over the rocks and into the ocean. This is a picture of the springs we took from the boat.

However, you cannot get off the boat right there at the springs. Instead, you have to dock on the other side of the point and walk about two kilometers to get to the springs. This is just as good, in some ways, as the springs themselves. The path is all set on an elevated boardwalk and the trail leads through the densest, greenest rainforest we have seen.

The springs seemed crowded at first, but we had chosen the last trip of the day to go to the park and after we had been there for only a few minutes our group virtually had the whole place to ourselves. Compared to a lot of hot springs, the water here was pretty clear and did not smell quite as sulfurous as some springs do. I had a good time soaking; John was absolutely in heaven.

 

The trip home took us through some of the most gorgeous landscape I have ever seen in North America. I understand why many Canadian fought so hard to stop logging in the Cloyoquot Sound and why it is a designated biosphere reserve. The interplay of light and fog and land was amazing. John stayed on the stern for the whole trip back with camera ready.

When we did make it back, the two prisoners in doggie jail were very happy to see us!

We had some takeout from a local fish and chips stand, and I think everybody will go to bed early.

It was gray and foggy today. In fact, we learned that the month of August is so typically foggy in Tofino that they call it “Fogust” here. But we still had a great time.

Our day began the the Tofino Botanical Gardens. Yesterday we had seen a sign in a storefront window about a free mudflat interpretive walk there this morning.  It sounded interesting, and the gardens are only a short distance from our condo, so we decided to go. It was a great decision! The Tofino Botanical Garden features plants from this area and from other temperate rain forest environments around the world. The cultivated areas fit perfectly into the existing landscape. Plants are nicely labeled.  Bits of sculpture are scattered around the garden.

Despite an official no dogs policy, our canines were in fact quite welcome and Edie even found Petie, the resident dog, to be a wonderful playmate.

Our tour group was quite large today. There is a “field station” in the garden. This is kind of a hostel for visiting groups. This weekend there was a large group of international students who are studying English in Victoria for the summer at the hostel and they joined us for the tour. Our guide was Josie. A Vancouver Island native, she was very knowledgeable about everything connected to the natural environment of this area. She also had an instinctive sense of how to speak to kids and particularly to kids who are still learning the language. She began by showing us just how extensive these mudflats are on the map.

 

We then moved down to the shore where she pointed out some of the birds. During March and April hundreds of thousands of migrating birds visit the mudflats. There are not many there in July or August, however. She then went out on the mud and began to dig, showing us that the mudflats are filled with the most delicious things to eat – at least if you’re a bird.

 

There are lots and lots of shrimp and crabs in the mud. These are not as big as the ones that humans like to eat, but if you are a bird they are definitely bite-sized.

She invited anybody who wanted to explore the mudflats to go out and take a look. Most of the visiting students were Asian, and they just stood on the rocky shore. But a group of intrepid Mexican students kicked off their shoes and starting digging in the mud themselves.

 

I figured there was no reason why I shouldn’t join them, and the dogs were quite happy to get muddy paws. It was mucky, though surprisingly warm. At points I sank up to my knees. The dogs, with weight distributed over four legs, found it pretty easy to move on the mud.

 

After the students left, we stayed around a bit to talk to Josie. She told us a little more about the geological history of the area, particularly the earthquakes and tsunamis which have shaped the land. She gave us some tips about places to go with the dogs and places to eat. She said that the Wickaninnish Inn, the most expensive place to stay in Tofino, does indeed have a fantastic restaurant, but that it was pretty reasonable for breakfast or lunch. We decided that we would eat our lunch there.

There were not that many people there, so we had a prime table by the window overlooking the beach. The food was great! John’s Crabcakes Benedict was a delight not only to the mouth but also to the eye.

 

The dogs had to stay in the car while we had lunch, but they were able to get out and romp on Chesterman Beach right next to the hotel. This is not the biggest beach in the area. That would be Long Beach in the nearby Pacific Rim National Park. Josie warned us that the rangers the the park were pretty strict about the leash requirement there, but that Chesterman was where all the locals took their dogs. And our pups loved it there!

 

Once again we were surprised by how relatively warm the water was. The sand was particularly fine and soft on bare feet. In the picture below, you can see the restaurant on the left side of the building. The picture does not really capture, however, just how big and broad the beach is.

 

After a couple hours at the beach, we went back into town. We somehow lost one of the leashes on the beach, so we had to pick up another one. Like so many things in Canada, it cost way more than the equivalent item back in the States. But we were amused to find in addition to the coop shops this store. We had noticed that the animosity to Los Angeles, so typical of northern California, is not shared north of the 49th parallel.

 

There was also a gallery called the Eagle Aerie which was showing the prints of a local native artist. The gallery is so well-known that it is even the subject of local painting!

In the evening, we finally watched Twilight. We figured that since we will be in Forks, Washington next week we might as well know something about this cultural phenomenon. I’ll leave the reviews to others.

This morning we packed the car, seriously wondering why we had brought everything into the hotel in the first place. We walked across the street to the Friday morning farmer’s market. It was not much:  far more crafts than food. There was one booth where a couple of very serious looking people were hawking some kind of book about talking to your children about Santa Claus. I had a feeling they did not approve of the old gent.

One of the things we bought at the market was a jar of strawberry preserves sold by the ladies of Saint Paul’s Anglican Church. Since the church was right next to the hotel, we decided to just stick our heads in and take a picture. As I was leaving I was pleased to see the poster for the parish EFM program!

 

We left Nanaimo on the main highway once again passing an almost unbelievable number of strip malls. Fortunately, there were fewer billboards to mar the view. Our guide on the little ferry boat last night had told us we should stop in Parksville on the way up because it was a great beach for dogs. It was wonderful advice. It is a huge, flat beach and the water is surprisingly warm.

 

Edie and Eli found some playmates. When other dogs were not around, Eli chased his tennis ball into the water.

 

It is not altogether easy to see in the picture below, but we found the most fantastic little hotel there. You can see the turrets of the castle there behind the RV’s and there is a real snow-covered mountain in the background. It must be just like being at Disneyland for a whole lot less money.

 

Edie half-heartedly chased a few birds, but this flock of Canada Geese paid little attention to her.

 

The road from Parksville to Port Alberni is pretty straight and fast. But after Port Alberni towns vanish and the road become incredibly winding. It’s just gorgeous as you drive past groves of giant cedar and dark fjords with glaciers looming in the distance. But at no point do you ever take your eyes off the road particularly as you try to shoot past the RVs when there is the occasional broken line on the pavement. We will have to take this road back, so perhaps we will stop and take a picture then.

We came into Tofino a little after three in the afternoon and found our condo without any problem. But we were not supposed to check in until four, and the cleaner was busy using the wireless internet connection and not inclined to let us in until he was done. So we went into the village and talked to the woman at the tourist information office. She suggested we take the dogs to the nearest town beach, Tonquin Park. It was a great place to pass an hour. You have to walk down a wooden boardwalk and stairs to reach the beach.

Once there, the dogs romped around and got their feet a little wet.

 

Once it was past four, we went back to the condo. It is right on the water overlooking Tofino Harbor and the islands of Clayoquot Sound.

We learned that the development is called Eik Landing after the Eik cedar tree shown in the picture below. This is possibly the oldest tree in the area. It started to grow sometime around 1200 AD! It was sacred to the First Nations people who lived here. Unfortunately, the trunk has become so weak with age that the city was about to have to cut it down to prevent an accident. Residents decided instead to create a system of supports to keep the tree alive for as long as possible.

This is maybe the nicest place we have stayed on the trip so far – except, of course, for Mike and Ellen’s house – and the best feature of the place is the balcony with its views of the water. John found his way there right after we were finished packing, and he soon had some company as well.

 

Here is what you see from right outside our living room.

  

After soaking in the view for a while, we walked into the village with the dogs. Tofino is about a far west and you can go in British Columbia, other, I suppose than the Queen Charlotte Islands.

 

As we walked around, we watched fingers of fog go in and out of the inlets and island of the Sound.

We stopped by the grocery store and picked up some salmon and chicken which we cooked on the grill for dinner. We spent the night watching all the episodes of Summer Heights High on cable.

Tomorrow, we’ll explore more of the beaches of this area.

When we woke up this morning, it was cool and gray. We decided that we had done most of what we intended to do in Victoria and we were ready to move on to our next destination, Nanaimo. We packed the car up and headed out of town. Along the way, we stopped near some of the grand houses in the Uplands area of the city and looked at some of them from the beach. Many, like the one below, reminded me a lot of Maine.

We glanced at the Abkhazi Garden which had been planted and tended by some expatriate royalty from somewhere or other. Nobody was twisting our arm for the admission fee of 10 dollars, so we just took a quick look and left. After the Butchart Gardens, it seemed like a really good back yard.

We were driving past the converted church where we saw Billy Bishop last night, so we stopped and took a snapshot.

Once we reached the unattractive outskirts of Victoria, the fog lifted and it became warm again. Traffic was bad on the Trans-Canada, but not as awful as it had been yesterday afternoon. British Columbia seems to have missed out on Lady Bird Johnson’s campaign against roadside billboards, and it is depressing to drive past ugly advertisements on the highway. And that’s after you’ve driven through the endless strip mall developments. These folks really need somebody to help them with urban planning.

We pulled off the highway to go to the town of Chemainus. We were here years ago. This is an old logging town which has tried to reinvent itself as an arts center. There is a big theater which for Broadway musical revivals – Guys and Dolls is being mounted now – and and just about every large wall in town they have painted murals illustrating the history of the area.

 

The dogs were indifferent to the art generally, unless some other dog had apparently done some art appreciation there previously….

Our final stop for the day was the city of Nanaimo. At one point, this was one of the most important cities in Canada. It was here that Robert Dunsmuir had his coal mining operations, and there were also extensive sandstone quarries operating here. The San Francisco Mint – the old one down on Fifth Street, not the new one near the Church Street Safeway – is made of sandstone quarried from Nanaimo. Logging later became a major industry in the area, but by the last 1970’s that had also disappeared and the town was in serious decline. They have tried to redevelop the old harbor area to made it attractive for tourists and retirees, and to some degree this has been successful.

We arrived in the late afternoon to our downtown Best Western, and our plan for the evening was to take a little ferry from the waterfront to Newcastle Island. This was once a resort run by the Canadian Pacific Railroad, but was acquired by the Province as a park. The weather was perfect, and we had a wonderful couple hours walking around the island.

Our ferry operator was a retired teacher. He did not seem to miss it….

As evening fell we walked around the city. John snapped this picture of the waterfront. He’s getting pretty good with that new camera, don’t you think?

Our dinner was at the Modern Cafe. The decor was great, the food mediocre, but it was pleasant to sit on the sidewalk and watch evening fade into night.

Tomorrow, we leave to adventures on the west coast of the island.

We actually had an early start to our day. Our big adventure, as I mentioned yesterday, was to go to Butchart Gardens. We have both been there several times before and we know how crowded it can get. So we decided to get there just about at the moment it opened.

Here are a couple shots of our place. There is a nice deck which we can use if we want, though it really belongs to the main house. It does have a view of the ocean.

In the back there is a little sauna. Since there is not all the much privacy in this back yard, I am not sure how practical this is.

 

After stopping at Starbucks for some coffee, we made a quick trip to Butchart Gardens. Robert, the English voice on our GPS, insisted on calling it “butch art” gardens – which it really isn’t. Butchart Gardens is surprisingly dog-friendly. Canine have to be on leases, of course, and they cannot be in the buildings, but there are dog water fountains throughout the grounds and the folks in the information booths have an amply supply of dog biscuits to hand out as treats.  

Robert Butchart was a successful cement manufacturer. After he had extracted all the commercial-grade limestone from his quarry on the Saanich peninsula, he and his wife Jenny decided to turn this industrial waste area into their home and garden. I suppose today we would think of this as an example of brownfield redevelopment. You can still see evidence of the old quarry in the “sunken garden”.

The deepest portion of the quarry was just turned into a lake. The fountain was added much later, but it is a nice touch.

One of the first things that Robert and Jenny planted was the Japanese Garden. Japanese gardens were the rage in British Columbia in the teens and twenties. Ironically, this was also the time that the Provincial Legislature successfully outlawed all immigration from Asia.

We talked to a tour guide who had the strongest Canadian accent John thought he had ever heard. It turned out she was from Minnesota! She was funny and offered to take our picture.

Besides the sunken garden and the Japanese garden, there is a rose garden and an “Italianate” garden which really did not remind me of anything I had ever seen in Italy.

     

After a couple hours, it started to get more crowded and a little warmer. The dogs were ready to go home. They had been real celebrities during their time in the garden in which at least two dozen people stopped us to pet them or even get their pictures taken with them. I have no idea how often I had to answer the question, “What kind of dog is that?” I was surprised, though, that many people accurately identified Edie as a Bouvier des Flandres despite her Giant Schnauzer haircut. 

We stopped at a farm market along the way, and returned home briefly to have lunch and pick up a couple things. We then set out for Craigdarroch Castle, probably Victoria’s second most famous tourist attraction. We had never gone here on previous trips to Victoria because it seemed just so “touristy”. But there is often a reason why things are popular, and Craigdarroch Castle proved to be an interesting excursion. It is a particularly garish bit of late Victorian architecture as you can see in this picture, nicked from the British Columbia tourism website.

The interpretive leaflet we received with our admission referred to it as “bonanza” architecture, typical of the kinds of homes constructed by self-made industrialists in the late nineteenth century. John struck a pose which certainly seemed to capture the larger-than-life sensibilities of these robber barons.

This particular robber baron was named Robert Dunsmuir. A Scot, he emigrated to Vancouver Island in the mid-nineteenth century. Starting out as a miner, he managed to become owner of the largest coal mines on the Pacific coast. He sold much of this coal to the Southern Pacific railroad and a plaque in front of the house notes their connection to the Big Four.

The house has amazing woodwork inside, particularly the grand central staircase.

Although some of the rooms have yet to be restored – it was used as a military hospital and a school after the family sold it – the main rooms are set up in the style of the “mauve decade” of the 1890’s.

 

There is some lovely stained art here.

There is also a lot of really, really ugly Victoria kitsch as well. This, of course, is a little more fun than the tasteful stuff.

The smoking room, with its picture of Sir Walter Raleigh, may suggest why Robert Dunsmuir never actually lived long enough to move into this house. Just as  guess….

 

After this, we traveled a couple of block to the Lieutenant Governor residence. Canada is nominally a monarchy, although a recent poll showed than less than 5 percent of Canadians knew that the Queen was Head of State. In each province, the Queen is represented by a Lieutenant (pronounced lef-TEN-ant if you’re a royalist) Governor. The residence is modern and frankly as ugly as any seaside hotel in England, but the grounds are interesting. They show some of the last remaining stands of Garry Oak in Vancouver Island. This was once the predominant ecosystem on the south and east coasts of the island.

The parts of the grounds that are not wooded and rocky have some pretty flower beds.

 

After our visit here, we tried to go to a provincial park on the other side of town that came highly recommended in some guide. But the traffic on the Trans-Canada Highway was as bad as any I have ever seen in Los Angeles, so we gave up and went to the sweet little beach by our house.

In the evening, we went to Billy Bishop Goes to War. This is a revival of what is considered the most successful Canadian musical of all time. It deals with the exploits of Billy Bishop, a loser from Owen Sound, Ontario – oddly enough, also the birthplace of Robert Butchart – who somehow became the most celebrated fighter pilot of World War I. Originally written in the 1970’s, this two man show is really an anti-war piece. But it is a brilliant showpiece for the lead actor. In this production that role was taken by the immensely talented Ryan Beil.

The play was performed in an old church in an interesting central Victoria neighborhood. The set design and lighting were perfect.

Tomorrow, we leave Victoria and head off to Nanaimo. 

We intended to leave Salt Spring early, but somehow we just did not make it to the 9:50 ferry. We did a last load of laundry, clean up the cottage, and packed the car. We headed south to the village of Fulford where you catch the ferry to Swartz Bay on Vancouver Island. Fulford seems like a place where the 1960’s live on. The old houses are painted gaudy colors and every shops sells pottery and organic baked goods.

The ferry ride from Fulford is actually free! I guess BC ferries figures that you must have already paid enough on your previous rides to get to Salt Spring. It is not a particularly nice boat, however, and we were parked   not far from a garbage truck.

 

John and I went up on deck to look around. Poor Edie and Eli were stuck in the car. Of course, maybe Edie liked the smell of the garbage truck! Parked only a couple of cars behind us was the woman Edie had slammed into yesterday on the beach. We had a nice talk, and she assured us that she was fine and scheduled for a knee replacement anyhow.

 

We arrived at our new digs in Cadboro Bay, just east of Victoria. It was not easy to find a place which was affordable and took dogs in Victoria. We are actually in a small basement unit underneath a house in a suburban neighborhood. It’s been nicely setup as a rental unit, but we miss the stunning natural views we had on the islands. However, it’s only a short walk to the beach. There’s a nice playground there for the kids.

 

For dogs, there are off-leash areas on the sand and in the park. Edie really does not like to chase a ball, but she enjoys trying to get Eli distracted when he is chasing it.

 

We went into Victoria. Since the car was filthy after a week on the islands, we first went to the car wash. It was not in a  particularly picturesque part of the city, so we did not bother to take pictures. We then went to the very picturesque waterfront where we took lots of pictures. Here are the dog with totem poles.

 

And here they are at the BC Provincial Legislature buildings.

 

And here at the Empress Hotel. Dogs have no interest at all in having afternoon tea, so we did not bother with it.

 

Instead, we followed a walking tour of the waterfront which I had found on the tourist board’s website. It helped us find a few places we might otherwise have missed. For example, we walked down a small alley off of Yates Street where it pointed out that the pavement was made of wooden bricks.

In the evening, we went to a performance of Good Timber and the Royal British Columbia Museum. It is a show featuring mostly the poetry of Robert Swanson set to original music. Swanson is supposed to be for loggers what Robert Service was for gold miners, but his poetry really isn’t very good. It works reasonably well, however, as song lyrics and the show was well-done and entertaining. The difficulty with the material, of course, is that the loggers that Swanson celebrated were engaged in the wholesale destruction of the North American temperate rain forest. There were some new poems incorporated into the show which acknowledged this troubling fact.

 

Tomorrow, off to Butchart Gardens and other adventures.

We had a late start to the day. We have both started to warm to our hillside cottage which seems  to float in a cloud of  birch, madrone, and Douglas fir trees. Of course, having cable TV also makes it harder to get going in the morning. We now have opinions on a whole variety of Canadian political issues which we had never even heard about a week ago.

We took a drive around the north end of Salt Spring Island. If the south end, near Burgoyne Bay, seems to have attracted the old hippies, the north end has attracted the investment bankers and law firm partners. There are lots and lots of stunning homes nestled in the trees above the rocky shores. Most have docks where you can park your yacht should you decide that the ferry from Vancouver is just not classy enough!

 

I found this cool looking rock on the beach. Sadly, it broke in the car.

 

We  found another beach on the east side of the island where there were a number of dogs already frolicking on the beach. We pulled off and let ours join theirs.

We did have to beat a bit of a retreat when Edie ran into the woman throwing the stick. She had bad knees and was not happy about it. She was also absurdly possessive of a couple sticks she had found on the beach and felt that only her dogs should be interested in chasing them.

We boarded the ferry for Pender Island in the mid-afternoon. After a while, the novelty of taking pictures from the ferry and of the ferry wears off, and the Queen of Nanaimo is not the most luxuriously craft in the BC Ferries fleet. We decided to just make a day trip to Pender and return late at night. All the guidebooks suggest skipping North Pender and driving directly to South Pender. The two islands were once one island joined by an isthmus until enterprising Victorians decided that every isthmus needed a canal. So now you take a one-lane bridge from one island to the other. But, before we reached the bridge, John decided to pull off at a cemetery and look around. I found this a bit perplexing since our time was short, but as always he proved to be right. There were some fabulous headstones here:

I hope I never meet up with those Pender Island Dachshunds….

We were looking for Beaumont Marine Provincial Park, but we never found it. Instead, we discovered this exquisite little cove with stunning views of Mount Baker and Orca Island. We stayed there for a couple hours, and for most of that time we had it to ourselves. I read Tent of Blue to John and Eli got thoroughly soaked retrieving his ball from the water time and time again. 

After this, we stopped at Poets Cove resort for dinner. This place had come highly recommended in the guidebooks. It’s basically a partial ownership place, but they rent out cottages and rooms when they are not in use by the owners or if they have not yet been sold. The entire place was pretty dog friendly.

Make that deer-friendly, too, because these garden destroyers seemed to have the idea that this place belonged to them. The full-time residents of these islands do not like deer, but I suppose that the management of Poets Cove decided that the cost of replacing plants was more than equaled by the photographs that city tourists would take with the animals.

  

We had a leisurely supper at the patio restaurant. They have a fancier restaurant, but we decided we were not quite dressy enough for it nor did we want to spend that much. The food was good and it was nice to just sit and look at the boats in the harbor and the sunset. After dinner, we walked up and down the docks looking at the boats. There were some that even hailed from Newport Beach and North Carolina!

We made sure, speaking of boats, that we were back in Otter Bay in time to catch the last ferry of the day. It was the dumpy old Queen of Nanaimo again, but it took us back to Salt Spring in no time at all.

Tomorrow, on to Victoria!

Some travel days are about as frantic as any you can have at work. A couple of our days in Seattle and Vancouver were like that. Today was a slow and restful day.

Both of us went to the morning Eucharist at All Saints by the Sea, one of the three locations of the Anglican Parish of Salt Spring Island. It is a modern building, not particularly attractive from the street, but inside you can see that it salvaged elements of a much older building. John was taken by the old needlepoint kneelers and took a discreet picture of them (snapping photos during a service generally being frowned on). Again, there were few empty seats and people were quite friendly afterwards at coffee hour.

We went back home, picked up the dogs, and headed to the top of Mount Maxwell. This is not quite the tallest peak in the Gulf Islands, but it is reasonably accessible and offers stunning views eastward towards Vancouver Island. The fences tend to spoil the view, but it is a 500 foot sheer drop at that point, so I suppose some accommodations have to be made to safety.

We found some of the biggest foxgloves we had ever seen growing wild in the forest there.

We returned to the ultra-expensive Hastings House for their Sunday afternoon concert.

The picnic lunch provided was not quite up to the price they charged for it, but the food was fresh and nicely prepared. I suppose to the upside to the precious portions was that the calorie count wasn’t too high!

The music was provided by a group of aging local rock and rollers who called themselves “The Millionaires’”. They did competent covers of old R & B songs and a little classic rock. The lead singer joked that he did not quite know what to do when the patrons weren’t drunk and yelling at him! There were only a couple dozen of us on the lawn and while John and I were not the youngest, we were close to it. The weather was perfect and the setting, overlooking the yachts moored in Ganges Harbour, was better than perfect.

 

We came home,  put the dogs in the car, and headed off the Burgoyne Bay Provincial Park.  This park is directly adjacent to Mount Maxwell. In fact, if it weren’t for that fence, you’d almost fall straight from the top of Mount Maxwell into Burgoyne Bay! This part of the island is lightly settled, and some of the old counterculture has made it their home. We talked to an old kayaker who said he came there 20 years ago and has not left. He lived on a small ship moored in the bay. He decried the guy who salvaged an old lumber float and moved a trailer on to it.

There are old farm fields, now abandoned, as part of the park. Several streams feed into the bay and these are lush with sword ferns and other greenery. Both dogs and humans frolicked in the water.