First came the wine, beer and apple cider food pairings, and now . . .  flights of mighty leaf?

by Jeff Bateman

The art of bellying up to the bar takes on new meaning at the Silk Road Aromatherapy and Tea Company in Victoria’s Chinatown. Co-owners Daniela Cubelic and Nancy Larose are offering not only 100-plus leafy imported blends, a dazzling collection of tea accoutrements and green-tea spa facials, but also an in-depth education at the world’s only linger-and-learn tea bar.

“Tea has enough distinct aromas, flavour profiles, colours and complexity that it deserves the same respect as wine,” says tea master Cubelic. Weigh the vegetal hints of a Japanese green, for instance, against the malty hues of an Assam from northern India. Or ponder the difference in a pair of smoky gunpowder teas, one from Sri Lanka, the other China’s Zhejiang province. As to affecting the air of a connoisseur: Gently inhale the steaming bouquet, then sip slowly, swirling liquid over tongue before swallowing. 250-704-2688

Related info:  >>Vancouver Olympics’ Centre A World Tea Party >>video: How to Make the Perfect Tea

Photo courtesy Silk Road Aromatherapy and Tea Company

Springtime in the Fraser Valley Is blooming amazing

by Liz Bryan

Jaunt: Fraser Valley Ramble

Distance: Approx. 350 km   Fuel: 1/2 tank

Duration: Weekend

Prime Time: April

Tunes: “The Four Seasons: Spring” (Vivaldi)

This meander through the Fraser Valley capitalizes on spring in bloom – everything from dandelions and fields of daffodils and tulips to wonderful country-fresh edibles. Also, looping from Fort Langley to Hope and back, the itinerary eats up very little gas yet easily includes two days’ worth of attractions. Best experienced on a weekend – preferably that of April’s Bradner Daffodil and Flower Show, when the valley’s fields of gold are at their best.

Leg One: Fort Langley to Agassiz (approx. 170 km)

From the historic fur-trading post still standing in the village of Fort Langley (about 50 km east of Vancouver), take quiet, narrow River Road (88th Avenue) to mooch along the Fraser River to the pioneer settlement of Glen Valley. Glen Valley Regional Park stretches along the riverbank above the Two-Bit and Poplar sandbars, both popular fishing venues. Just past the picnic area, turn right (south) along Lefeuvre Road to McTavish, which leads east onto Bradner Road.

Roadtrippers arriving in Bradner on the weekend of April 9 to 11 will find the local Daffodil Festival in full swing. Thousands of the flowers have been grown on the high ground here since 1914, when English pioneer Fenwick Fatkin first planted the Dutch bulbs on his farm as an experiment. South down Bradner Road: the Village hall, which showcases the festival’s flower show (first held in 1928), with more than 400 varieties of the bloom. The adjacent schoolyard hosts a plant and flower market popular with local gardeners; a tea garden provides good homemade fare. Roadside stands sell bunches of flowers and local growers provide wholesale and retail supplies and take orders for fall home delivery of bulbs. Best flower fields: East side of Bradner Road and along Haverman Road.

North of Bradner Hall is the village’s 1911 general store and gas station (beside the railway tracks at the corner of 58th Street and Bradner Road); farther north is Jubilee Hall, where the festival’s arts and crafts show takes place. Post-festival, drive south down Bradner Road and, just before the road dips under the freeway (Hwy. 1), swing left (east) onto Downes Road and stop in at the Rossdown Farm Market for “nest-to-plate” poultry products, honey, ethnic breads and veggies (604-856-5578). Farther along is Tanglebank Country Garden and its colourful display of bedding plants. Keep east on Downes Road for about nine kilometres; it jogs north via Seldon onto Clayburn Road as it crosses Hwy. 11 and leads three kilometres to the Village of Clayburn, B.C.’s first company town.

HISTORIC CLAYBURN, CIRCA 1925 Founded in 1905 by Charles Maclure to house workers at his Clayburn Brick Works, the village has maintained its historic centre: a dozen old homes, a heritage school and church and a wonderful two-storey brick general store.

Founded in 1905 by Charles Maclure to house workers at his Clayburn Brick Works, the village has maintained its historic centre: a dozen old homes, a heritage school and church and a wonderful two-storey brick general store. Inside, the renovated building serves two purposes. On the right it houses an old-fashioned candy store and Yorkshire deli (Melton Mowbray pies, shortbread, cheeses and treacle puddings); those with a sweet tooth will be in heaven. The other half is an English tearoom with scrumptious sweets; its snow-crab soup and homemade scones are famous (open Tuesday to Saturday; check for holiday closures; 604-858-4020).

CLAYBURN: The Hummingbird Native Art Gallery, located in an old church. Many buildings here were designed by architect Samuel Maclure, whose mansions still grace elegant Vancouver and Victoria neighbourhoods. Courtesy Neil Carson

Ask at the store for a village walking tour guide. Many of the brick buildings were designed by Charles’s brother, architect Samuel Maclure, whose mansions still grace elegant Vancouver and Victoria neighbourhoods. Today in one of the five brick Foreman’s Cottages, Clayburn Comforts sells handmade soaps (in small Clayburn-brick moulds) and lotions. The back garden, with fountain-fed pools and native plants, is well worth a peek. A stroll down Wright Street reveals the old schoolhouse (now a museum), the brick church, the Hummingbird Native Art Gallery and Creekside Cats (a holiday home for pampered cats), though not much remains of the old brickworks, which moved closer to Abbotsford in 1930.

Drive east to the end of the village. Here, Old Clayburn Road leads back to Hwy. 11 and the freeway, while Straiton Road provides a more bucolic route following the Ferny Valley of Clayburn Creek to Sumas Mountain  Road. Turn right here and go south toward the freeway, then east again onto North Parallel Road to No. 3 Road. Then cross the freeway and head for the Yellow Barn for fresh fruits, vegetables, honey and more (604-852-0888). Afterward, stay east on No. 3 Road, keeping an eye open for more fields of daffodils, then turn north onto Boundary Road and cross the Vedder Canal Bridge onto Keith Wilson Road. Two blocks along, on the south end of Sumas Prairie Road, is the Great Blue Heron Nature Reserve: 130 hectares of floodplain along the Vedder River that is home to more than 200 nests of the endangered bird as well as painted turtles, eagles and other wildlife. Stop at the interpretive centre for live video activity at some nests (April is peak nesting month) and a trail guide and bird checklist. Open daily, 8 a.m. to dusk; admission by donation (604-823-6603).

From the heronry, drive north on Sumas Prairie Road to Greendale village, detouring west on South Sumas Road to visit Greendale Pottery for stoneware and crystalline porcelain, organic freezer beef and farm eggs (Thursday to Saturday; 604-823-6430). Sumas Prairie Road leads to Yale Road West and Heavenly Days Dairies’ goat cheese (just North of Yale Road at 7350 Barrow Rd.; 604-823-7241) and Anita’s Organic Grain and Flour Mill stone-ground specialty flours (weekdays only; 43615 Yale Road West; 604-823-5543).

Yale Road leads to the Lickman Road entrance to Hwy. 1 for a quick drive (about 20 km) to the Hwy. 9 interchange. Turn north, cross the Fraser River and drive into Agassiz to overnight. Good sleeps: Blackberry Lane B&B – friendly, luxurious, in a country setting with huge breakfasts and homemade pies and cookies for sale (5877 Limbert Road; 604-796-9875). Good eats: Just 10 km away in Harrison Hot Springs, at the Old Settler Pub (604-796-9722) and Crazy Fish Bistro (604-796-2280).

Leg Two: Agassiz to Vancouver via Hope (approx. 180 km

FRASER VALLEY Minter Gardens, the Fraser Valley’s counterpart to Vancouver Island’s Butchart Gardens.Courtesy Minter Gardens

After breakfast, return to Hwy. 9 and head back across the Fraser toward the freeway. At the roundabout, turn right (west) onto Yale Road East, then onto Bunker Road for a morning at Minter Gardens, the Fraser Valley’s  counterpart to the Island’s Butchart Gardens. Founded by Brian and Faye Minter in 1980, these 12 gardens are a mass of spring blooms, including daffodils and 100,000-plus tulips, and from April on are a rainbow of floral designs laced with walking paths, streams and waterfalls. Allow an hour or so to stroll around and poke through the plant and gift shop. There are two eateries: the Garden Café and the Trillium Restaurant.

After coffee and treats, return to Agassiz to follow Pioneer Way to Ashton Road, which leads to Limbert Road, heading past the pioneer graveyard to Limbert Mountain Farm. This picturesque retreat has everything:  gardens to tour, herbs and other plants for sale and homemade goodies such as herb-infused chocolate, teas and gourmet pestos. The teahouse (open weekends) serves imaginative fresh lunches (nettle frittata, green-potato soup) and cooking classes are given throughout the spring and summer (604-796-2619).

Continue west along Limbert Road to Cameron Road, then north across Hwy. 7 to McCallum Road for handmade artisan cheeses at the Farm House (604-796-8741). Next, turn north up Hardy Road onto Golf Road to the Back Porch and its many delights: 25 varieties of garlic, farmyard pets, an antiques and collectables barn,  Lynda Vaun Scobie’s pottery studio/showroom and  organic coffee roasted in a 1919 flame roaster.  (Wednesday to Sunday; 604-796-9871).

Head back to Agassiz on Hwy. 9 (about six kilometres) and drive through town to McDonald Road; follow it across the bypass toward the Fraser. In the market for fresh sweet peppers? Turn up Johnson Road to Cheam View Greenhouses’ farm stand. Another farm-gate operation is north on Tranmer Road (No. 1694): a cooler with fresh tulips for sale. The house behind is home base for Tulips of the Valley (604-796-3496). Its 16-hectare holding north on Seabird Island is a multicoloured carpet of blooms toward the end of April, when the Tulips of the Valley Festival is held (phone for exact dates). To reach the festival fields, drive north a short distance on Hwy. 7, turn left onto Seabird Island Road, then right on Chowat Road. Fresh-cut tulips and dahlia tubers are available onsite; tulip bulbs can be ordered for fall planting. Don’t miss: During the festival, Limbert Mountain Farm’s daily “Tulip Teas,” 2 to 4 p.m.

To complete the tour, drive east on Hwy. 7 for about 20 km to Hope, for a walk around the historic little town: don’t miss the old church and the two-dozen impressive chainsaw carvings, most of them around Memorial Park. If there’s time, drive out to Coquihalla Canyon Provincial Park (five kilometres) for a stroll through the famous Quintette Tunnels on this stretch of the historic Kettle Valley Railway route. The park is usually open by April 1 (Hope Visitor Centre, 604-466- 8325). From Hope via the freeway, Vancouver is less than two hours away.

Booked solid every weekend through spring? Plan an upper-Fraser Valley jaunt around July’s Brunch on the Farm, August’s slow-food Circle Farm Tour or celeb Chef Diaz’s cooking lessons – and discover the local cheesemaker supplying the White House. 

See also: Fraser Valley Weekender

How I built an eco-shed, ditched my SUV, alienated the in-laws and changed my life forever

An excerpt from Almost Green, by James Glave  (Greystone Books, 2008)

What it means to be an eco-warrior/father of two

My name is James, and I drive an SUV. It is a golden-pearl Premium Edition Lexus rx-300, with all-leather interior, genuine walnut wood dash, seven-speaker Nakamichi sound system, seat heaters, moon roof and sport racks. It is a high-riding icon of luxury, a mobile conspicuous-consumption statement, a prosperity public-address system – the sort of vehicle that valets named Chip park in front of five-star Indian fusion restaurants. Let me be clear, though, that the rx-300 is not an indication of my hard-won success as a writer. It’s a hand- me-down from my father-in-law, who offered it to my wife, Elle, and me as a gift just as our 1994 Volvo station wagon threatened to die with our two tired babies in the backseat some night on a lonely New Mexico byway well beyond the fringes of Sprint-Verizon’s digital safety net. Although we are extremely grateful for the gift, the Lexus was perhaps not our first choice for a family four-door; it conveys a not-entirely-accurate message about who we are to those who don’t know us.

This became clear to me one day when I had lunch with my friend Dave, a former colleague whom I greatly admire. It had been a few years since we’d seen each other, and we were sharing a laugh over a certain local restaurant critic whom we both felt could benefit from a little more journalistic backbone. Dave was describing his most recent sighting of the foodie scribe in question: “I’m sitting in this sidewalk café, right? And up pulls you-know-who in this total asshole Lexus suv.”

Hilarious. For at least a few months after that day — at least when out of earshot of our small children — Elle and I referred to our pearl-white and gold-trimmed palace on wheels as “the asshole.” And please forgive me, Padre. Because even though you have that framed photo of George Bush, Sr., in your office, and even though you forward me e-mails asserting that global warming is a “swindle” and a “liberal conspiracy,” I do really love you, and I so appreciate your generosity. But the more I read up on the damage I am doing each time I motor through another tank of regular unleaded, the more I can relate to Dave’s point of view and the less comfortable I am getting back behind the wheel. Because I am the one running a scam. We have hung on to your wheels for reasons that contradict our gradually increasing consciousness and have everything to do with cash flow and guilt. We don’t want to offend you, and
we don’t want to finance something else. I don’t think we can keep dancing like this forever, though. One day I’m going to have to break it to you, Padre, that I think your very generous gift is gradually torching the lot of us.

For now, assuming Pops doesn’t care either way, Elle and I are looking to downsize. With the kids now out of strollers and diapers, we’ve finally decommissioned our bulky toddler infrastructure. We are in the market for a small car. I’ve brought my preschool-age son, Duncan, and his five-year-old sister, Sabrina, into the loop, and they have already begun window-shopping with me as we tool around the twenty-five-square-mile island we call home, just off the sparkling West Coast city of Vancouver, B.C., Canada. One recent morning, on the way to the day care, my son asked me to explain the differences between our six-cylinder white elephant and the zippy little DaimlerChrysler Smart Car that had just passed us headed the other direction.

“Dad,” he asked, “why don’t we have a Smart Car?”

Let me briefly mention here that, like many young boys, my Duncan is infatuated with internal combustion. If it drives, digs or flies with some flavor of refined petroleum, well, he’s all over it.

“They’re fun, aren’t they?” I replied. “We don’t have one because they’re too small. There isn’t enough room inside one of them for our whole family.”

“Why not?” Sabrina chimed in.

“Well, there are four people in our family, and the Smart Car only fits two people. So we would have to take turns or sit on each other’s lap, and that wouldn’t work very well, would it?”

“Oh. ok.”

I could have left it there, but I didn’t. “It is possible to have a car that’s too big, though. Mummy and Daddy think this car is too big. That’s why we are hoping to trade it for a smaller one.”

“Why do we want a smaller one?” asked Sabrina.

“Well, honey, you know how we always stop at the gas station to buy gasoline? This car is pretty heavy – it’s much heavier than it needs to be – and so it uses up more gas than a Smart Car. Gas is expensive, and it is also very bad for the Earth.”

“But Dad,” said Duncan, “why is gas bad for the Earth?”

Long pause here. Jesus, where do I begin?

“Hmmm. Ok, when we burn gas it makes the car go, but it also makes the Earth get hotter. And we’re worried that if we burn too much gas, the Earth will get too hot, and it won’t be such a nice place to live when you two grow up.”

“So our car is too heavy for the Earth?”

“Yes, that’s right. We want to get a smaller car that all four of us can fit inside – one that uses less gas. One that’s nicer to the planet.”

“But not a Smart Car?” confirmed Duncan.

“Right. Not a Smart Car. There are lots of other kinds of smaller cars out there.”

“What kind of car do you want?” Sabrina queried.

“Well, Mummy and Daddy would really like to get a car called a Prius,” I said, offering to point out the next one we passed.

“A Prius? Why do we want that one?”

“Because it doesn’t use as much gas, so it’s nicer to the planet. And we can all fit inside one.”

“Why don’t we get one of those cars right now?”

“Um, they’re expensive. They cost too much money for us, sweets. But we’ll figure it out. In the meantime, we are trying to use this car less. That’s why we walk to the village together so much.”

“Oh,” replied Sabrina. “Oh, yeah.”

I grinned to myself. Duncan was hopelessly obsessed with fuel injectors and transmissions, but his older sister had just made the right connections in her head. She’s a smart cookie, this girl of mine. I was proud of her, and proud of myself for explaining that our present vehicle wasn’t so great but that answers were out there. I’d slipped in an age-appropriate explanation of climate change, without coloring in the whole grim picture.

Then Sabrina chimed in again with a pearl of wisdom that put all my eco-angst into perspective the way only a precocious five-year-old can.

“You know what, Dad?”

“Hmmm?”

“I have a vagina.”

“Yes . . . ?”

“But Duncan has a Prius!”

Continued on GLAVE.COM

See also: Gone Newfie.

Stikine: The Great River (excerpts + an update)

by photographer Gary Fiegehen

An Introduction

SPECTRUM RANGE – looking north to Mount Edziza. The mountain has a 7,500,000-year history of volcanic activity and is part of the circum-Pacific Rim of Fire, which continues almost uninterrupted from southern Chile northward around to New Zealand.

The modern history of the Stikine watershed is shaped by a belief in material riches. Russian fur traders in the 1790s were the first Europeans to see and identify the Stikine’s estuary. In the mid-1800s fur traders were joined by gold prospectors, who followed the Stikine towards the interior in the hope of sudden wealth. This first gold rush came to nothing. At the end of the nineteenth century the Hudson’s Bay Company set up its first permanent Stikine trading post 12 miles below Telegraph Creek. At about the same time, the gold rush of 1897-98 brought a flood of people to the Stikine. Photographs from the period show tough men at a wild frontier.

Soon steamboats were moving up and down the Stikine, bringing supplies to Telegraph Creek and other staging points. This flurry of activity lasted a very short time. The last steamer travelled the Stikine in 1916. The gold rush faded into romanticized history. The fur trade settled into a routine and minor activity. Dreams of agricultural expansion, railways, new towns left a thin trail of incomplete developments.

SPECTRUM RANGE Billy goats are solitary by nature. The first winter usually claims half of the young males and females; the survivors mature sexually at two and a half years and reach full size at age four. A full-grown billy weighs 90-plus kg. The horn grows in length each year, making the goat progressively more attractive to big-game hunters.

But developers vaunted other developments: coal, roads, more gold, hydroelectric dams. Telegraph Creek again became a supply depot, this time for the construction of the Alaska Highway in the early 1940s. In 1972, the Stewart-Cassiar Highway was opened, linking Kitwanga on the Skeena River with Watson Lake on the Alaska Highway. BC Rail attempted to bring a railhead to mining possibilities in the Stikine headwaters.

The watershed is vast, and developments thus far have come and gone or touched only its edges. But the very wildness of the place excites the frontier mentality. No one who works in or with the land can be unaware of ideas that encourage a sense that all real wilderness is doomed.

In another sense, Gary Fiegehen’s photographs [shown in this post, as published in the book Stikine: The Great River] have a place in the struggle for Indian rights. They portray the land of the Tahltan, the people whose hunting, fishing and trapping territories announce that this is not a nature beyond culture.

TWIN GLACIER, STIKINE ICECAP Part of the Coast Mountains, granite peaks 2,600 metres high poke through the 1,200-km ice field. Hoodoo Glacier and Twin Glacier feed the Iskut River to the south; Porcupine Glacier feeds the lower Stikine to the west.

The Tahltan are now centred at the villages of Iskut and Dease Lake, on the Stewart-Cassiar Highway, and Telegraph Creek, below the Grand Canyon of the Stikine River. They are Athabascan-speaking peoples whose economy is a mix of hunting across vast areas and salmon fishing concentrated at specific locations. Their goats, bear, caribou, moose, deer, beaver and groundhog, as well as their berries and furs, come from the lands that Fiegehen’s photographs reveal. Their salmon come from the lower stem of the river. Timber for houses and carvings comes from the forest edge. The obsidian from which they once made knives came from Mount Edziza.

The Tahltan homeland is dramatically defined, but theirs has probably never been a culture of isolation. Trading links connect them with neighbours on all sides – with Tlingit to the west and north, Nisga’a and Gitskan to the south, and interior Athabascan peoples to the east of them, on the other side of the Continental Divide. Exchange of oolican oil, dried salmon, obsidian and berries was part of an intricate regional intercultural economy that depended as much on inland trails as on river and coast travel. Exchange, travel and, at times, warfare are strong elements in Tahltan oral history. In this history the people’s use and knowledge of the Stikine is recorded and celebrated. The names of mountains, creeks and village sites, along with the histories of family names and titles, give life – cultural, human life – to every part of this landscape.

–Hugh Brody, Stikine

A Call to Action

Stikine River Country is raw wilderness. Its headwaters region, the wildlife-rich Spatsizi Plateau, is North America’s equivalent to Africa’s Serengeti Plain. In its mid-region, the mighty river continues to deepen the spectacular 100-km-long Grand Canyon, which has only once permitted the passage of humans. The Stikine’s estuary, with its broad-fanned delta of layered silt, is a vital and irreplaceable migratory bird stopover along the Pacific flyway.

SPATSIZI MOUNTAIN Spatsizi is a Tahltan word meaning "Land of the red goat." Goats roll around and bed down in the iron oxide dust, changing their normally white coats to red.

But this beautiful country will remain wild only if there is massive effort by the citizens of Canada and the U.S. to keep it that way. Mount Edziza and Spatsizi Plateau Wilderness provincial parks and the United States’ Stikine-LeConte Wilderness Area currently protect portions of the Stikine, but saving the rest of the watershed will not be easy because of the enormous push by industry and government to develop its resources. Unless public pressure to preserve the Stikine grows, the earthmovers will go to work, destroying the wilderness bit by bit as economic conditions permit.
The gravest threat is the system of dams proposed by the BC. Hydro and Power Authority – two on the Stikine and three on the Iskut River – and the construction of reservoirs, roads and transmission lines that will accompany the project. According to B.C. Hydro, the need for power from the Stikine is inevitable as the province’s population grows. The company has already spent $40 million in engineering studies on this megaproject. Conservationists know, however, that encouraging private and corporate citizens to become “power smart” would be a much better solution.

The region is also threatened by mining. Thousands of claims exist at present, some of which could become viable as soon as road access is available. In the summer of 1991, without public review or adequate environmental analysis, construction commenced on a major road into the heart of the Golden Triangle area of the Iskut – the Stikine’s major tributary. Conservationists would like the Stikine to contain only small, air-accessed underground mines that concentrate on the highest grade of ore and operate according to strict pollution abatement regulations.

Logging is another serious problem in the Stikine. In 1989, the B.C. government proposed the establishment of a “recreation corridor” that would hide logging from river viewpoints but do nothing to curtail it. The short-term profits to be made from logging the watershed are far outweighed by the long-term costs of destroying the wilderness.

courtesy Gary Fiegehen

Over the past decade, tens of thousands of supporters have joined forces to fight for protection of the Stikine. In 1988 we proposed that a National Park Reserve be set up, a move that would stop industrial development while safeguarding native land claims in the area. But our efforts have not been enough. We need you to join us.

Stikine country is too previous to squander. It is a place for wildlife to flourish – and a place for you to make a stand.

–Paul George, founding director, Western Canada Wilderness Committee, Stikine

Fast forward to 2010

Twenty eight years after first experiencing the Stikine I continue to return whenever I am able. I watch with trepidation as new mines are developed, some with access roads that have a habit of turning into logging roads, as our government pushes a new power corridor up Hwy. 37 to facilitate them.  And I watch with hope when the Tahltan with public support were able to repel Dutch Royal Shell out of the Sacred Headwaters and – at least for now – stopped methane gas extraction from the headwaters of the Stikine, Spatsizi, Klappan and Skeena rivers. I hope that 28 from now and 128 years from now there will still be a free-flowing river with an intact watershed and people are still able to know the wild. I also hope folks will inform themselves by googling Cassiar Watch and Pembina Institute, then vote for whomever represents their values.

The photographer  >>Photographer Gary Fiegehen first encountered the Stikine in the early 1980s, then spent five years consumed with photographing it. He travelled on horseback, by canoe and on foot. He went in all seasons, searching for images that would convey the power and majesty of this ancient land as well as his own intense responses to it.

The book   >>Stikine: The Great River, by Gary Fiegehen (1991, Douglas & McIntyre; $25). Available at gfiegehen@uniserve.com

Related Reading >> Northern B.C.: The Last Wild River >> Northern B.C.: Swim the Skeena

All photographs: Gary Fiegehen

Breaking bread with B.C.’s culinary queen

Notes toward a screenplay based on the life of Kathy McAree (think the book Eat, Pray, Love, as directed by Alfred Hitchcock): In 2001, while recuperating from surgery after a car accident, a 33-year-old woman spends a few weeks as a slow-food traveller in Europe. What happens while she’s there – the tour of Spain’s Basque region with the Texan chef, the armed man on the French night train, the 9/11 attacks, the Puglia cooking school in Italy – changes her life forever.

In an area roughly the size of Belgium, Vancouver Island has more than two dozen wineries, five artisan cheese-makers, two Old World ciderhouses, wild seafood galore and farm-raised everything: beef, chicken, duck, lamb, water buffalo, even emu. Courtesy Tourism Vancouver Island/ ChrisCheadle.com

Fast forward almost a decade and McAree is head of Travel with Taste, B.C.’s first culinary tour operator – leading locals and international travellers into the West Coast food culture of Vancouver Island. Her specialties: walking tours in her home city of Victoria (“urban foraging,” as she calls it) and longer treks to the farms, wineries and under-the-radar restaurants of Salt Spring Island and the Cowichan Valley. As founder of the Victoria Taste Festival and director of the B.C. Culinary Tourism Society, she is also helping give B.C.’s west coast its status among food lovers – one formerly reserved for Europe – as a gourmet wonderland of wine, cheese, meat and seafood. “Kathy’s one of our pioneers,” says Eric Pateman, founder of Edible B.C., the largest culinary tour operator in Canada. “She’s definitely been one of the most visible forces in promoting culinary tourism and local food.”

Julia Child is back in people’s minds because of the book and film Julie and Julia. And Child is a wonderful example of taking something you love, something you’re good at, and making a career out of it.”  –Kathy McAree

So how did a former Winnipegger and Kellogg’s multinational employee land such a tasty career?

The idea for Travel with Taste came while McAree was using up her banked vacation on that trip across Europe. “It may have been a red-wine-induced moment,” she admits with a laugh. But, inspired by the foodie joys of the Basque country, she sketched an itinerary of wineries, cheesemakers and restaurants back home on southern Vancouver Island and showed it to the tour leader. The Texas chef, however, scoffed at the notion of B.C. as a destination for travelling gourmets. “I’ll never forget it. He took one look and handed it back, saying, ‘You should just do this yourself.’ I walked away thinking, ‘Fine, I will.’ ”

After Spain, three more events convinced her to seize the day. The first was an encounter with an armed stranger on the night train to Nice, a man she thought was going to gun her down. Another was the 9/11 attacks, which cast a mood of solemn self-reflection over the entire world. Then in Italy she received news about the death of a friend “who was only in his early 40s. I remember climbing the steps on the Amalfi Coast, thinking, ‘Wow. Life is really short.’” And after a week of cooking lessons on an Italian farm, she returned to B.C. in fall 2001 and saw it, as converts do, with new eyes: as a food-lover’s paradise.

As most of us can attest, eating well while we travel – near or far – is on the rise. Research by the International Culinary Tourism Association (ICTA) confirms that sampling local wines, beers and cuisine is consistently one of travellers’ top-three activities, with memorable meals topping best-experience lists. Courtesy Tourism Vancouver Island/ Boomer Jerritt

As most of us can attest, eating well while we travel – near or far – is on the rise. Research by the International Culinary Tourism Association (ICTA) confirms that sampling local wines, beers and cuisine is consistently one of travellers’ top-three activities, with memorable meals topping best-experience lists. One Tourism B.C. report shows that over a two-year period, 11 million travellers to the province – half of them Canadian, half American – took part in some kind of gourmet experience, whether at a winery, restaurant or artisan farm.

“Eating regional foods is how we get to know a place, how we really experience local culture,” explains McAree. When she uncorks the terroir of the West Coast for clients, for example, they meet local chefs and tour specialty farms while sampling everything from local Auxerrois Pinot Blanc and ash-ripened chèvre to fresh Fanny Bay oysters and seaweed salad. Victoria is second only to San Francisco in restaurants per capita, she notes. In an area roughly the size of Belgium, Vancouver Island has more than two dozen wineries, five artisan cheese-makers, two Old World ciderhouses, wild seafood galore and farm-raised everything: beef, chicken, duck, lamb, water buffalo, even emu. “I get to show this whole other world that most people never get to see, even people who live here, because they don’t know it exists.”

>>Victoria Taste Kathy McAree’s July festival of local foods (updates on 2010 tastings and events at victoriataste.com)  >>More Island noshing  >>10 top B.C. foodie treks  >>Edible B.C. foodie tour giveaway (Winner to be announced March 2010)

Get Mobilized

Travel with Taste Tours from $89. 250-385-1527

• Walking tours of Victoria (pâtés made from local ingredients at Choux Choux Charcuterie, teas blended with local lavender or, if you dare, seaweed).

• Daytrips to Salt Spring Island (renowned for its organic lamb/other specialties).

• The Saanich Peninsula (chat with the chef at Butchart Gardens) and the CowichanValley (guided vineyard tours, including a three-course lunch paired with local wines).

See also: Top 10 B.C. Foodie Treks, Mywestworld.com Giveaway, Swallow Tail Tours

Founded by liberated slaves and later favoured by hippies, today Salt Spring is the first Gulf Island that comes to mind when ex-Toronto power brokers think “retirement cheese making”

by Daniel Wood

As it turns out, this moment contains everything that follows. Three round mounds of goat cheese, each originally the size and shape of a flan, sit beside half-empty glasses of wine and a diminishing supply of crackers. The cheese is so soft the weight of the descending knife slices effortlessly to the cutting board. Wisteria grows above and hummingbirds zing past in the warm, early autumn air. David Wood, the cheesemaker and no relative of mine, looks out onto a flock of 100 sheep, their lugubrious faces just beyond his fenced hilltop yard.

Wood, 66, is explaining how he has found peace on Salt Spring – far from his former high-profile Toronto job – making cheese on this quiet Gulf Island. It’s a theme reiterated by his neighbour, Robert Bateman, 80, one of the world’s leading wildlife artists, who moved from Ontario to Salt Spring 25 years ago and is – on this same afternoon – sitting in his waterfront studio painting a Siberian crane. It is a theme mentioned again and again here by those who have sought a retreat from the urban hubbub to pursue their dreams. On this 185- square-kilometre island – where no road runs straight or level for 100 metres, where residents would fight the construction of a single traffic light, and where the roadside verges contain dozens of unattended stands piled high with string beans, free-range eggs, apples, dahlias and “honour boxes” for payment – time drains away in unhurried increments, cracker by cracker, glass by glass.

But First, a Little Island History

Salt Spring Island is the largest of B.C.’s southern Gulf Islands and has much to recommend it. The island’s first non-native settlers included a small group of freed slaves from the U.S. in the late 1850s and the place has maintained itself as an outpost of peace-loving, conscientious thinking ever since. It has several mountains, eight lakes, four villages (including the little hub of Ganges), scores of small farms and a year-round population today of 10,000. Driving the island’s meandering two-lane roads, lined with hedgerows of sweet pea and blackberry, the place reveals itself in subtle ways. Dozens of roadside signs, decorated with stencilled blue sheep, indicate the homes of local artisans whose studios and workshops are open to visitors. Here an organic apple farmer; there a craftsperson of wooden toys; and over there a potter . . . or a winemaker . . . or a woman selling hand-painted rubber boots. Flocks of real sheep graze in rolling pastures. Strangers wave as I pass.

At the Ganges Village Market, one of the island’s two supermarkets, a middle-aged clerk named Fifi wears an aluminium-foil peace symbol around her neck. To commemorate Woodstock, she explains, and gives me, her contemporary, my sliced picnic ham and a nostalgic “V” signal with her raised fingers as I depart the deli counter. Outside, a 32-year-old busker named Andre is strumming Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind,” a song, I inform him, I was singing before he was born. For visitors of a certain age, Salt Spring Island is – to quote Yogi Berra – déjà vu all over again. As Robert Bateman said of his first encounter with the people of Salt Spring when he moved here in 1985: “There were all these old English eccentrics and superannuated hippies. It suited me. I was a bit of both.”

Back to the Food and Wine – via Ruckle Park, L’Orenda and Salt Spring’s Celebrated Public Market 

With daypacks filled and the prospect of a morning’s exploration ahead, my companion and I drive south-eastward to the island’s premier tourist attraction: Ruckle Provincial Park – 486 hectares of forest and farmland surrounded by seven kilometres of oceanside bluffs, cobble beaches and trails. A warm west wind has the distant sailboats tacking back and forth across adjacent Swanson Channel. Kayakers in colourful little flotillas pass offshore. The ocean water is as clear as gin. I set as our goal Bear Point, a headland an hour’s hike distant. Beneath the ubiquitous Garry oaks and arbutus trees that punctuate the cliffs of this region, we spread our blanket and succumb to the view. The tide creeps in, submerging the starfish. For an hour, absolutely nothing happens. Zen is its own reward.

The Saturday market on Ganges’ Centennial Park waterfront is the best place to glimpse the island’s soul. April to October, it’s a weekly outdoor jamboree of 150 local artisans, farmers, musicians, food vendors and oddballs.

The Saturday market on Ganges’ Centennial Park waterfront is the best place to glimpse the island’s soul. April to October, it’s a weekly outdoor jamboree of 150 local artisans, farmers, musicians, food vendors and oddballs. The sidewalks surrounding the park teem with a Calcutta-density of shoppers wandering between stalls. There’s a young girl named Natalie playing “Love Me Tender” on her recorder, a basket for coins at her feet. There’s Lorraine selling heart-attack-inducing, deep-fried doughboys stuffed with fruit and whipped cream. Folk artist Bruce Schneider wears a wooden necktie and stands at a table selling his hand-propelled, half-metre-high automatons – straight out of a Rube Goldberg comic strip. I turn the crank on his wooden Private Dancer and the bikini-clad figure gyrates. His Ruth’s Nineteenth Hole figure cuts an unsteady golfer’s swing through mid-air. “I make silly things,” Schneider tells me without the least apology. “The sillier, the better.”

And here is David Wood again, beaming affably at his stall, selling his cheeses. When he’d first arrived on the island in 1990, he knew nothing about cheese making, he tells me. It took him five years to learn the intricacies of traditional European methods. Today, along with his hard sheep’s-milk cheeses, he makes 18 tonnes of creamy goat cheese and cannot keep up with demand. I buy two small, soft rounds of his exquisite efforts, one covered in pink and black peppercorns and one soaked in olive oil, and carry them through the bustling market like a pair of baby sparrows.

When David Wood first arrived on Salt Spring in 1990, he knew nothing about cheese making. It took him five years to learn the intricacies of traditional European methods.

I know, because I’ve been to every Gulf Island, that Salt Spring offers the most recreational opportunities. Its size, ease of access, population and topography ensure this. For cyclists, there are dozens of kilometres of winding back roads, many running through the island’s valleys, minimizing exhaustion. There are dozens of hiking trails, some to remote beaches and some to the island’s peaks. There are the lakes and ponds, warmed by summer’s heat, where bathers loll on offshore public rafts and men in electric-motor-propelled Zodiacs troll for bass and cutthroat trout. There are idyllic kayaking destinations – northeastward to Wallace Island Marine Park and southeastward to Princess Margaret Marine Park, both an easy two-hour paddle offshore. But I decide to let lassitude reign, signing up with Don Mellor for an afternoon’s sail. Almost two decades ago, he tells me, he quit his office job to build a sailboat and spend his life as a gypsy. It took him seven years to construct by hand his 40-foot gaff-rigged yawl. He named it L’Orenda – The Spirit.

We leave Ganges Harbour and head southeast, past the Three Sisters islands, along some of Salt Spring’s 135 km of shoreline, past Ruckle Park’s bluffs and the recently abandoned picnic site and into the open water of Captain Passage. The boat takes the wind, and I lie back in a sort of transcendent reverie, adrift without a care in the world. In the distance, approaching fast, a huge BC Ferry . . . a reminder that reveries must end, and no man is an island for long.

Get Mobilized  A circuit of the island can be made in a two-hour, 60-km whirlwind drive, but Salt Spring is a place to mosey. Whether daytripping or weekending, don’t miss:

• Ganges’ Saturday Market One of the most outstanding craft/farmers’ markets in B.C., it operates until Thanksgiving each year.

• Saltspring Island Cheese Co. Open weekends through fall and winter (250-653-2300).

• Island Escapades  Several local companies provide on-island adventure, including Island Escapades in Ganges (250-537-2553): for nature tours, kayaking day trips, guided hiking and an afternoon’s sail aboard L’Orenda. Other Ganges shops have bike rentals; every marina has boat rentals and fishing charters.

• Island Studio Tour A self-guided tour of 42 artisans’ workshops – potters, painters, quilters, etc. Pick up a studio map at the Infocentre (see below) or download a copy at http://www.saltspringstudiotour.com/

• Salt Spring Fall Fair A true country fall fair with roosters, pigs and other livestock on display/for sale, memorable home baking, crafts, rides, etc. (Held September 17 and 18 this year; plan for it next fall.)

• Annual Apple Festival Salt Spring’s long apple-growing tradition includes 350 varieties of organic pommes. This year’s event pays homage to the finest British apple, the Cox Orange Pippin, and 22 Cox crosses. October 2, Fulford Hall (250-653-2007; burtonh@saltspring.com).

Getting there BC Ferries reaches Salt Spring along several routes: from Swartz Bay on Vancouver Island to Fulford Harbour (35 minutes); from up-Island Crofton to Vesuvius Bay (20 minutes); and from Tsawwassen on the B.C. mainland to Long Harbour (two to three hours).

Island sleeps The Infocentre/Salt Spring Island Chamber of Commerce in downtown Ganges is a must-stop (250-537-5252 or 866-216-2936), with maps, artisan info, foodie tips and several large binders featuring photos and bios on the island’s excellent range of accommodations, from acclaimed inns such as Hastings House to B&Bs and secluded cabin and oceanside home rentals.

Photos courtesy Daniel Wood

As long as kayaks come with adjustable spray skirts, there will be room for culinary voyages through the Gulf  Islands

by Masa Takei

Wine bottles clank together in the boat beside me as a mountain of provisions disappears into the hatches of seven other red, orange and yellow sea kayaks. My fellow travellers fuss around their crafts, securing gear-filled dry bags and plastic bins pregnant with culinary potential. We snap together paddles, tighten life jacket straps and apply sunscreen like war paint. Meanwhile, from a seaweed-strewn log, leader James Bray surveys the activity with a benevolent smile. At eight sharp this morning, he greeted us at the Nanaimo ferry terminal with a mischievious grin. Within minutes, we were rattling across the Nanaimo River in his 15-passenger van, a hula doll wobbling manically on the dashboard, power chords of Franz Ferdinand beating out the triumphant rhythms of “Take Me Out.” Now, with the provisions almost loaded, all our party of 10 has to mull over is what lies ahead: three days of Gulf Island paddling, two nights camped luxuriously on De Courcy Island and an introduction to some of the finest cuisine that local ingredients can yield.

Thanks to Bray’s eight years’ experience as a kayaking guide, 15 years working in restaurants throughout the province and a partnership with Edible B.C., his Blue Planet kayaking weekends have attracted more than 400 devotees in the first three seasons of operation. The 35-year-old, however, is not the first to lure urban escapees to B.C.’s Gulf Islands for a taste of the good life (though he is the first to do so with kayaks and fine food). Eighty-two years ago, cult leader Brother XII and members of his Aquarian Foundation launched their boats from this very beach at Cedar-by-the-Sea, just south of Nanaimo.

What actually happened, of course, was slightly more lurid. Accounts of the cult’s seven island years are rife with references to black magic, sex slaves and “brutal” labour. I consider this local colour a cautionary tale . . . [and] remain eager to experience first-hand a nirvana where the Three Truths are active relaxation, fine wine and good food, all locally sourced. 

Born Edward Arthur Wilson, Brother XII was a British sailor turned bearded, charismatic occultist and self-proclaimed mystic who, by the early 1930s, had collected an earnest and wealthy following. The “Poultry King of Florida,” Roger Painter and Asheville, North Carolina socialite Mary Connally were just two of the hundreds who contributed their fortunes to the Brother’s vision: escape the fall of the world’s economic system and the destruction and chaos bound to follow for a self-sustaining utopia in the “wilds” of De Courcy and Valdes islands. The Brother’s compelling manifesto, The Three Truths, espoused the “unity of all life,” the “law of karma” and the “immortal soul.” What actually happened, of course, was slightly more lurid. Accounts of the cult’s seven island years are rife with references to black magic, sex slaves and “brutal” labour.

I consider this local colour a cautionary tale about putting one’s faith entirely in the hands of another. Convinced by a recent convert (a foodie friend) as to the integrity of Blue Planet adventures, I remain eager to experience first-hand a nirvana where the Three Truths are active relaxation, fine wine and good food, all locally sourced. And all I’ve had to do so far is sign the relevant papers, pack my bags and hitch a ferry.

Blue Planet guide and chef extraordinaire James Bray in his Valdez Island kitchen.

Now, I cast an evaluating eye on James Bray, the man upon whom our little convoy will depend for sustenance and direction. I search for hints of megalomania or delusions of grandeur as he good-naturedly trades banter with two of the group’s self-proclaimed Seattle soccer moms. He seems every bit as smooth as his clean-shaven pate might suggest. Black sleeveless shirt, wraparound sunglasses and studded leather belt holding up his manpris – a younger, hipper Mr. Clean assembling us on the beach for a last ritual. Standing back-to-back with a partner, we pass our paddles back and forth, from side to side, up over our heads, between our legs – movements symbolic, perhaps, of our imminent shared passage by paddle that also yield a pleasant stretching of the hamstrings, upper lats and obliques. Soon, we board our boats and push off, following Bray’s lead. Clear skies. Gentle waters. Sailboats drifting by and a light breeze that takes the edge off a mercurial noon sun. It’s an auspicious start. As we paddle and glide, I wonder if Brother XII’s ill-fated group felt this same kind of optimism.

A chatty flotilla, we cross Stuart Channel to the promised land of Pirates Cove, less than four kilometres to the south. Just one hour’s paddle and we’re already in a different world as we round De Courcy, wind- and surf-sculpted sandstone cliffs looming – three-dimensional Rorschach tests on a grand scale. Bray plucks a purple leather starfish from above the waterline, its underbelly covered with hundreds of raspy tentacles. Shaped like snails’ eye-stalks, the undulating appendages grab carnivorously at my fingers when I pass the impromptu petting zoo along. Minutes later, we stop for awhile in a small cove. The solitude is broken only by the quacking of a wind turbine spinning over a glassy expanse of island architecture.

Bears aren’t a worry in paradise, apparently, but mice and raccoons maraud these lands. “They’ll take your makeup and wear it; steal your clothes and sell them on eBay,” warns Bray. 

With the wind at our backs, just an hour later we’re hauling the kayaks high on a driftwood-strewn shore. We stand blinking in PFDs and spray skirts like demented ballerinas arrayed in droopy, black tutus, before scattering to erect our tent utopia. Bears aren’t a worry in paradise, apparently, but mice and raccoons maraud these lands. “They’ll take your makeup and wear it; steal your clothes and sell them on eBay,” warns Bray. We hang edibles and toiletry kits along a line strung between two trees and, colony established, ease into the rhythm of this new life.

Bray, who serves only locally sourced regional cuisine, prepares Vancouver Island Cowichan Valley chicken.

Bray and his young assistant, Steve Elsbens, an affable Belgian-born chef in a broad-brimmed straw hat, are soon artfully arranging lunch on lime and sky-blue plates.  A base of organic greens with fingerling potatoes, yellow beans and vine-ripened tomatoes from East Sooke’s Ragley Farm is topped with hot smoked albacore tuna, truffled mayo, niçoise olives and red wine vinaigrette. Like the vegetables, the fish is locally sourced – from a supplier who controls everything from boat to box, ensuring quality and wild provenance. The result kicks the pants off any salad niçoise I’ve ever sampled, including in the south of France. And Bray’s hot-off-the-grill delivery bodes well for the congregation’s continued high spirits.

Wandering off to explore our domain, we discover a pirate’s chest out on the spit – a geocacher’s treasure trove of knick-knacks. “Take something, leave something. Aaaarrrr, matey,” reads the handwritten note tacked under the lid. As we crouch around, Bray tells a tale of the island’s real treasure: How Brother XII converted his followers’ funds into gold pieces and packed them in Mason jars sealed with wax, a few of which may have been left buried on the island. “Which brings us to the next activity,” chuckles Bray. “Stevie and I have shovels for you all.” There’s no talk about how we’ll split whatever we unearth.

Large French coffee presses await us the next morning. And as their gourmet brew steams open our eyelids, we survey the day’s first signs of wildlife: a heron stalks the shallows; a family of river otters scamper and slide at the water’s edge; a raccoon on the day shift ambles along the shore.

Bray reads the wind and the waves and decides not to lead us on the planned pilgrimage to nearby Valdes. (A strenuous return paddle would run counter to his doctrines of safety and relaxation.) Instead, after settling on a suitable eddy to submerge the net bag of white wine to chill for this evening, we set off in the opposite direction, due north, paddling only long enough to feel justified in beaching at the nearest sandy cove for lunch. Kayaks lashed together in the shallows, we spread out on a knoll. Some seek the shade of a cypress tree. Others gravitate toward the Garry oaks, shaped, as Bray suggests, by filmmaker Tim Burton with bark fractured like dried mud. Here, Bray entertains with an account of Brother XII’s sadistic mistress, Madame Z. Clad in thigh-high leather boots and wielding a bullwhip, she supposedly drove the cult’s disciples to work themselves ragged clearing fields for farming. If she wasn’t threatening enough, a pair of enormous Polynesians, dubbed “the wrecking crew,” quieted those prone to grumbling.

Brioche French toast topped with local blackberries – expedition fare that borders on the sublime.

Absent any such oppression, we scatter as we please. The chefs assemble West Coast clubhouse sandwiches with smoked and candied salmon, we concentrate on relaxing; and after the meal an Elysian calm falls over us all. A turkey vulture circles lazily overhead. We suck happily on Italian sweets. Couples do coupley things. We want for nothing.

Journeying back to base camp, we raft up and a sail, a tarp strung between two paddles. Perhaps the only things more gratifying than a free wind ride are those we catch surfing small waves. And so we return to our humble frontier, a successful day’s paddling under our spray skirts.

By late afternoon I’ve made serious headway into a light summer novel. My eyes drift from the page to the canopy overhead: chocolate-coloured bark shavings peeled back from the pistachio trunk of an arbutus tree, its leaves sprigs of mint, crisp against a blue sky.

Yes, I’m hungry. Well, perhaps not technically, but craving something. I crane my head toward the cooks’ domain. Bray and Elsbens are busy working the barrage of pots on a pair of double-burner Colemans. I loll back onto the sandstone shelf and find my place back on the page. I could get used to this. Bouts of idleness mixed with light exercise, punctuated by memorable meals. The day’s outing a happy memory, I spend what’s left of the afternoon largely horizontal.

The evening meal showcases braised red cabbage and a pasture-raised chicken-leg confit with mustard balsamic jam. Our adulation is unbounded. “I’d rub it on my bare arms and lick it off,” sighs Debbie, a recently retired tech exec. Sea asparagus, harvested within sight, blanched and pan-fried in butter garnishes every plate. We wash it all down with 2005 Averill Creek Pinot Gris. Darkness falls and the tide rises, amplifying the sound of lapping waves.

What did St. Paul say? “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Sun-baked, salt-skinned and pleasantly tired, I sip my Cherry Point blackberry port and savour another slice of Comox Camembert. Should the world come to an end tomorrow, it’s agreed, we are content to have placed our faith in James Bray. Unlike Brother XII, who along with Madame Z absconded with an ill-gotten fortune, he has not led us astray.

Get Mobilized

>>For the chance to win an Edible B.C. Foodie Tour (winner to be announced March 15, 2010)

 >> Edible B.C./ Blue Planet Kayaking Adventures gourmet kayaking weekends (604-812-9660 and 1-866-595-7865). Difficulty: moderate. 

>>Other Edible B.C. excursions include test-driving a new Audi to food and wine destinations in the Okanagan and on Vancouver Island and working alongside a high-end restaurant chef for the day (includes shopping for ingredients on Granville Island and preparing a multi-course meal in a restaurant kitchen). 

>>Background reading: Madame Zee: A Novel, by Pearl Luke (Perennial Canada, 2007; $19.95); Brother XII: The Strange Odyssey of a 20th-Century Prophet and His Quest for a New World, by John Oliphant (Twelfth House Press, 2006; $24.95). 

See also: Edible B.C. Contest.

Photos courtesy Edible B.C.

The eighth wonder of the world, via rail

by Colleen Friesen

The hot desert wind scours our faces as we cling to the rails of our open-sided box car. We are rocketing full-throttle down Mexico’s Pacific Coast on the vintage Sierra Madre Express.

It is our first morning enroute to the Copper Canyon aboard this four-car “consist.” Last night, the rails waltzed us to sleep in our little Lucy and Desi bunks. Somewhere in that starry night, we left behind the twin border towns of Nogales. My husband Kevin and I are on board with 33 other passengers, eight Mexican staff and our Tucson tour-guide team, the Molines.

MEXICO's Copper Canyon, in the northern part of the country, is most spectacularly accessed via rail.

Jim Moline speaks: “We will be entering into the territory of one of the most remote Indian tribes in North America. There are more than 60,000 Tarahumara in these canyons, many of them still living in caves or primitive plank houses.”

The cacti forest morphs into pine as we climb inland 5,100 feet. A dustry drive and we’re at Hotel El Mission in Cerocahui. Heavily scented roses surround the open-verandah hallways. Margaritas await in the dining room. The buzz of non-stop conversation is punctuated with loud laughs as everyone shares their stories.

That night we tuck in under woolen blankets, falling asleep to children’s laughter in the town’s centro. Roosters summon the dawn. The aroma of coffee and hot corn tortillas slips through our open window.

Back on board, we trundle up, up, up. The single use of the word “canyon” is almost a misnomer. Known as the eighth wonder of the world, this is a series of almost 20 canyons that fold and fall into each other, eventually encompassing an area almost five times the size of United States’ Grand Canyon. The comparison ends there. These barrancas are sunken forests of pine and endless blue-green crevasses, like an inverted mountain range. Ultimately we will pass through 87 tunnels and over 37 trestle bridges on tracks, reaching 8,100 feet on a railway line that took nearly a century to complete.

Near Creel, the train stops. Alongside, Tarahumara women quietly display their intricate baskets woven from grasses or foot-long pine needles. This is not the Mexican bargaining we’re used to. Silent babies, wrapped in bright cocoons, cling to hot-pink sweaters and orange shawls. Homemade sandals protect the women’s feet; floral, pleated skirts create tents around their muscular legs. Our tiny compartment fills with the scent of hot pine.

Our hotel for the next two nights hangs from a cliff. Silence, thick as snow, pushes into our thick-tiled room. Far-off fires from tiny Tarahumara homes light the way to a view of forever. Beneath our balcony, a hard-packed trail leads to a family’s cave.

The last night on board, Donna Winchester of South Carolina leads with the first toast: “I thought I’d signed on to travel by train to a remote landscape . . . I had no idea I would end my journey so educated about the local culture.” We all nod, raising our glasses in tacit agreement.

Updates:

• The CHEPE (or public train) is the only way to journey by rail through the Copper Canyon as of February 2010.
• The town of El Fuerte was recently named one of Mexico ’s “magic towns,” a new initiative designed to promote lesser known cultural gems throughout the country. As a result, many of the colonial buildings surrounding El Fuerte’s town square are now being renovated.
• A Field Guide to the Wildflowers of Mexico’s Copper Canyon Region.  75% of the proceeds from each book purchased through the author’s website are donated to an educational scholarship for Tarahumara and mestizo girls in the Copper Canyon. Contact author Linda Ford at spade53@juno.com.
• Girls’ school in Cerocahui

>> The A-trains: 10 Dreamy Rail Vacations to Stoke Your Boiler

Photos: Colleen Friesen

A train has replaced Afghanistan camels on journeys across the Outback

by Daniel Wood
 
The vast and arid Outback is to Australians what the Arctic is to Canadians: mythic, seldom visited, the object of fascination, and subject of occasional tragedy. Crossing it under normal circumstances could be unpleasant. Landmarks are few, desert tracks transitory, water scarce. (And guidebooks remind backroad drivers that drinking one’s own blood is not advisable.) But seated in a window-seat on the continent-spanning Ghan train, a traveller can contemplate fundamentals while being indulged in the luxurious.

The 2,979-km-long railway line crosses Australia’s heartland from Adelaide in the country’s south to semi-tropical Darwin, home of legendary Crocodile Dundee, in the far north. 

The 2,979-km-long railway line crosses Australia’s heartland from Adelaide in the country’s south to semi-tropical Darwin, home of legendary Crocodile Dundee, in the far north. (Or, with a Darwin departure, vice-versa.) Opened in 2004, the Ghan commemorates, in name, the Afghanistan camel trains that once provided Australia’s explorers with transportation through the continent’s formidable interior. Today, the train follows a similar route 19th century adventurers took across the spinifex-dotted, pointillist desert where lonely cattle stations now exist, and aboriginal people stand at rail crossings, waving as visitors pass.
 
On my journey south from Darwin, egrets rise from billabongs and wild buffalo flee the rumble of the Ghan’s approach as the kilometre-long train rockets along at 110 km/h. With welded-steel rails, there’s no clickety-clack. Dirt tracks lead away into eucalyptus forests and thousands of massive, stalagmite-like termite mounds draw gawking Ghan passengers to the windows. This is the land of “Waltzing Matilda,” cooibah trees and all. The swagmen (itinerants) may be gone, but a half-million feral camels graze a terrain too desiccated these days for jumbuck (sheep). Inside, champagne appears, hors d’oeuvres of local emu pate are served, and the passengers settle into conversations prompted by the prospect of the long journey ahead. The train rolls on; an elegant dinner (barramundi or kangaroo), too much wine, the mesmerizing effects of motion and darkness reduce me to stupor. I fall asleep to a sky full of stars.
 
At dawn, I join other pre-caffeinated travellers in the lounge to witness sunrise over the Outback. The land is dead flat, only the margins of the dry watercourses green with trees. And kangaroos now: fleeing our appearance. Up ahead is Alice Springs where I’ll leave the Ghan and acquire a Jeep for a week’s drive southward, 1,599 kilometres to Adelaide. In the distance in those days ahead, I’ll sometimes see the Ghan, off in the distance, a silver arrow of modernity passing through the desert’s timelessness.
 
Getting there: Book early. Many break the 50-hour journey – as the author did – mid-continent at Alice Springs for a memorable side trip to Uluru National Park (Ayer’s Rock).

>>For info: http://www.gsr.com/

>> The A-trains: 10 Dreamy Rail Vacations to Stoke Your Boiler

And the winners are . . . according to the Society of International Railway Travellers

Background

The U.S.-based Society of International Railway Travellers bases its annual awards on the experiences of its members, writers, editors and staff. Trains chosen must meet “stringent standards for service, accommodation, scenery, itinerary, off-train experiences and passenger enjoyment.”

The Winners

New to the Top-25 list as of 2009 are two routes in Norway and the British Pullman, which completes the British leg of the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express journeys between Paris and London. However, due to the recent economic downturn, gone are the GrandLuxe Express and Sierra Madre Express, which ran in Mexico’s Copper Canyon.

Three of the trains featured on this list have accompanying articles by Westworld writers: The Rocky Mountaineer, the Blue Train and the Ghan.  The Sierra Madre Express also has an accompanying article, even though it is no longer on the top-25 list. Why? Its route is still serviced via other trains, and the highlight is still the Copper Canyon – considered the eighth wonder of the world. Obviously, this remains a rail journey well worth taking.)
North America

1. Canadian (Canada)

2. Royal Canadian Pacific (Canada)

3. Rocky Mountaineer (Canada)
South America

4. Andean Explorer (Peru)

5. Hiram Bingham (Peru)

Africa

6. Blue Train (South Africa)

7. Pride of Africa (Rovos Rail) (South Africa)

Asia/Indian Subcontinent

8. Palace on Wheels (India)

9. Eastern & Oriental Express (SE Asia)

10. Shangri-La Express (China/Tibet)

11. Toy Train (India)

12. Deccan Odyssey (India)

Europe

13. Danube Express (Central Europe, Turkey)

14. British Pullman (Great Britain)

15. El Transcanta-brico (Spain)

16. Golden Eagle Trans-Siberian Express (Russia)

17. Venice Simplon-Orient-Express (Europe)

18. Glacier Express (Switzerland)

19. Bernina Express (Switzerland)

20. Royal Scotsman (Scotland)

21. Flam Railway (Norway)

22. Bergen Railway (Norway)

Australia

23. Ghan (Australia)

24. Indian Pacific (Australia)

25. Sunlander (Australia)

>>A 2010 update on the growing trend in slow travel: Trains-formers

>> 4 of the World’s Top 25 Rail Journeys

>> The A Trains: 10 Dreamy Rail Vacations to Stoke Your Boiler

Lead photo courtesy Orient-Express.

Flashdance soundtracks, abandoned Russian outposts, Mongolian “Midnight Madness” – the Trans-Siberian is a cultural carnival on wheels

by Katrina Simmons

I stand, gazing out the window, elbow-deep in dishwater. Through bare trees, a comforting echo rises from the valley. Every time I heat that whistle, and the clatter of wheels on rails, I start to sway to the rhythm of the train song. Ch-chunk ch-chunk, ch-chunk ch-chunk . . .

A few months ago, I travelled with my husband 9,000 km across two continents, three countries and five time zones on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Its main line cuts a path east from Moscow, straight across Russia to the eastern port of Vladivostock. But because we wanted to visit China again, we chose, instead, an alternative route that heads south after four days, traversing Mongolia and ending in Beijing.

Euphemistically called first class, our tiny compartment ranked such a lofty title for the simple fact that it had only two beds. It was redeemed by a huge window that provided us with a front-row seat from which to meditate on the changing scenery for the next week. We shared two washrooms with the rest of the passengers and crew. Showers were conspicuous in their absence. Every attempt at a cat lick in the Lilliputian sink while the train rocked on its rails sent water sloshing onto the floor and down the tops of my boots. I ceded my vanity to the god of train travel.

We were situated next to the dining/bar/social car, giving me less practice at the swaying step, akin to sea legs. The narrow halls connecting the rooms turned this gait into the Trans-Siberian shuffle, a momentary waltz when I met other passengers head on.

Moscow, En route to Ulaan Bataar

The train left Moscow’s Yaraslovl Station in the evening, bang on time. Once we got beyond the city lights, the dust-etched window revealed nothing but my own reflection. I stared instead into the blackness of the Russian night, and was rocked to sleep by the railway lullaby. Ch-chunk ch-chunk, ch-chunk ch-chunk.

I awoke to a white birch forest bathed in soft pink light. Sometime in the night we passed from Europe to Asia. The Ural Mountains, boundary between the two continents, receded into the distance, as the vast region of Siberia embraced us in her frigid arms.

Here and there small towns emerged from the heavy forest. I imagined them as bas relief, chiselled from the hardwoods surrounding them. Small houses of unpainted wood: Their soothing grey enhanced by carved window frames or the herringbone pattern of the planks.

Gardens announced the presence of communities. I was reminded of the last of my own meagre harvests, now sodden by the killing frost. A few cabbage were left to brave the Russian winter, but the plots were carefully turned over. Those urban farmers were far more diligent than I. I tried to guess how large the approaching towns were by the size of their garden sites. Large cities were the easiest; their many-hectared patchwork quilts of dark earth, straw frost cover and makeshift fencing shouted their stories in a language close to my heart.

Writing in my journal was near impossible. It wasn’t the smoothest train I’d ridden. I used my mini-cassette to record mileage markers, stunning scenery and the background music of the rails, reverting to pen and paper only to copy the Russian names of the stops along the way. So much for the letters I’d planned to write. Weeks after I returned to Canada, my friends were still receiving Mongolian postcards scrawled with notes on Moscow, mailed from Beijing.

The downswing in the economy was not so evident in Moscow, but in Krasnoyovsk, industrial graveyards were filled with rusting train parts behind abandoned factories and warehouses. Paradoxically, cranes rose above the city skylines, and new apartment blocks bore monolithic billboards that screamed Buy Me!, in any language.

The dining/social/bar car was entertaining in its own right, with plastic plants hanging in windows, Harley-Davidson posters on the walls and background music from the Flashdance soundtrack. It certainly had redeeming qualities, but the food was not one of them.

After a few mediocre meals, I decided to give my stomach a break from fatty beef, watery gravy and greasy eggs. I broke out our emergency food that we’d reserved for later in the week. The samovars on each car were part of the coal-fired boiler system, supplying screaming-hot water for our coffee, tea and ubiquitous instant noodles.

After a few mediocre meals, I decided to give my stomach a break from fatty beef, watery gravy and greasy eggs. I broke out our emergency food that we’d reserved for later in the week. The samovars on each car were part of the coal-fired boiler system, supplying screaming-hot water for our coffee, tea and ubiquitous instant noodles. I used it in lieu of filtering my drinking water, too. I only wished I could use some for a shower.

I failed to realize, then, that the Mongolian passengers that boarded with it would be the floorshow for most of the trip. At every stop they jumped from the train, wearing new leather coats, mitts, jackets, hats, boots and carrying another dozen of the same.

Large crates, boxes and bags consumed most of the space in the four-berth carriages. I noticed this cargo on the platform in Moscow, but assumed it would make its way to a freight car. I failed to realize, then, that the Mongolian passengers that boarded with it would be the floorshow for most of the trip. At every stop they jumped from the train, wearing new leather coats, mitts, jackets, hats, boots and carrying another dozen of the same. Residents of the small communities waited, money in hand. As soon as the traders disembarked, the haggling started.

Railcar attendant at one of many stops across Siberia. In the background, peering from the train, is a Mongolian trader, waiting for her to clear off so he can jump out and sell some of his wares.

The car attendants tried to stop us from taking photos of the platform entrepreneurs, but their efforts were futile. The traders flogged their wares even from on board. Train staff were persuaded to unlock windows and look the other way. At night, too, the buyers were waiting. It was Midnight Madness on wheels. Armed with flashlights, measuring tapes and shopping bags, nighttime shoppers had 15 minutes to inspect goods, guess at sizes and haggle for the best deal.

On one of many 10-minutes tops we watched a frenzied Mongolian woman pounce on a thief trying to make away with a pair of leather gloves. Just when I thought she might win the round, the train started pulling away from the platform. Forfeiting her goods, she jumped on board, laughing. I think she enjoyed the challenge.

I got the distinct impression that, as travelers, we were merely tolerated; that this train belonged to those brassy and aggressive Mongolian traders. I spent the whole evening dodging freight dollies loaded with crates of beer, 100-kg bags of milk powder and rice, distributed amongst the passengers to avoid customs duty. After the lengthy border ordeal the reverse process began, forcing my retreat out of the aisle and into my bed. Sleep eluded me for many hours as rumbling dollies, heavy footsteps and banging doors continued into the night.

Mongolia

When I awoke in Mongolia I was gazing into absolute nothingness. From the plateau of sand and scree, sparsely covered in brown grass, to the barren and distant hills, I saw not one house, vehicle, road or any sign of life. How could anyone survive out there?

The villages on that barren plateau were welcome intruders into the void. Some were ghost towns; strategic military posts for Russia before 1992. Their skeletal remains littered the landscape with the discards of more prosperous times. Some towns looked like they were built in a one-day blitz. Residential schools for children of the nomads and identical homes of concrete block, each equidistant to their neighbours, were connected by power-line umbilicals. If these are the alternative, I can understand why the herders would forgo settlement, despite the harsh conditions of their nomadic lives.

Though I saw many of these heavy felt tents set up for temporary shelter in the city of Ulaan Baatar, their presence on this rugged landscape confirmed the hardiness of these ancestors of the great Ghengis Khan.

I slowly gave in to the rhythm of the train and spent most of the day playing spot the ger. Though I saw many of these heavy felt tents set up for temporary shelter in the city of Ulaan Baatar, their presence on this rugged landscape confirmed the hardiness of these ancestors of the great Ghengis Khan. For hours I saw only frozen creeks, salt-lake-beds and the occasional herd of hairy camels, goats and yaks. Herders accompanied their animals, including stout horses, on foot.

And into China

The Chinese border guards at Erlian were thorough and efficient. A very patient immigration officer sat next to me on my bunk, pointing out all the places I needed to make changes to my forms when I was completely baffled by the questions written in Chinese and French.

We shunted back and forth for half an hour, while the railcars were separated and rerouted, side-by-side into a shed. They were each lifted on hydraulics while we watched, captive, from the windows. The wheels of the train were changed to accommodate a different-guage track in China. I watched with a mixture of fascination and trepidation. Were they really working by the light of a single flashlight under there?

As we were lowered onto our new bogies, the impromptu conference of passengers dispersed to their cabins. Our final night on the train, the quieter and gentler ch-chunk ch-chunk, ch-chunk ch-chunk of new wheels on smoother track, rocked me gently to sleep.

The harsh, dry conditions of the desert-like land are much the same in its northern neighbour, but every corner of China teems with life. Farmers coax crops from the unlikeliest soil. I’ve often dreamed of spending a few years there, learning to grow food in this land where nothing seems impossible.

Workers stacked dry corn stalks into teepees, while a fat black pig waited for gleanings. Blue-green cabbage still sat in the fields. Rammed earth dikes enclosed empty rice paddies. Grave markers dotted this intensive agricultural land, as if the fields had slowly engulfed even the most remote tombs. And in the middle of this timeless scene of horses, carts and back-breaking manual labour sat a shiny new pick-up truck, with not a spot of dust on it.

I felt appropriately chastened. How could I have imagined not recognizing such an astounding engineering feat? The reconstructed stone barrier undulates through the mountains like the ridge-scales on a dragon’s back. And the circus that is the entrance to this historic attraction puts Canada’s Niagara Falls Clifton Hill to shame.

The Chinese penchant for walls made me wonder how I would know which was the Great Wall. They’ve built walls of mud, brick, stone, wood and steel around their fields, farms, courtyards, neighbourhoods, towns and cities. But when the train passed through the real thing at Badaling, I felt appropriately chastened. How could I have imagined not recognizing such an astounding engineering feat? The reconstructed stone barrier undulates through the mountains like the ridge-scales on a dragon’s back. And the circus that is the entrance to this historic attraction puts Canada’s Niagara Falls Clifton Hill to shame.

As we rolled into Beijing the train slowed to a crawl. I watched a woman curbing her dog along the tracks. I’ve always been struck by the irony of small pets in a culture that routinely offers them on the menu.

A wave of homesickness flooded over me, as I thought of my own little Sheltie. I could hear him barking at the squirrels and chickadees. He starts jumping at the birdfeeder, as I snap back to the mundane responsibilities of home: deciding on dinner, feeding the dog, planning for next spring’s garden. The daydream fades into the past, but the train song still resounds from the valley: Ch-chunk ch-chunk, ch-chunk ch-chunk.

>> The A-trains: 10 Dreamy Rail Vacations to Stoke Your Boiler

All photos courtesy Terry Asma, 2020 Studios.

The Blue-Ribbon Rendezvous: a 26-hour journey from Cape Town to Pretoria*

(*a distance of nearly 1,000 miles; passengers can also continue on to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe)

by Helena Zukowski

For a train lover, a chance to ride South Africa’s legendary Blue Train is the kind of thrill one might experience if one were a chef and Alain Ducasse confessed that one’s soufflé made his look like mere pudding. The Blue Train is simply the ultimate luxury train.

The Blue Train’s pedigree goes back to 1901, when the Zambezi Express provided luxury rail travel between Cape Town and Victoria Falls for those whose fortunes were dug out of the diamond mines in Kimberly. By 1939, the line’s blue-and-gray air-conditioned cars were part of the scenery, and locals popularly referred to them as “those blue trains.”

courtesy Helena Zukowski

The first officially dubbed Blue Train was so named in 1946 and was pulled by a steam engine. It ran until an even grander version replaced it in 1972. In the 1990s, Nelson Mandela’s advisers suggested that beefing up tourist facilities would create jobs and increase tourism revenues; of course, the Blue Train would attract those interested in the best in service and comfort. The recently launched, $9-million third incarnation of the Blue Train introduced state-of-the-art upgrades, including powerful air-conditioning that keeps the train cool, even as outdoor temperatures reach 113 degrees, and expensive incandescent lighting controlled by dimmer switches. Of the two Blue Trains, one carries 84 passengers, the other 76; each has a staff of 27 that includes a chef, kitchen, employees and butlers.

Far more than just a mode of transportation, however, these trains set a romantic mood for enjoying South Africa’s landscape and game parks and offer the ideal ambience for making friends along the way.

When I arrive at the station in Cape Town, the sleek blue snake with gold banks along the sides of its 18 cars is already waiting. My bags are whisked in one direction and I am whisked in another to a comfortable station lounge, where blue-uniformed attendants are handing out champagne and orange juice.

Erik, my butler, is escorting me to my room with the kind of understated grace found in noble families. He stashes my bags; explains the intricacies of the electronically controlled window blinds, the telephone and the television (which can be used to watch in-house movies or documentaries about the areas the train traverses), and shows me where to place my shoes for polishing and my clothes for ironing. And, oh, yes, if I want anything, anything at all, I have only to ring.

courtesy Helena Zukowski

Soon, Erik, my butler, is escorting me to my room with the kind of understated grace found in noble families. He stashes my bags; explains the intricacies of the electronically controlled window blinds, the telephone and the television (which can be used to watch in-house movies or documentaries about the areas the train traverses); points out the individual AC controls and dimmer switches for the lights and shows me where to place my shoes for polishing and my clothes for ironing. And, oh, yes, if I want anything, anything at all, I have only to ring.

I am beginning to feel like a peasant child whose royal birth has just been revealed.

By the time I finish inspecting the intricate. inlaid veneer-paneling, the gold-leaf-and-brass walls sconces and the Gialo Royale Italian marble en suite, with its 24-carat-gold fittings, it’s time for lunch.

I dine on appetizers of asparagus and portabella mushrooms topped with crabmeat, grilled baby kingklip (a South African fish) with spicy tomato concassee, lamb served with baked pumpkin and sautéed potatoes and, for a finale, bananas flambéed in 20-year-old brandy – all of this presented on fine-bone china with cut crystal glasses and silver cutlery. And as the train glides along on its cushioned wheels, there isn’t the tiniest bump to disturb the meal.

During lunch, my companions, a young couple from Cape Town on their way to the Maldives for a honeymoon, keep their eyes peeled for famous passengers. After all, Elton John was on board just a few days ago.

During lunch, my companions, a young couple from Cape Town on their way to the Maldives for a honeymoon, keep their eyes peeled for famous passengers. After all, Elton John was on board just a few days ago. As we linger over coffee, talking about celebrities, politics, royalty, republicanism and scuba diving, the veld (grasslands covered with scattered shrubs and trees) outside sizzles in a golden light that laps all the way to the foot of the blue mountains beyond. We have already passed through an endless stretch of vineyards and still have the stunning arid beauty of the Karoo, with its hills and flat-ridged kopjes, ahead.

At our main stop, Matjiesfontein, the train pulls up beside a former military headquarters that is now a tiny, perfectly restored Victorian village. As we step from the station platform onto a rickety red double-decker bus, someone notes that the train is longer than the town. The absurdity of a bus tour through such a small village leads us to guess it is probably just a clever ploy to get passengers to bond; the jokes fly left and right.

courtesy Helena Zukowski

By the time we are on our second sherry at the village’s Lord Milner Hotel, friendships have solidified. Later, back on the train, over cucumber sandwiches and tea, “the three Rogers” – golfing friends from Ireland, Scotland and England who are all, coincidentally, named Roger, provide expert, running commentary on the passing scenery: “Look, moo cows at 9 o’clock.”

That evening the Rogers join me for a dinner that is even more elaborate than lunch, with the addition of specialties such as Knysna oysters, crayfish, and crocodile and impala cooked in the distinctive Cape style, which borrows from the Far East and the French Huguenots. Throughout, we are served award-winning South African wines, as our waiters confide that to ensure the peak of freshness, the ingredients for the next meal are flown to airstrips near train stations en route.

In the club car after dinner, passengers continue to bond. One man confesses that it is his 98th trip on the Blue Train; a couple from Copenhagen try to get everyone to talk about Russian literature, and the Rogers mercilessly tease the honeymoon couple.

courtesy Helena Zukowski

The trip is rapidly coming to an end. And as I slip drowsily between my embroidered sheets and feather-light down comforter, I say a small prayer of thanks for a brief but perfect journey, for fine old trains and new friends.

Getting there: The blue train operates in two seasons. Rates during high season (January 1 through April 30 and September 1 through December 31) are about $1,145 to $1,575. Rates during low season (May 1 through August 31) are about $740 to $1,100.*

*Prices are based on exchange rates at the time of publication and are subject to change

>> The A-trains: 10 Dreamy Rail Vacations to Stoke Your Boiler

Photo: Helena Zukowski

Why a 19th-century invention should become the 21st-century people-mover

by Charles Montgomery

There is a common theory about the great environmental crisis of our time. We are warned that any serious attempt to cut greenhouse gas emissions will doom us to lives of misery, tedium, limited food choices and dull vacations. We are told that we have to choose between living well and saving the planet.

It occurred to me at exactly 10:45 a.m. on a recent midsummer’s day that such considerations might be entirely wrong. And by 10:46 I was cruising toward a much more compelling notion: that the climate crisis might be an opportunity, a chance to regain the art of travel and return to a more civilized time, where the journey was not merely a hassle, not an obstacle to overcome, but a pleasure to be savoured as fully as the destination itself.

AMTRAK’s Adirondack cruises from Montreal to the Big Apple in a 14-hour overnight trip. Courtesy Amtrak

I know exactly what time these thoughts occurred, because my Paris-bound train had just left London’s Waterloo station right on schedule. I was contemplating the bad carbon karma I had already racked up by flying from Vancouver to London, when a steward with twinkling eyes approached. Observing the consternation on my face, he leaned toward me and gently cooed, “Champagne, monsieur?”

Champagne for breakfast. Pannier Brut Sélection NV, to be exact: an elegant blend with creamy brioche aromas, according to those who know about such things, yet totally wrong for a man attempting a few hours of carbon penance.

“Yes, of course!” I barked eagerly, and the bubbly flowed as the sun burst through the clouds, rendering the red bricks and railyards of London a holy shade of amber.

This journey was supposed to be about sacrifice, given that in my transatlantic flight from Vancouver to London I had contributed to pumping nearly a tonne of CO2 into the atmosphere. For if you are ever masochistic enough to calculate your own carbon footprint, you’ll realize that flying is just about the nastiest thing you can do to the planet. Each passenger on a transatlantic flight blows out about as much greenhouse gas as they would driving a Hummer to work for a year. Which means, as an occasional travel writer, I’ve flown enough in my life to merit a thousand lashes with a carbon-tipped whip.

It’s not that there isn’t hope for air travel. While fuel prices soar into the stratosphere, both government and corporate researchers are searching for cheap, alternative fuel sources for airplanes. But so far the prize has been elusive. Jet engines require a potent kerosene-like fuel that can withstand high altitudes and low temperatures, and engineers are now examining ways to power aircraft with hydrogen.

Meanwhile, to my way of thinking, rail has the upper hand. In fact, as early as 1901, the electric predecessors of the Paris-bound train I was riding were being adopted in Berlin, while today’s generation of electric trains can travel more than twice as fast as the speediest diesel-powered locomotives and – theoretically, at least – can be powered by distant solar, nuclear or wind turbines. And so I reasoned that, because my cross-channel train journey pumps out only a tenth of the carbon dioxide generated by flying from London to Paris, I’d arrive at my destination a little closer to carbon neutral and a lot closer to climate righteousness. Oh yes, I was ready to suffer for my sins.

The Indian Pacific. Courtesy Great Southern Rail

But things were not working out as anticipated. I had walked into the Eurostar terminal in Waterloo (Eurostar has since moved across the Thames to St. Pancras International Station) barely half an hour before my departure. Ticket confirmed, luggage scanned and passport stamped by French customs, all in a matter of minutes, I was then escorted onboard to a reserved window seat: an outrageously comfortable, moulded number that would be quite at home in an Austin Powers shag pad. I opened my newspaper to read about the chaos that summer rains were causing at Heathrow Airport. Thousands stranded. I toasted their patience.

As I sipped my Brut – it is really quite delightful how those bubbles swirl and pop beneath your nose – it struck me that if I had chosen to fly, I would still be en route to Heathrow. Once I reached the airport, I would then have to spend two hours being poked, prodded and herded through its infernal collection of duty-free shops, deep-fry vats and flocks of rumpled departure lounge castaways. And if my flight left on time – by no means a certainty at Heathrow – I would lift off at just about the moment my 10:40 a.m. Eurostar train was to pull into Gare du Nord in central Paris.

Forget, for a moment, that this train is très vite. And forget, as well, this traveller’s carbon guilt. These are footnotes, really, to the philosophical question that a rail journey naturally raises. Can the quality of an experience be judged by the distances we cross to claim it? Do we travel to collect miles, or do we travel for joy? Do we still believe that it’s not only where you go that’s important but also how you get there?

In the 1987 film Swimming to Cambodia, the late monologue artist Spalding Gray describes his theory of The Perfect Moment. No matter how unpleasant Gray’s journeys, he considered them incomplete – and he would soldier onward – until he had experienced that rarified moment. It might be nothing more than a brief feeling of transcendence felt while floating in, say, the Indian Ocean. But once he had collected his Perfect Moment, even if it occurred mere hours after first stuffing socks into suitcases, Gray would be ready to turn around and head for home.

THE ORIENT EXPRESS Complete with starched linens, boutique shopping and fine dining (beef carpaccio with juniper and coriander in red wine sauce, anyone?Courtesy the Orient-Express (www.orient-express.com

In this age of discount, fast-tracked globetrotting, it seems we have all been seduced by The Perfect Moment School of Travel. It dictates that no matter how many continents we have to cross, no matter how much pollution we spew, no matter how many affronts, security friskings and leg cramps we suffer en route, all that matters are those few seconds of postcard bliss on the other end. In other words, Perfect Moment-ism is corrupting that most ancient and noble axiom of travel: getting there should be something of an art.

It’s time to stop kidding ourselves. We’ve traded car camping, lazy weeks on nearby beaches and the clickety-clack of rail for the seductive possibility of getting as far away as we can, as quickly as possible. But I believe there is a better way, one that requires tossing out the math so many of us use to plan our vacations. It means trading maximum mileage for meandering. And if one thinks about it, I’d argue that the most climate-friendly means of travel are also the most pleasurable: the canoe drift; the bicycle tour, even the station-wagon safari to the summer cabin. But the grand dame of leisurely journeys is still the train. There is something deliciously cinematic about moving across this earth by rail. While air travel renders the world an abstraction from 20,000 feet, rail is inherently voyeuristic, offering peeks through the world’s back door.

Courtesy Great Southern RailI have a friend, a climate worrier, who decided to take the train from Vancouver to a job in Texas, even though the patchwork journey would take him the better part of a week. He insists he had a marvellous time. The trip was transforming, “like a dream.” And he thought, deeply. He thought like he hadn’t thought in years. I didn’t quite have the stamina for a week of introspection. But the Eurostar offered a glimpse as, after pulling out of the gothic station, we cruised through the graffiti-grit of rail industria. Overall-clad men loaded trucks with beer. Hobos dozed in the shadows of ancient walls. A pair of teenage boys smoked furtively among blackberry thickets, ignoring my gaze. I felt like a ghost, floating through.

Soon, the backyards of suburbia gave way to the streams and pastures of places in-between, where gumbooted Mr. Bean lookalikes chased sleepy Herefords. The English countryside rose and fell alongside the tracks like soft green ocean swells, and gradually the oak groves began to blur across my window.

The Europeans have never forgotten the joys of train travel. In fact, if the Eurostar is any indication, they have been refining it to an art. This train leaves on time – not an hour late, not a minute late. No excuses. The track is straight and swift, and becoming more so. (The train became the U.K.’s first high-speed route in November 2007, shortening the London-to-Paris trip from a full day to two and a quarter hours – a great shame, really, considering how little time this will leave for champagne.) Still, the Eurostar remains far more than a high-tech curiosity. More than 95 million passengers have ridden it under the English Channel since 1994. And while many arguably ride these rails for convenience, similar routes around the world are also drawing passengers who clearly care more about the journey than the destination.

Courtesy the Orient-Express (www.orient-express.com)

Take the Venice Simplon Orient-Express, which makes a sturdy overnight march from London to Venice, pulling in after a solid 17 hours on the rails. At U.S.$3,120 a sleeper, riders are not paying for speed, but for the experience of riding a lovingly-refurbished antique first used on the original Orient-Express of the 1920s and 30s – complete with starched linens, boutique shopping (the Express has its own Collection, including hand-blown French crystal and pearl earrings) and fine dining (beef carpaccio with juniper and coriander in red wine sauce, anyone?).

Much like modern-day cruise ships have revived the romance of ocean travel, luxury rail travel is again now having its day. The pampered few catch glimpses of the Taj Mahal from the gilded chambers of the Palace on Wheels as it winds through Rajasthan, India. They sip fancy cocktails and smoke Cuban cigars as they venture from Cape Town through the South African bush to Pretoria on the deliciously named Blue Train. They nibble on chocolate-dipped strawberries as they gaze at the serrated edges of the continental divide from the glass-domed cars of Canada’s Rocky Mountaineer. And they all learn, as generations of our travelling ancestors have, to adopt a particularly languid modus operandi. One must simply be prepared to doze, to dream and, particularly in North America, to spend plenty of hours on those tracks.

courtesy the Rocky Mountaineer

Take Via Rail’s Canadian, which ambles between Toronto and Vancouver. Yesterday’s traveller might consider the journey three days lost. But slowness can be a virtue. The train’s engineers are apparently so unhurried that they’ll take stop requests anywhere in the wilderness between Sudbury and Winnipeg. Want to go wandering up the third creek east of that grey hill? Just ask. They’ll dump you and your backpack wherever you like and continue on their way. Via can also do Toronto to Montreal in about four hours – just enough time to savour the roast-duck-breast napped with sweet cherry sauce served in Via 1 Class. Vancouver to Jasper is an overnight by sleeper. Amtrak’s Adirondack cruises from Montreal to the Big Apple in a 14-hour overnight trip.

If you let go of your hurry, rail can even roll you out of winter: Amtrak’s Coast Starlight connects Vancouver with the west coast of the U.S., rolling between Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles in a couple of leisurely days. (Of course, the soulful traveller would take time out to hit the public market in Seattle, the wineries of Napa and the cliffs of Yosemite National Park.)

The Ghan train / courtesy Great Southern Rail

And yes, it’s true, Canadian rail travel requires special patience. The network is aging and freight generally gets priority on the tracks, so one out of every four Via Rail trips arrives behind schedule. But things are changing. Federal stimulus funding is helping unplug routes such as the previously bottlenecked Montreal-Toronto corridor. And even Toronto’s Union Station will soon be restored to the historic grandeur of its 1927 opening, when the Prince of Wales proclaimed, “You build your stations like we build our cathedrals.”

Having flown Vancouver to London before boarding the Eurostar, I knew in my heart of hearts that I’d already burned any carbon offset my Eurostar trip might offer. But I resolved to enjoy it anyway. I accepted a pear from the steward – a perfect pear, actually: unblemished and chilled, so that it was now gleaming with dew. It was like a painting.

Courtesy the Orient-Express (www.orient-express.com)

I bit into my pear. I watched cloud shadows race across patchwork fields. I let the sound of the train lull me. The Eurostar did not roar like a jet. It did not clickety-clack like The Little Engine that Could. It whooshed with calm efficiency. And against that rushing air was a sound that air travellers just don’t hear anymore: the tinkling, almost musical percussion, of silverware. I looked down and, yup, there they were, wrapped in a linen napkin: my own stainless steel knife and fork, sharp edges and all. It seemed a symbol of all that was good and right and dignified about this journey.

There were other sounds, too: giggling. I peered between the seats ahead of me, where two middle-aged women were mixing themselves mimosas. One had polished her long fingernails a burnished silver. The other had sequins woven into her black T-shirt. The latter caught my eye and winked.

“To Paris!” they bawled in Jersey accents, then downed their flutes.

Ah, yes, we were headed for Paris. I had almost forgotten, lost in what was becoming a seamless collage of dozing and perfect moments. The train slowed a touch. We glided through the Kent hills, sank gradually beneath the youthful grass of spring, down through the skin of the earth, into the darkness of the Channel Tunnel, where we could imagine the city to come.

Winding through the eucalyptus-filled Blue Mountains to the arid Nullarbor Desert, Great Southern Rail's three-night journey features the world’s longest straight stretch of railway track.Courtesy Great Southern Rail

The World’s Top 25 Rail Journeys, including Westworld writers on Russia/Mongolia/China’s Trans-Siberian Railway, Australia’s Ghan, South Africa’s Blue Train and Canada’s Rocky Mountaineer/VIA’s Trans-Canada route.

The A-trains:  10 dreamy rail vacations to stoke your boiler

by Sonu Purhar

• Eurail
Across Europe
From Bulgaria to Ireland and everything in between, Eurail is the wandering soul’s key to the continent. The number of countries and length of travel determine which rail ticket is best suited to the individual — though with every stop an invitation to explore a new culture, the comprehensive Global Pass is the most tempting option.

• Great Southern Rail
Sydney to Perth, Australia (The Indian Pacific)
Winding through the eucalyptus-filled Blue Mountains to the arid Nullarbor Desert, this three-night journey down the world’s longest straight stretch of railway track (478 km) showcases Australia’s startling contrasts — from vantage points up to 1,000 metres above sea level. Keep an eye out for the wedge-tailed eagle. The massive avian is the Indian Pacific Railway’s official mascot.

Snow-capped Rockies, golden Prairies and thundering Niagara Falls — Canada’s natural landmarks are best explored by rail.Courtesy the Rocky Mountaineer

• The Rocky Mountaineer/VIA Rail
Vancouver to Toronto, Canada (Trans-Canada Rail Adventure)
Snow-capped Rockies, golden Prairies and thundering Niagara Falls — Canada’s natural landmarks are best explored by rail. And this 13-day, cross-country exploration includes motorcoach and helicopter tours, national park passes and nine-nights’ hotel accommodation.

• Trans-Siberian Railway
Moscow, Russia, to Beijing, China (Trans-Siberian line)
The longest rail line ever constructed, the Trans-Siberian crosses one-third of the globe and spans more than seven time zones. Four routes connect Russia to the Far East, and though the landscape is spectacular, it’s the eclectic mix of passengers that makes the journey unforgettable.

• Chihuahua-Pacific Railroad
Chihuahua to Los Mochis, Mexico
Known to the locals as Ferrocarril Chihuahua al Pacifico, or El Chepe, this refurbished train follows what is reputed to be one of the world’s most scenic rail routes. Highlights include the vast Copper Canyon, seven times larger than the Grand Canyon; a series of rustic, off-the-path villages; and a visit with the swift-of-foot Tarahumara tribe.

• The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway
New Jalpaiguri to Darjeeling, West Bengal, India
One of the few railways that is also a World Heritage Site, the Darjeeling’s century-old engineering allows for sharp, spiralling ascents over Himalayan terrain. Passing through the soaring Mahaldirum Range and over the rushing Mahanadi River, this half-day tour is so breathtaking, Mark Twain is said to have called his DHR experience the most enjoyable day of his life.

• Shangri-La Express
Beijing/Xian, China, to Goldmund/Lhasa, Tibet
According to locals, “Shangri-La” is a mythic paradise hidden beyond the Himalayas — and that’s exactly what this 12-night rail trip seeks. Two possible routes venture to the “roof of the world,” Tibet, with the highest altitude reached topping 5,000 metres (oxygen is pumped aboard). Stops include Beijing’s Forbidden City and the Dalai Lama’s Summer Palace in Lhasa.

Empire Builder at Havre Station, Mont. Courtesy Amtrak

• Amtrak
Chicago, Seattle or Portland to Montana, U.S. (Empire Builder Train)
The U.S. is known for its national parks, and this 14-day pioneer-themed journey explores five of the most scenic: Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Arches and Canyonlands. The route follows portions of Lewis and Clark’s famous trail, with such notable sights as the lazy Mississippi, temperamental Old Faithful and other geological, natural and wildlife marvels of the American West.

• Rovos Rail
Cape Town to Pretoria, South Africa
The five-star luxury of this refurbished 19th-century “cruise train,” which may be hauled by steam, diesel or electric locomotives throughout the journey, is ideal for experiencing exotic South Africa. History reigns supreme: as the train trundles across centuries-old veldt and past ancient towns, its period décor, after-dinner champagne and traditional white-glove service recall the glamour of a bygone era.

• The Royal Scotsman
Scotland tour
Sparkling lochs, sprawling moors and overnights in ancient castles are just a taste of the itinerary offered by this travelling luxury hotel. On-board meals reflect seasonal Scottish specialties (guests have the option of donning kilts at dinner); evening entertainment includes Highlanders regaling passengers with tales of life in old Scotland.  ?

Recommended: Purchase rail tickets prior to departure, as many countries offer substantial discounts on advance bookings.

>> 4 of the World’s Top 25 Rail Journeys

>> The World’s Top 25 Rail Journeys (2009)

Lead photo: courtesy Helena Zukowski

Prime Picks: four foraged feasts

by Ryan Stuart

No matter where one travels in B.C., there’s food in the forest. But determining the difference between delicious and deadly — be it mushroom, moss or seaweed — can be scarier than skydiving, which is where B.C.’s foodies of the wild come in. Ardent supporters of dining locally, but for free, these pros have grub-gathering neophytes turning stinging nettle into sweet tea and seaweed into trail snacks within hours.

1. Wild Seaweed Tour
Outer Coast Seaweeds, Sooke

WHIFFIN SPIT's Participants in Wild Seaweed Tours with "Seaweed Lady" Diane Bernard sample 12 to 15 of the 600-plus species found off the Vancouver Island coast. Courtesy Seaflora Wild Organic Seaweed Skincare

Washed up, dried out and covered in sand, seaweed looks and smells anything but edible, or nutritious. That’s why Diane Bernard, a.k.a. the Seaweed Lady, leads her Wild Seaweed Tours past “the compost pile” and into the “living ocean garden” of the tidal flats off Whiffin Spit. “We look at, learn about, eat, wear and play with about 12 to 15 different types of seaweed,” says Bernard. “And I give lots of ideas on how to cook and enjoy all of them.” According to the former politician, the 600 different seaweed species thriving off Vancouver Island contain almost every known vitamin, 60 trace minerals and tons of fibre — and “they don’t taste bad,” either. Participants nibble raw samples on a two-hour morning tour or sign on for a seaweed lunch at one of two partner restaurants, including world-renowned Sooke Harbour House. Optional: three-course seaweed spa treatment, a spinoff of the seaweed tour featuring Bernard’s Outer Coast Seaweeds spa products (made from seaweed, natch). Day trips, from $35, including tour, meal and spa option. 877-713-7464

2. The Great Fall Mushroom Hunt
Aerie Resort, Malahat

It’s an assignment worthy of 007: a half-day educational “hunt” led by Brother Michael, a mycologist and Benedictine monk based out of Vancouver Island’s only monastery. Every weekend for six weeks starting at the end of September, gatherers-in-training depart the Aerie by resort van for a mushroom patch known only to fungi agent Michael (who off-hours manages a roaring trade harvesting wild shrooms for restaurants in-the-know, including the Aerie’s). Rummaging around on the forest floor near Lake Cowichan, Brother Michael first identifies four or five common, edible specimens before unleashing the rookies. After a few hours of hawk-eyed hunting, trainees are then ready to pack up their spoils and return to the Aerie’s five-star digs atop the Malahat’s summit for a three-course mushroom-centric lunch, take-home box of fungi (including recipes) and shroom martini — shaken, not stirred, of course. Half-days, $110 to $130 (includes hunt, transportation to and from the Aerie and three-course meal, with martini). 1-800-518-1933

3. Thriving Wild
Windwalker Adventures, Comox & Lake Cowichan

THRIVING WILD WEEKENDS WBernilderness survival expert Wes Gietz teaches students how to thrive in the wild with nothing more than a sheath knife. Courtesy Wes Gietz

Forget Survivorman. Do it yourself. That’s what Thriving Wild Weekends wilderness survival expert Wes Gietz teaches students — how to thrive in the wild with nothing more than a sheath knife. Besides building weatherproof shelters and rubbing sticks together to make fire, wannabe Les Strouds learn what they can eat and how they can eat it. “Virtually everything we need is at our feet,” says Gietz, a protégé of survival guru Tom Brown Jr. who draws on 40 years of training and consulting in wilderness survival. Nuts, roots, flowers, berries and fruit are all on the menu, depending on the season (though tenderfoots bring backup food and a tent, just in case). Two-night, two-day Thriving Wild weekends are also available for groups of up to 12 or more anywhere in the province. Weekends, $165. 250-339-3197

4. Earth Walker Skills Camp
Strathcona Park Lodge, Campbell River

courtesy Strathcona Park Lodge & Outdoor Education Centre

Over the six days of this wilderness skills summer camp, 13- to 15-year-olds go from campers to survivalists. Life starts relatively luxe: Newbies sleep in tents and sleeping bags and eat everyday food from pots and bowls on the edge of Strathcona Provincial Park. But as instructors teach the skills needed to survive in B.C.’s wilderness, campers gradually and voluntarily forgo modern conveniences. Metal spoons are swapped for hand-carved ones, pots give way to rock ovens, sleeping bags and tents are traded for stick-and-leaf shelters and Earl Grey morphs into Labrador tea. As for sustenance, instructors reveal what’s in the woods and how to prepare it, sometimes setting traps for critters to roast on spits over a fire. By day five, the goal is to have abandoned all modern-day “essentials.” Of course, fun and safety are top priorities. Six-day camps, $726. 250-286-3122

The Okanagan’s Kettle Valley Railway Trail is where mountain bike forks meet VQA corks

by Chad Hershler

Kurt Flaman isn’t happy. We just started biking and already we’ve run into a pickup truck. B.C.’s Kettle Valley Rail Trail, the old Kettle Valley Railway converted into a hiking and biking route that stretches 455 kilometres from Hope to Midway, has regulations regarding vehicles that the Penticton region, it would seem, has agreed to bend. “The legacy of the KVR is to avoid exhaust and car marks,” gripes Flaman, owner of the Penticton-based Freedom Bike Shop, and I can see his point. But the interloper doesn’t bug me one bit. I’m just happy to be out of the bike van and breathing some fresh Okanagan air; the bumpy ride up to our drop-off point on nothing but espresso and pear galette has left my stomach a tad edgy.

We drift past the pickup and nod to the driver. Then Flaman spots a trail off the side of the KVR he doesn’t recognize. “Are you up for it?” he asks, eyes wide with excitement. I look down at the KVR’s almost two metre wide gravel expanse, then at the potholed trail covered in rocks and tree roots. Flaman smiles and runs up the trail with his bike. Take away the beard, the receding hairline and a few centimetres in height, and he’s still a 10-year-old kid with his first BMX. The pear galette does another flip. Sigh. How can I possibly say no?

I've spent the morning assembling my local-specialties-inspired feast for the road: scurrying from Penticton's Saturday morning farmer’s market with its organic fruits, olives and barbecued bison bratwurst to the Bench Artisan Food Market for Poplar Grove cheese. Courtesy Cindy Nelson/Penticton Farmers Market

To be clear: There was no avoiding the galette. My assignment here is three-fold: bike, eat and drink, and not necessarily in that order. For while Penticton has established a stellar reputation amongst Okanagan wine aficionados (the Naramata Bench is the fastest-growing wine region in Canada), its local food artists – cheesemakers, organic farmers and, yes, galette bakers – are rapidly carving out a niche for themselves at the tasting table. And with the Kettle Valley Rail Trail and a network of idyllic country roads leading from the city through parkland right up to said table, local bike-shop owners, tour operators and guides have jumped at the opportunity to assist sweat-friendly travellers in finding their way there – with élan.

Flaman, though normally only the bike-renter and map-provider for Freedom’s self-guided cycling tours, has elected to join me on my trek along the Penticton stretch of the KVR, including a trailside gourmet lunch and post-ride wine and cheese sampling on the bench (can you blame him?). I’ve spent the morning assembling my local-specialties-inspired feast for the road: scurrying from the Saturday morning farmer’s market with its organic fruits, olives and barbecued bison bratwurst to the Bench Artisan Food Market for Poplar Grove cheese. Then it was on to Il Vecchio Deli for the sandwich everyone in Penticton can’t seem to stop talking about and, finally, back to the farmer’s market for the handcrafted pear galette by Joyroad Catering I was afraid might no longer be there. Luckily – or so I thought at the time – it was. It didn’t make it out of the market.

Still licking my fingers, I rushed up to Freedom to meet Flaman and rent my bike. From there, Ambrosia Tours – which transports cyclists and bikes from Freedom to one of two spots along the KVR – dropped us off at Chute Lake Resort, deep in the heart of Okanagan Lake Park. It’s about a three-hour bike ride back into town. And so, galette still digesting, olives, fruit, cheese and one Il Vecchio deli sandwich tucked away for later, here I am barrelling down the side of a mountain with Flaman, super-human bike man, leading the charge.

“When will we get back on the KVR?” I shout from behind his fast-disappearing rear wheel.

“We’ll come right back to it,” Flaman shouts in answer, kicking loose branches away with one leg. “This is just a short cut.”

Construction for the Kettle Valley Railway began in 1910, after the CPR beat out rival companies to build a Kootenay-to-coast railway that would transport locally mined copper, gold, silver and coal to Vancouver. Now, as a recreation trail, the KVR transports hikers and bikers along the same route (never steeper than a two per cent, train-friendly grade), winding its way through parks and canyons, from one small town to the next. Nowhere in my research, however, did it mention fallen trees, sharp turns and sudden drops on improvised biking trails no more than 30 metres from the main route.

“Don’t brake too hard or you’ll skid. Lean back when it’s steep. Don’t worry about what you’re going over, worry about where you’re going,” yells Flaman.

I grip my brakes hard and pray it won’t last long. This is no gourmand’s gentle wheel through the countryside of southern France, all checkered tablecloths and exotic cheeses, vineyards and lazy sunsets. Oh no. This is: Watch out for sliding rocks and low branches and, maybe, if we’re lucky, we might see the elk herd I’ve heard about. Eventually, we’ll get to the wine.

“In the 1930s there was a derailment on the KVR right around here, and this load of elk they were transporting escaped,” Flaman tells me, biting into his energy bar. After checking out a few old rock ovens built by the Chinese railroad workers during the rail bed’s construction, we’ve thankfully stopped for lunch in amongst the Douglas firs and ponderosa pines – the KVR, as promised, just a few metres above our heads. “So once in a while you’re biking around here and you turn a corner and there’s this whole herd of elk, just staring at you.” We both laugh. “It’s a crazy sight.”

Crazy indeed. Just as crazy, I imagine, as the sight of all us mountain bikers, decked out in spandex, sipping wine and nibbling cheese on some of the Naramata’s more popular vineyard patios. Like the herd of cycling lawyers (around 90 of them) who descended on Hillside Estates, Red Rooster and Poplar Grove vineyards last fall as part of the Okanagan Tour deVine, a guided and catered wine and cycling tour linked to the Okanagan Wine Festival (see sidebar). “Only in their case,” Flaman says, not without a hint of derision, “they didn’t carry a thing.” From the friendly gravel slopes of the KVR, the phalanx of riders coasted onto the Naramata Bench to find a catered lunch – replete with cloth napkins and silverware – awaiting them, along with a van to ease them and their wine purchases back to their hotels. “But we earn it!” Flaman cries, holding up the wrapper to his energy bar like a victory flag. “We earn our wine!”

All “earning of wine” aside, I wouldn’t mind a sip of Pinot Gris to go with my lunch. The marinated olives, organic pears and Poplar Grove Double Cream Camembert are looking a little lonely beside my water bottle (note to self: bring wine next time). Nevertheless, Il Vecchio’s triple-cheese repast has lived up to its billing – and I can save the rest for the wine tastings later.

Back in the saddle, we follow the KVR this time, surrounded by trees for the next hour, then emerging onto the sage-brush-strewn terrain overlooking Lake Okanagan. Behind us the lake curves northeast toward Kelowna, before us it flows back toward Penticton town centre, the lush, irrigated vineyards of the bench kissing the near side. We coast into a tunnel and past a number of adventurous families hiking the grade uphill, scouting a good picnic lookout spot for themselves. Flaman points out the charred remains of 2003’s wildfires on a mountain across the way. The KVR took a blow that summer.  One of its more publicized routes – the Myra Canyon – was wiped out, trestle bridges and all. Unfortunately, says Flaman, media reports led tourists to believe the entire KVR was ruined – sending many local recreation-based outlets out of business. His Freedom bike shop, Ambrosia Tours and a Kelowna outfit, Monashee Tours (see sidebar), are now doing their best to re-introduce bikers to the KVR’s Penticton region.

NARAMATA, Pacific Breeze Winery Over the past eight years, the number of Naramata wineries has almost doubled (from 11 to 19).Courtesy Lone Jones Photography

Nearing clusters of wineries now, we leave the KVR to take a back road through some of the vineyards unreachable via the trail. Over the past eight years, the number of Naramata wineries has almost doubled (from 11 to 19), leaving the thirsty cyclist with any number of possibilities to choose from. Though too late for wine and cheese at Poplar Grove, we manage to squeeze in a wine tasting at Hillside Estates along with a more leisurely cherry port and apricot wine tasting on the patio at Elephant Island Orchard Wines – shadowed by the fruit trees and overlooking the lake.

Here, along with my leftover savouries from lunch, aching palms from braking so hard, bike-crazy cohort by my side, I make good on my last assignment for the day: sipping fruit wines lazily in the late-afternoon sun. I look up the hill I have to climb to get back on the KVR and into Penticton. It was a treat to coast down its scenic length, passing row after row of fat, happy grapes, white bluffs shearing into the lake visible in the distance. I look over at Flaman, guiltily. Now, if only there was a van that could whisk me back to the hotel.

MONASHEE ADVENTURE TOURS Custom, catered and guided vineyard cycle tours in the Kelowna and Penticton regions from March through November — anywhere from one to 14 days, with as few or as many participants as desired. Courtesy Monashee Adventure Tours

Krank your pedals on the kettle
The independent and map-proficient biker, foodie and wine lover can assemble a gourmet lunch in Penticton with the help of:

• The Bench Artisan Food Market
Dips, spreads, local goodies, catered lunches. 250-492-2222

• Il Vecchio Delicatessen
European goodies; sandwiches to die for. 250-492-7610

• Joy Road Catering (Cuisine de Terroir)
Okanagan caterers who use as many locally grown ingredients as possible. 250-493-8657

• Penticton Farmer’s Market
Locally grown organic produce, honey farmers, cheesemakers, Polish grandmothers selling perogies and those galettes. Saturdays, 8 a.m. to noon, May 5 to November 3. 250-770-3276; bcfarmersmarket.org

Buy local wines from:

• The Wine Information Centre
One-stop wine shopping and info. 250-490-2006

Rent bikes and get maps from:

• Freedom — The Bike Shop
250-493-0686

Get dropped off by:

• Ambrosia Tours Ltd.
250-492-1095

For the wine- and food-loving cyclist who wants a more luxurious ride (as well as a van to carry those crates of wine back to the hotel):

• Okanagan Tour deVine
Catered and guided vineyard cycle tours during the Okanagan Fall Wine Festival. Group tours with package deals available. 1-800-663-1900

• Monashee Adventure Tours
Custom, catered and guided vineyard cycle tours in the Kelowna and Penticton regions from March through November — anywhere from one to 14 days, with as few or as many participants as desired. 1-888-762-9253

Lead image courtesy Cindy Nelson/Penticton Farmers Market

TRAIN TRAVEL

Four journeys, four continents, four top 25 trains

1. CANADA

• The Rockies Under Glass
  by Rob Howatson

It’s a grey dawn at Vancouver’s Pacific Central Station. Groggy tourists climb aboard their cars and collapse into assigned seats, as the train lurches in the deserted railyard and begins rolling down the platform. Unlike the ticker-tape bon voyage of a cruise-liner, there is no brass band send-off. The only ceremony comes from a handful of hastily assembled Rocky Mountaineer Railtours (RMR) employees, who position themselves honour-guard style alongside the tracks and wave . . . [Continued at The Rockies Under Glass]

2. SOUTH AFRICA

• South Africa’s Blue Train
• by Helena Zukowski

For a train lover, a chance to ride South Africa’s legendary Blue Train is the kind of thrill one might experience if one were a chef and Alain Ducasse confessed that one’s soufflé made his look like mere pudding. The Blue Train is simply the ultimate luxury train. The Blue Train’s pedigree goes back to 1901, when the Zambezi Express provided luxury rail travel between Cape Town and Victoria Falls for those whose fortunes were dug out of the diamond mines in Kimberly. By 1939, the line’s blue-and-gray air-conditioned cars were part of the scenery, and locals popularly referred to them as “those blue trains.” . . .  [Continued at   South Africa's Blue Train ]

3. MOSCOW TO MONGOLIA TO BEIJING

• The Trans-Siberian Railway: From Moscow to Mongolia to Beijing                                                                                          by Katrina Simmons

I stand, gazing out the window, elbow-deep in dishwater. Through bare trees, a comforting echo rises from the valley. Every time I heat that whistle, and the clatter of wheels on rails, I start to sway to the rhythm of the train song. Ch-chunk ch-chunk, ch-chunk ch-chunk . . .

A few months ago, I travelled with my husband 9,000 km across two continents, three countries and five time zones on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Its main line cuts a path east from Moscow, straight across Russia to the eastern port of Vladivostock. But because we wanted to visit China again, we chose, instead, an alternative route that heads south after four days, traversing Mongolia and ending in Beijing . . . [Continued at  The Trans-Siberian Railway: From Moscow to Mongolia to Beijing]

4. AUSTRALIA

• The Ghan
• by Daniel Wood

The vast and arid Outback is to Australians what the Arctic is to Canadians: mythic, seldom visited, the object of fascination, and the subject of occasional tragedy. Crossing it under normal circumstances could be unpleasant. Landmarks are few, desert tracks transitory, water scarce. (And guidebooks remind backroad drivers that drinking one’s own blood is not advisable.) But seated in a window-seat on the continent-spanning Ghan train, a traveller can contemplate fundamentals while being indulged in the luxurious. [Continued at   XX ]

>>For the latest on the global slow-travel rail trend: Trains-formers

>>For the complete list of  The World’s Top 25 Rail Journeys (2009)

>> The A-trains: 10 Dreamy Rail Vacations to Stoke Your Boiler

Eat It Up B.C.: Where the foodies roam

• AVin-Couver Island Roadtrip
• by Jeff Bateman

Highway travel subverts the charm of southern Vancouver Island in a blur of heavy traffic and high-speed glimpses of mountain, forest and ocean. Wine aficionados, however, can escape such freeway madness by traipsing along scenic back roads from one charming vineyard to the next on the Saanich Peninsula and in the Cowichan Valley. [Continued at AVin-Couver Island Roadtrip ]

2. Vancouver Island

• 100% Cowichan
• by Jeff Batema

Sighs of contentment rise and fall in steady waves as one score and 10 fortunate souls tuck into the fruits of the Cowichan Valley. A collection of leading chefs from this rapidly emerging culinary region has pooled its talents to raise funds for Providence Farm, a 160-hectare spread in the Vancouver Island countryside east of Duncan. For a century, the historic property was run as a boarding school by the Sisters of St. Ann. Today it serves as a therapeutic retreat for those with physical and mental disabilities, where a central part of community life is horticultural therapy. The organic produce sold at the Duncan Farmer’s Market and Providence’s on-site store is the result of willing hands sunk deep into healing soil. In fact, the crisp greens that follow the appetizer platters of Denman Island oysters were plucked from the ground here minutes earlier. As one wag at our convivial table puts it, the salad is a classic example of the “100-metre” diet . . .   [Continued at 100% Cowichan ]

3. Cortez Island

• Daytripper: Shuck it Up by Andrew Findlay

Plump, dark clouds obscure the Coast Mountain summits that brood over the misty reaches of TobaInlet, B.C. Here on the eastern shores of Cortes Island, the Pacific has rolled out to reveal the broad, rocky tidal flats of Squirrel Cove. Now the air has a thick, briny aroma, as though someone has pried open an oyster shell and placed its slippery contents beneath my nostrils. To breathe in is to inhale the enduring mysteries of the ocean, fecund and remotely unsettling. [Continued at Daytripper: Shuck it Up ]

4. The Okanagan’s Naramata

• Daytripper: Wine Country MTB
• by Chad Hershler

Kurt Flaman isn’t happy. We just started biking and already we’ve run into a pickup truck. B.C.’s Kettle Valley Rail Trail, the old Kettle Valley Railway converted into a hiking and biking route that stretches 455 kilometres from Hope to Midway, has regulations regarding vehicles that the Penticton region, it would seem, has agreed to bend. “The legacy of the KVR is to avoid exhaust and car marks,” gripes Flaman, owner of the Penticton-based Freedom Bike Shop, and I can see his point. But the interloper doesn’t bug me one bit. I’m just happy to be out of the bike van and breathing some fresh Okanagan air; the bumpy ride up to our drop-off point on nothing but espresso and pear galette has left my stomach a tad edgy. . . . The pear galette does another flip. Sigh. How can I possibly say no? [Continued at  Daytripper: Wine Country MTB]

5. B.C.

• Prime Picks: Wild Edibles
• by Ryan Stuart

No matter where one travels in B.C., there’s food in the forest. But determining the difference between delicious and deadly — be it mushroom, moss or seaweed — can be scarier than skydiving, which is where B.C.’s foodies of the wild come in. Ardent supporters of dining locally, but for free, these pros have grub-gathering neophytes turning stinging nettle into sweet tea and seaweed into trail snacks within hours . . . [Continued at Prime Picks: Wild Edibles ]

6. De Courcy Island

• Getaway: My Paddle, My Pie Lifter
• by Masa Takei

Wine bottles clank together in the boat beside me as a mountain of provisions disappears into the hatches of seven other red, orange and yellow sea kayaks. My fellow travellers fuss around their crafts, securing gear-filled dry bags and plastic bins pregnant with culinary potential. We snap together paddles, tighten life jacket straps and apply sunscreen like war paint. Meanwhile, from a seaweed-strewn log, leader James Bray surveys the activity with a benevolent smile. At eight sharp this morning, he greeted us at the Nanaimo ferry terminal with a mischievious grin. Within minutes, we were rattling across the Nanaimo River in his 15-passenger van, a hula doll wobbling manically on the dashboard, power chords of Franz Ferdinand beating out the triumphant rhythms of “Take Me Out.” Now, with the provisions almost loaded, all our party of 10 has to mull over is what lies ahead: three days of Gulf Island paddling, two nights camped luxuriously on De Courcy Island and an introduction to some of the finest cuisine that local ingredients can yield . . .   [Continued at Getaway: My Paddle, My Pie Lifter ]

7. The Fraser Valley

• Profile: Brian Harris
• by Kerry Banks

Brian Harris’s most famous photograph was taken outside the doors of a nunnery in Dharamsala, India, the adopted home of the Dalai Lama. The shot depicts two shaven-headed Buddhist nuns laughing. “They had just come outside to bang a gong to signal lunch, and I asked them if I could take their picture. Evidently, they thought this was pretty hilarious,” recalls Harris, whose iconic photo captured the nuns’ joyful amusement. The image subsequently appeared on the cover of his 1996 book Tibetan Voices: A Traditional Memoir, and later on posters and greeting cards. However, it was just one of thousands of shots Harris took during a 20-year span working as a photographer and fundraiser for Seva Canada, an organization with a mandate to eliminate treatable blindness in India, Tibet, Nepal and Tanzania . . .    [Continued at Profile: Brian Harris ]

8. A Fraser Valley Culinary Weekender                                                                                                                                                  by Sonu Purhar

For many travellers, the upper Fraser Valley calls to mind Harrison’s iconic mineral springs and spa, a 100,000-visitors-a-year attraction. Yet the region is ripe with lesser-known discoveries. Amply irrigated by the 1,368-kilometre Fraser River, the valley is one of B.C.’s major farming hubs, generating more than half of the province’s agricultural revenue. Perhaps not surprisingly, its diverse mix of fresh, organic produce and gourmet specialties is fast becoming the common denominator amongst the upper boroughs’ hundreds of family owned farmsteads…[Continued at A Fraser Valley Culinary Weekender]

9. Vancouver Island Travels With Taste

Notes toward a screenplay based on the life of Kathy McAree (think the book Eat, Pray, Love, as directed by Alfred Hitchcock): In 2001, while recuperating from surgery after a car accident, a 33-year-old woman spends a few weeks as a slow-food traveller in Europe. What happens while she’s there – the tour of Spain’s Basque region with the Texan chef, the armed man on the French night train, the 9/11 attacks, the Puglia cooking school in Italy – changes her life forever. 

 Fast forward almost a decade and McAree is head of Travel with Taste, B.C.’s first culinary tour operator – leading locals and international travellers into the West Coast food culture of Vancouver Island. Her specialties: walking tours in her home city of Victoria (“urban foraging,” as she calls it) and longer treks to the farms, wineries and under-the-radar restaurants of Salt Spring Island and the Cowichan Valley. As founder of the Victoria Taste Festival and director of the B.C. Culinary Tourism Society, she is also helping give B.C.’s west coast its status among food lovers – one formerly reserved for Europe – as a gourmet wonderland of wine, cheese, meat and seafood. “Kathy’s one of our pioneers,” says Eric Pateman, founder of Edible B.C., the largest culinary tour operator in Canada. “She’s definitely been one of the most visible forces in promoting culinary tourism and local food…”[Continued at Vancouver Island Travels With Taste]

10. Salt Spring: A Gulf Island Getaway                                                                                                                                                       by Daniel Wood

As it turns out, this moment contains everything that follows. Three round mounds of goat cheese, each originally the size and shape of a flan, sit beside half-empty glasses of wine and a diminishing supply of crackers. The cheese is so soft the weight of the descending knife slices effortlessly to the cutting board. Wisteria grows above and hummingbirds zing past in the warm, early autumn air. David Wood, the cheesemaker and no relative of mine, looks out onto a flock of 100 sheep, their lugubrious faces just beyond his fenced hilltop yard.

Wood, 66, is explaining how he has found peace on Salt Spring – far from his former high-profile Toronto job – making cheese on this quiet Gulf Island. It’s a theme reiterated by his neighbour, Robert Bateman, 80, one of the world’s leading wildlife artists, who moved from Ontario to Salt Spring 25 years ago and is – on this same afternoon – sitting in his waterfront studio painting a Siberian crane. It is a theme mentioned again and again here by those who have sought a retreat from the urban hubbub to pursue their dreams. On this 185- square-kilometre island – where no road runs straight or level for 100 metres, where residents would fight the construction of a single traffic light, and where the roadside verges contain dozens of unattended stands piled high with string beans, free-range eggs, apples, dahlias and “honour boxes” for payment – time drains away in unhurried increments, cracker by cracker, glass by glass…[Continued at Salt Spring: A Gulf Island Getaway   ]

>>For more island noshing: Swallow Tail Tours

>>For the chance to take home an Edible B.C. Tour Giveaway

by Masa Takei

In Peter Freuchen’s account of his 1924 journey across Canada’s far north, the Danish explorer recounts how, in a driving storm, his sled dogs refused to travel any farther. So Freuchen took refuge under his dogsled, overturned against the wind-side of a large boulder, but then awoke found himself entombed, his feet painfully frozen. Barely able to move, he clawed at the hardened snow. Finally he resorted to using the edge of a polar bear hide – stiffened with frozen saliva – as a chisel. He knew one foot had already succumbed to frostbite. Unless he freed himself soon, an icy crypt would be his final resting place.

Just 1,300 kilometres up the trail, the front-runner of the 24th annual Yukon Quest 1,000 Mile International Sled Dog Race is within a half-day’s hard travel of setting a new course record.

Almost a century later, I punch out of my down sleeping bag, gasping in the Yukon’s frigid February night air. On the tarp next to me, two Muktuk Adventure guides remain peacefully encased in their sleeping bags, a light dusting of frost coating their cocoons and only a fist-size breathing hole open above their noses. The moonlight is so bright I can make out the 35 sled dogs curled up in nearby flakes of hay. Several metres beyond: two canvas wall tents with wood-burning stoves shelter the rest of our party of nine. Everything is frozen in silence. Yet just 1,300 kilometres up the trail, the front-runner of the 24th annual Yukon Quest 1,000 Mile International Sled Dog Race is within a half-day’s hard travel of setting a new course record. We dogsledding tenderfoots, on the other hand, are days away from an entirely different kind of record. Our loose collection of cryophiles from three continents has signed on with Muktuk’s Quest adventure option for an inside look at the first leg of the race in progress, followed by several days of mushing in the racers’ wake. Our mission: to dogsled a 267-km loop along the Yukon’s historic Overland Trail.

It is the early hours of Day 3 of a six-day sledding expedition, which includes a 135-km stretch of the Yukon Quest Trail. Our loose collection of cryophiles from three continents has signed on with Muktuk’s Quest adventure option for an inside look at the first leg of the race in progress, followed by several days of mushing in the racers’ wake. Our mission: to dogsled a 267-km loop along the Yukon’s historic Overland Trail, north to the first Quest checkpoint at Braeburn, then south along Lake Laberge and back to Muktuk owner and Quest racer Frank Turner’s guest ranch on the Takhini River outside Whitehorse. But at the speed we’re going, a pace comparable to that of a tricycle trailing the Tour de France, the guides have already advised we’re possibly the slowest mushers in the kennel’s 15-year history. By the end of Day 6, they joke, we’ll be lucky to have made Braeburn Lodge, the biker-run roadhouse famous for its oversized cinnamon buns.

The Yukon Sled Dog Race: From the starting point

Alternating direction each year between Fairbanks, Alaska, and Whitehorse in the Yukon, the Quest is about as long as the 1,868-km Iditarod but with less than half as many checkpoints. Above:Booties protect against paw injury and ice buildup in -50 C temperatures.

The rough-and-tumble cousin of the better-known Iditarod, the 1,635-km Quest is billed as the toughest sled dog race on the planet. Back in 1983, its creators schemed over drinks in Fairbanks’ Bull’s Eye Saloon to forge a route that would reflect the original vision of the Iditarod – before all the media and commercial interests its now-celebrated status entails. Alternating direction each year between Fairbanks, Alaska, and Whitehorse in the Yukon, this means the Quest is about as long as the 1,868-km Iditarod but with less than half as many checkpoints.  (Translation:  long stretches of isolated mushing.) Racers must also traverse four mountain ranges with heavier sleds, fewer dogs and no substitutions, and without the assistance of non-racers, except at the halfway mark in Dawson City. As well, the race is held in colder weather (temperatures this February have dropped below -50?C), with endurance and self-sufficiency prized over pure speed. Still, at their essence, both races remain a celebration of the primal partnership between humans and dogs that made early survival in the North possible.

Ten days ago, our group joined the crowd of hardy spectators at the Whitehorse starting chute to cheer on the race’s 28 competitors, including Frank Turner, as they set off on their epic run. If anyone is the godfather of the Quest it is the bearded, bespectacled and deceptively diminutive 59-year-old, entered this year with 14 of his top dogs. Blessed with the energy of someone half his age, the 1995 Quest champion has competed every year since the race started in 1984, except in 2006, when his then-26-year-old son signed up. Now the former Toronto social worker is back from a very short retirement to do battle once more and perhaps better his course record, which has stood since he set it a decade ago.

Other favourites: Lance Mackey, a 36-year-old Alaskan often compared to that champion with the same first name from the cycling world. Since coming back from his own bout with cancer five years ago, Mackey has won the Quest for the past two years. If he wins again this February, he’ll be only the second musher ever to win three consecutive Quests. (The first, Hans Gatt, an amicable Austrian from Atlin, B.C., has come second to Mackey these past two years.) William Kleedehn, 47, an AC/DC-loving hard man, originally from Germany, is another strong competitor. Despite having a prosthetic leg, “Iron Bill” has placed amongst the top five finishers every year since 2001, with the exception of 2004, when he withdrew after breaking his leg. But it’s not just men who are favoured to win. Michelle Phillips is perhaps the strongest female competitor in the field, a Tagish, Yukon, native who is supported this year by her husband, Ed Hopkins, another long-time Quest racer.

As the black-and-white bib of the last musher disappeared down the ceremonial starting chute, our group took to the highway. We would journey by truck to successive checkpoints, following the racers’ progress and counting the days to our own backcountry adventure. Carmacks, population 426, several hundred kilometres along the course and the second checkpoint, marked the next time we would see Turner, a day and a half into the race. The town’s community centre looked like the rallying point for earthquake survivors, with computers and communication centres set up on folding tables and spectators and support staff sleeping on the gymnasium floor. A white board tracked which mushers were in, as handlers and media rushed to meet incoming teams. Out in the darkness, 14 sets of eyes reflected the blinding blur of camera lights as each caravan pulled up – panting and steaming like the Trans-Siberian coming into a station – before waiting officials. Rimed with ice and snow, along with every sled and its bleary-eyed driver, the dogs still had the energy to announce their arrival with a cacophony of barks and yelps before pirouetting onto straw beds.

But the most enduring glimpse of the race came on its fourth day when, in the dark hours linking night to morning, we pulled the truck over at a rare section of the route that shadows the highway. The wilderness diorama was frozen in absolute stillness, the only sound the huh, huh panting of dogs and the swishing of a single set of sled runners over crisp snow. Overhead, the northern lights cut a green swath across the night sky as the lone musher raised a fur-mittened hand in silent greeting and veered back into the woods. Piling back into the truck, we continued on in subdued silence.

By the time we rolled into Dawson City, the mushers’ last stop before the Alaska border, it was Day 5 of the race and several teams had scratched or withdrawn, including Turner’s. Hard-packed snow makes for fast running but also more wrist and shoulder strains amongst the dogs. Turner had already dropped two, and his lead, Carter, had begun showing signs of serious tendon injury. An unfortunate turn of events, but it meant the Quest legend would now be on hand to impart a few last pointers before seeing us off on our own sledding epic, just as we’d seen him off a week earlier.

"The toughest sled dog race on the planet": Rimed with ice and snow, along with every sled and its bleary-eyed driver, the dogs still had the energy to announce their arrival with a cacophony of barks and yelps before pirouetting onto straw beds.

The Quest’s leading mushers were some 1,200 km into the race the next morning when we pulled into Muktuk Adventures’ command central. An off-the-grid outpost built with massive Sitka timbers shipped from Haines, Alaska, the main lodge sits a kilometre in from the highway on 41 hectares, along with five cabins and 108 dogs. Doddering old-timer huskies who have paid their race dues are free to wander and doze; the rest are kept tethered to their respective kennels. As we unhitched a few for a practice run, the sight of dogs freed from their perches brought on a bout of baying reminiscent of hounds on the hunt after a prison break.

By the time we set off at 5 a.m. the next day, we were trammelling eight days behind the world’s mushing elite. We focused on smoothing out the kinks: learning to set up, break camp, care for the dogs, care for ourselves. The Takhini River lay wide open before us, like a highway – broad, blue sky overhead. Then we turned into the forest and onto the Overland Trail, to camp on our second night at the old site of the Little River Roadhouse. The clearing seemed like a good spot to catch sight of the northern lights; I opted to sleep out with the guides, al fresco.

And we’re off . . . in the wake of the Yukon Quest racers

After falling back asleep the next morning, I awake to hysterical laughter. Cynthia, our pretty young guide from Victoriaville, Quebec, is doubled over, gasping for breath. The zipper on fellow guide Travis’s sleeping bag is frozen shut. But instead of helping, she is having a giggling fit as he struggles to melt the iced-up zipper with his bare thumb and forefinger, the only parts of him visible.

This time last year, Travis was guiding 12,000 km away in Tasmania, Australia, in temperatures 80 degrees hotter. Even in the early morning hours it was near impossible to walk on exposed rock in bare feet; a Therm-a-Rest sleeping pad would delaminate in the extreme heat and balloon into a cylindrical sausage. For similar reasons, we aren’t using Therm-a-Rests here, either. In inflating them our breath would freeze the layers together. I’ve already made a similar mistake with the lens on my camera, now frosted over; though no matter, the batteries are dead. Turner had warned us to keep them, and our toothpaste, next to our bodies, and I’ve followed the latter part of his advice (guarding my contact solution as well). Still, no matter how long I keep a bar of dark chocolate snug in my inner pocket, it retains the consistency of candle wax.

Like the locals, none of us feel the need to reference wind chill to hype the reality; instead we note how at -45°C the properties of things change. Metal becomes sticky. Plastic becomes brittle. Humans succumb to inertia.

Celsius or Fahrenheit, -40 is cold. Certainly, like the locals, none of us feel the need to include wind chill to hype the reality; instead we note how at -45°C the properties of things change. Metal becomes sticky. Plastic becomes brittle. Humans succumb to inertia. But as Turner advised us earlier, the cold can be a motivator during days out racing. Sleeping in his emptied sled, he makes sure not to get too comfortable so that he wakes shaking. Too cold to stay in his bag, he then rallies and heads back out. Mushers typically race for four to six hours at a stretch before letting their dogs rest for the same amount of time. But once a team is fed and bedded down, only a few hours remain for the musher to sleep before it’s time to pack up and get the dogs back on the gangline.

We, on the other hand, journey at an altogether different pace. The first order of business each morning is to get the fire started. Anyone who has read Jack London’s To Build a Fire has some appreciation of the urgency this art can have in the north. Happily, we are not in any danger of losing life or limb. But we are hungry, and with a brick-sized box of wooden matches, a large

"Husky hotel" at the mandatory 36-hour layover in Dawson City, where the first racer into town wins four ounces of placer gold.

tube of fire gel and a pile of deadfall we soon get a fire roaring. It’s so cold that even when the parts of us facing the flames feel unbearably hot, the halves turned away are icy. Or as Travis puts it, “You can tell how cold it is by how close you can get to the fire and still have your ass frozen.” The solution would seem to be to sit in the middle of the blaze, Sam McGee style. Instead, we gather as close as possible without scorching the toes of our white-rubber bunny boots while Travis reads the Robert Service tale, set on nearby Lake Laberge.

Turner, for one, has lost three teeth over the years while racing, mostly due to the frozen granola bars that can make up the bulk of a racer’s trail diet.

The literary classic is the perfect complement to the aroma of caribou sausages grilled over open flame and omelettes sizzling in a wok – thawing in the shape of the Ziploc bags they were stored in. Along with the comfort of sleeping in tents with wood stoves, we’re eating a whole lot better than the racing mushers ahead of us. But even with breakfast well underway, the dogs come first. The animals need up to 10,000 calories a day (about three times the amount devoured by us, despite the fact they are a third of our weight), so we melt snow for coffee and the moistening of frozen dog kibble. Meanwhile they have no problem devouring the frozen turkey skins we throw them, hard as hockey pucks – a trick the mushers themselves sometimes try to emulate. Turner, for one, has lost three teeth over the years while racing, mostly due to the frozen granola bars that can make up the bulk of a racer’s trail diet.

Finally we’re ready. We kneel in the snow, wrestling to get booties, harnesses and coats on the dogs and rub arnica oil on sore paws (“No feet, no dogs,” is the musher’s aphorism). Swaddled in balaclavas, insulated bib pants and down parkas over multiple layers, we move as if we have no necks. But from the way he’s hunched over, I can tell that Art’s back is bothering him. The six-foot-five retired Boeing engineer will later clip his head on a low branch, and his dogs will run back into camp without him. But he’s no rookie, having dogsledded in Sweden and Alaska and climbed some of the taller mountains in North America. On this outing, he has bonded with a fellow Shitsu owner, Elmer, a retired electrical engineer from Farmville, Virginia. Big, bushy white beard, a southern drawl (particularly when playing Waylon Jennings on his guitar), Elmer comes across a bit like Uncle Jesse from the Dukes of Hazzard, but that could just be the beard. Further down the line are Bettina, a bespectacled chemist from Brehnen, Germany, and Jen, a twice-widowed grandmother of seven from Sydney, Australia, who has never been in snow before. Her last vacation was spent whitewater rafting on the Zambezi River.

Our time spent on our knees, wrestling with our furry colleagues, is consistent with what Turner and the guides have drilled into us: mushing is a team sport. The dogsledder is merely the enabler for a team of elite endurance athletes, each with its own personality and position in the pack. Racing dogs are capable of running 160 km in a day while pulling a 100-kilogram sled and a driver – then doing it again the next day and the next, and so on. The average household pet has as much in common with these dogs as a Ford Pinto has with a Ferrari. To earn the privilege of running with such champions, we’re expected to fulfill our end of the deal.

Multiple Quest champion Lance Mackey – often compared to that champion with the same first name from the cycling world.

Swooping down a section of winding single track through aspen, I discover this means more than just slipping on the right booties and throwing down some kibble. Besides steering the sled wide of trees, leaning and shifting one’s body weight between the runners, a driver ensures that lines are appropriately tight – slowing the sled down either by standing on a patch of snowmobile tread hanging off the back or standing on a clawed brake bar so that it bites into the snow. And on the uphills, mushers get off the runners and push. Fail to do so quickly enough and team members look back over their shoulders, an ear or two flopped over, eyes looking askance.

So, I run and push. Despite the sub-arctic temperatures, I’m sweating in my wool long-underwear. I drop the coyote-fur-ruffed hood on my Canada Goose parka, though the neoprene facemask stays on, since I already feel windburned on one cheekbone. Topping another rise, I jump back onto the runners in what I hope is a fluid motion, but judging from the looks cast my way, I need practice. On a straight section, I see Art – ahead of me with his team – step on the brake, kicking up a plume of snow. Must be a steep drop or tight curve coming up. I stomp on the drag and, when the trail falls away, drop into a half-crouch while shifting more heavily onto one runner and leaning off the handlebar. The sled is light and responsive. Even so I narrowly evade clipping a snow-draped tree with my brushbow. I make a mental note to focus on picking wider lines into the turns. As I pass Art, he has his sled down on its side and has dropped a snow hook to secure his team while he sorts out a tangled line.

With our sleds empty of all gear except a thermos and some dried fruit, we roam free like cowboys, agile if not speedy. It’s a unique kind of exhilaration. And it’s easy to understand why racers get addicted – arranging their lives around the sport and competing at great personal expense.

Our mushers are now separated by speed of travel. Those building a solid relationship with their dogs, or who have more dog-power hitched to their lines, speed behind Travis where he breaks trail with a snowmobile. The still-tentative have Cynthia riding sweep, ready to jump off her Ski-doo and lend a hand. With our sleds empty of all gear except a thermos and some dried fruit, we roam free like cowboys, agile if not speedy. It’s a unique kind of exhilaration. And it’s easy to understand why racers get addicted – arranging their lives around the sport and competing at great personal expense.

The dogs – which need up to 10,000 calories a day (about three times the amount devoured by mushers, despite the fact they are a third of our weight) – always come first.

At the other end of the spectrum of speed and self-reliance, the Quest racers – both human and canine – are doubtlessly losing weight. I can’t even imagine the toll the physical effort must be taking as, heading into Day 9 of the race, they tackle Eagle Summit. The 1,100-metre peak is infamous for wind-scoured conditions and a particularly steep climb followed by an even steeper drop,  a place more than any other – on a course filled with open water, overflows (water running over river ice), glare ice and side hills – where mushers and dogs are in danger. As a CBC correspondent quoted one race official as saying, “It’s where dreams are lost and promises to God made.”

Last year, Turner’s son Saul was one of five racers trapped on Eagle Summit, pinned down by an Arctic storm. “It went from dogsled race to Apocalypse Now, just like that,” he had told us, back at the ranch. Meanwhile, the older Turner, waiting on the sidelines, could hear but not see two Hercules C130 aircraft and a Black Hawk helicopter thumping their way overhead through the blizzard. In 22 years of racing the Quest, he had never witnessed such an onslaught of weather and military hardware.

As if the trail wants to ensure that we won’t get off too easily, either, Bettina awakens us later that night to a tent filled with thick, black smoke. Ejected from our shelter by a clogged stovepipe, we briefly join the guides who are already out sleeping in -52°C conditions. The next morning a tree doesn’t move out of the way fast enough and one of the mushers ends her trip with a smashed sled. But when we finally limp back into Braeburn, Turner is there to greet us.

Most of the Quest racers, he confirms, have already crossed the finish line. Mackey won the race a few days earlier by a wide margin, in 10 days, two hours, 37 minutes, beating Turner’s old record by almost 14 hours. (“Records are made to be broken,” Turner says, “and I’m glad it was Lance.”) Gatt has again come in second. Kleedehn has placed in the top five once more, edged out of third place by a mere three minutes. Michelle Phillips missed a top five placing by just over half an hour, and six racers have scratched. But there are a few others still out racing. (The “red lantern,” or last finishing racer, won’t cross the finish line for another two days, spending almost 15 days out on the course.)

Settling in for a burger and a beer – and a behemoth cinnamon bun – at the Braeburn Lodge, we drink a toast to the official racers before congratulating ourselves on our own modest success. We’ve ventured forth in the unforgiving cold: man, woman and dog. All have returned with no loss of life or limb. And though we’ve mushed less than a tenth of the distance the Quest racers ultimately cover, I contend we’ve had twice the fun, in half the time.

Keep  track of the current Race standings here

Track the Race LIVE

Learn more about the Mushers and sled dogs

Read Kerry Banks’s interview with the author, Masa Takei, here

See also: Sled Dog Races a Mushing Success

Photos courtesy Richard Hartmier

by Rob Howatson

More cowbell please! With the thermometer dropping and the Olympic Flame burning its way toward B.C., it’s time to get this party started. Regardless of whether one’s winter strategy involves embracing the 2010 Games full on or hunkering down in a Kootenay forest until the fireworks blow over, the following guide will help you medal in the appropriate event.

Throughout the 2010 Games, Big White Ski Resort will present its irreverent take on the winter athletic competition, hosting a different, fun event each day. Photo courtesy Big White Ski Resort

1   Jest for Glory
Big White Games, Kelowna
Kelowna’s local ski hill knows how to get into the Olympic spirit. Throughout the 2010 Games, Big White Ski Resort will present its irreverent take on the winter athletic competition, hosting a different, fun event each day. From inner-tube luge to the Nerf gun biathlon, this is the peoples’ games – open to guests of all abilities, with medal ceremonies held each evening in the Happy Valley flag garden. 250-765-3101

2  Black-Diamond Bronco
Wrangle the Chute, Golden
Put some yee-haw in your Olympic yodel at Kicking Horse Mountain Resort’s annual alpine hoedown. Contestants ski down a steep, narrow run, launch themselves off a ramp and jettison their gear in preparation for a wild ride on a bucking bronco. Warning: the horse is fake, but the wranglers operating its bungee suspension are genuinely ornery. Sane folk may prefer to opt out of the race and enjoy the antics from the Heaven’s Door yurt patio – complete with DJ and BBQ. February 6, 7. 1-866- 754-5425

3  Freewheel U
Cross-Country Ski Camps, Vernon
Silver Star Resort’s 105-km, groomed-trail network is the cross-country ski centre of B.C. – voted the number one Nordic destination in North America by Forbes Travel magazine. Numerous Olympic national teams will gather here to tweak their form prior to the Games and a popular series of cross-country ski camps will help weekend warriors do the same. Courses range from $199 to $739, including trail passes, lunch and video analysis. November 28 to December 6. 1-800-663- 4431

4  Varsity Rules
Thunderbird Hockey, Vancouver
Olympic hockey tickets are hard to find, but there is a way to get a sneak peek inside the Games’ new $47.8-million UBC venue – and see some gutsy varsity sports action at the same time. The T-Bird men and women hockey teams will play this season’s home games in the state-of-the-art, 7,500-seat arena. Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre. Tickets $10. UBC.
Schedules: gothunderbirds.ca

5  Wired for Wow
Air Grouse Mountain Ziplines, North Vancouver
Ziplining is one of those zany, adrenalin-pumping activities that has all the makings of an Olympic event – gasp-inducing speed, a gratuitous exploitation of gravity – but isn’t a sport . . . yet. For now it is simply a mind-blowing way to view the North Shore Mountains while hurtling above Grouse Mountain forest at 80 km/h. Après ride: Grouse’s 740-square-metre ice-skating pond, where 1972 Olympic silver medallist Karen Magnussen is lacing ’em up to give figure skating tips – for real. 604-980-9311

For this year's Ice-Wine Festival, organizers have opened up the spigot to include all Okanagan varietals. Photo courtesy Sun Peaks Resort

6  A-Vin-Lanche Patrol
Winter Wine Festival/Sun Peaks Resort, near Kamloops
The ancient Olympiad began with the Greeks offering wine to Zeus. So it is fitting that the Winter Wine Festival will flow January 16 to 24 – right before the Games. For 11 years, this was the Icewine Festival, a Sun Peaks swish-and-spit jamboree dedicated to the only vino harvested in the dead of night and dead of winter. This year’s grape party will continue to honour the elixir from the frozen vine, but festival organizers have also opened up the spigot to include all Okanagan varietals. New events include Wild Meats and Wild Wine at Masa’s Bar + Grill, a Varietal Showdown at the M Room and a Mixology Event for those who like sampling beyond the wine lists. January 16 to 24. 1-800-807-3257

7  Dude Meets dweeb
Old School Giant Slalom/Mount Washington, near Courtenay
There are bound to be neck-wrenching double takes at Vancouver Island’s alpine resort this winter as Olympic snowboarders share Mount Washington’s slopes with some bizarrely attired skiers. The elite boarders will be cramming for their parallel giant slalom test at Cypress. The downhillers, with their kamikaze headbands, one-piece neon hot-dogger suits, mirrored sunglasses and skinny, straight skis, will be there for the inaugural retro ’80s fun race January 30. Totally wicked! 1-888-231-1499

8  Oval Au Naturel
Polarthon, Kamloops
Kamloops is a hotbed for speed skating talent, but the city can’t afford a $178-million long-track oval like Richmond’s new Olympic venue. So its determined blade racers came up with a more affordable alternative: Logan Lake. Each winter a local ATV club sweeps the lake’s frozen surface, transforming it into a giant outdoor rink and the home of the Southern Regional Long-Track Speed-Skating Championships (January 9), a fun winter triathlon called Polarthon (January 10) and the Western Cup of Pond Hockey (January 15 to 17). Located just outside Kamloops, Logan Lake is the only lake-surface speed-skate venue in B.C. 250-523-6225

9  The Cold Lebowski
Winter Festival, Valemount
The Olympic torch passes through this gateway-to-Mount Robson community January 29, just in time to kick off Valemount’s second-annual icicle whoop-up. Frosty frolics on January 30 include a wacky winter triathlon (skate, cross-country ski, run), milk-jug curling, dogsled rides and the little-known sport of body bowling. The latter involves participants being hurled across a frozen lake in the hopes of knocking down a set of oversized pins. 250-566-4435

10  Fork Lighting
Lighting the Way, Grand Forks
Many towns throughout B.C. will celebrate the arrival of the Olympic torch when it passes through their communities. Grand Forks, for instance, will party it up January 24 as the flame flickers down its main streets – hopefully keeping its distance from the snow-and-ice sculpture contest. Plus: fireworks and performances by First Nations and Metis jig dancers, the Doukhobor Seniors Choir and the Sopranos Youth Singers. 1-866-442-2833

11  Follow the Pack
Sled Dog Tour, Invermere
Sled-dog racing was a demonstration sport in the 1932 Lake Placid games, and the International Federation of Sled Dog Sports has been agitating for a second chance ever since, though it may be awhile before Fido tops the podium again. In the meantime, mountain mushing experiences can be had at Toby Creek Adventures (just down the road from Panorama Mountain Village), featuring a full-day backcountry romp to the Delphine Glacier. (Movie-goers may recall this stunning icefield from the 1993 survival film Alive.) Many of the trek’s guides and dogs are veterans of the Iditarod and Canadian championship sled dog races, so you’ll want to hang on for the mad dash up Delphine Creek to the glacier’s spectacular, cliff-top icefall. 1-888-357-4449

B.C.'s second-annual Cultural Olympiad: more than 600 free and ticketed acts and exhibitions. Photo courtesy Trudy Lee Photography

12  Brrrrravo!
Cultural Olympiad 2010, Various B.C. Locations
The Cultural Olympiad has wowed audiences in Vancouver and along the Sea-to-Sky corridor since its launch last year. But the closer we get to the Games, the more spectacular those performances. More than 600 free and ticketed acts and exhibitions will be showcased January 22 to March 21, including the rare double-billing of Canada’s National Ballet and Royal Winnipeg Ballet – but also relative unknowns: e.g., The Only Animal theatre company’s ambitious production of NiX. The tiny Vancouver troupe will construct Canada’s first theatre of snow and ice at Whistler’s Lost Lake and fill it with a frozen fantasy about fireworks at the end of the world.

13  Learn From the Master
Nipika Classic Loppet, Radium Hot Springs
Can’t define “loppet”? All the more reason to attend Nipika Mountain Resort’s Learn to Cross Country Ski Week (January 18 to 25) – for classic and skate-skiing taught by resort co-owner Lyle Wilson. The former Olympic coach has been a dominant force on the Canadian Master ski circuit for 30 years. So, you can hone your skills on Nipika’s 50 km of trails, then be well-primed to race in its Classic Loppet at week’s end. 1-877-647-4525

Kimberley's Family Festival: Bands, glow-stick parades, a mountain scavenger hunt and s’mores by the skate pond. Photo courtesy Kimberley Family Festival

14  Kin Who Huck
Family Festival, Kimberley Alpine Resort
The Olympic family that shreds together breaks bread together. And so, in honour of the fact that skiing is such a great family activity, Kimberley’s ski hill has declared Valentine’s weekend a giant brood bash. There will be bands, glow-stick parades, a mountain scavenger hunt and s’mores by the skate pond. February 13 to 14. 1-800-258-7669

15  O Yes You Did
The O Zone, Richmond
An official celebration site of the 2010 Winter Games, the O Zone will showcase art, culture, entertainment and sport via a main stage for international headliners, giant outdoor ice rink, interactive exhibits and a towering 43-metre screen carrying live feeds from all Olympic venues. To find: just look for the colourful, 30-metre-long wall of ice at the O Zone entrance (by B.C.’s Gordon Halloran, who also designed the Turin Games’ 2006 sub-zero installation). 604-276-4000

16  Spread the Warmth
Hudson Bay Mountain Resort, Smithers
The Olympic Flame isn’t the only torch drawing crowds this winter. On January 29, evening skiers brandishing flares on bamboo poles will create what will look like a giant glowing red snake – descending the slopes of Hudson Bay Mountain Resort via its new eight-km trail to town (one of B.C.’s top-three longest runs). Torch bearers will finish their burn turns on the edge of Smithers, where a bus waits to take them to the resort’s watering hole, Whisky Jack’s, for the Torchlight Dance. All proceeds to the Canadian Cancer Society. 250-847-2058

17  Totem Polar Party
Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver
The towering glass walls of UBC’s Museum of Anthropology Great Hall still offer a stunning view of Vancouver’s outer harbour, and the hall itself still displays an amazing collection of totem poles. But huge changes are afoot thanks to a $55-million expansion and facelift. Highlights: new exhibition gallery and revitalized lobby, gift shop and café unveiling; plus the launch of “Boundary and Translation: New Art Across Cultures,” a cultural Olympiad exhibition of contemporary works by 12 international artists. January 23, 24. 604-827-5932

18  Don’t Piste Me Off
Big Mountain Freeskiing, Revelstoke
Skiers who find Olympic slope events too constraining can always sink their fat planks into competitive Big Mountain Freeskiing – a sport that’s been around for 15-plus years but is not yet on the Olympic radar. Revelstoke intends to change that when it hosts the Canadian Freeskiing Championships January 6 to 10. Competitors are given a start gate and a finish line; what they do with the mountain in between is up to them. But usually that means huge carves on open faces, bombing through tight chutes, launching off 15-metre cliffs and a smattering of tricks in between. 1-866-373-4754

19  Play Safe
National Avalanche Awareness Days, Various B.C. Locations
You can’t host the Winter Games without a few words of winter caution. In fact, more than 30 Canadian communities will hold white-thunder safety programs in January, with Fernie the anchor city for this season’s campaign. The East Kootenay powder pocket is a fitting location to headline the Canadian Avalanche Centre initiative because it draws both skiers and snowmobilers, and it’s the latter that took a beating in the backcountry last winter (avalanches smothered twice as many snowmobilers in the 2008-09 season than in any preceding winter). Still, all slope-lovers will appreciate the beacon searches, snowpit profiles and search-dog demonstrations January 8 to 10 at Fernie Alpine Resort (simultaneous activities at local sled area, January 9). 250-837-2141

20  Potluck Potlatch
Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre, Whistler
Fans of Whistler’s Farmers’ Market, which packs the Upper Village with organic goodness summer through fall, can now get their slow- food fix at a winter version – Sundays at the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre (SLCC), an impressive structure designed to evoke a traditional Squamish longhouse and Lil’wat Istken pit house. Sunday shoppers can stock up on storage crops, root vegetables, late-season fruits and locally prepared artisan breads before paying by donation to access the SLCC’s exhibits and weave-your-own-bling Salish Craft Workshop. 1-866-441-7522

Got a fave B.C. “Winter Wow” event we should know about? Send us a line!

Lead photo courtesy Grouse Mountain

by Rob Howatson

Port Hardy painter Eileen Field’s maps-as-art are a unique find for both mariners and landlubbers alike. The multimedia artist starts with the driest of canvasses — a Johnstone Strait nautical chart borrowed from the wheelhouse of her husband’s powerboat — and then layers on whimsical touches in the form of sea-mist acrylics, bits of poetry, feathers, copper sea stars, anything that helps her “tell a story.” Repetitive soundings and boring fathom curves become lyrical, three-dimensional seascapes that capture the imagination. >> Field applies her sea-story technique to both gift cards and small paintings and will custom create a vignette for any body of water, provided there is a map to build upon.

WRAP IT UP FOR CHRISTMAS Gift cards, $18, Port Hardy’s West Cost Community Craft Shop (250-949-2650); custom map paintings direct from artist, $50 (250-949-7659).

See also:

• Luggage Tags
• Top 3 Worldly Reads
• Top 7 B.C. Reads

Lead image courtesy Eileen Field.

by Rob Howatson

1. TALK ABOUT GOOD INTENTIONS GONE BAD. In 1850, the HMS Investigator departed England in search of the Franklin expedition, which had disappeared in the Arctic five years earlier. Yet not only did the rescue ship fail to find Franklin survivors, the Investigator became stuck in the ice and its crew faced starvation, madness and death on the uncharted Polar Sea. Vancouver author Brian Payton captures all of the gripping, freeze-thaw action in The Ice Passage: A True Story of Ambition, Disaster and Endurance in the Arctic Wilderness. (Doubleday Canada; $35)

2. MOST PLACES-TO-SEE-BEFORE-YOU-DIE books are a dime a dozen, but this one comes with the moral authority of the United Nations. World Heritage Sites: A Complete Guide to 878 UNESCO World Heritage Sites features gorgeous photos and pithy descriptions of Earth’s most culturally, historically and geologically significant locations. (Firefly Books, $30)

3. BEST BUY FOR DISTINCT TAKES on the world’s most awe-inspiring landscapes and the unique animals and peoples that inhabit them – as captured through the lens of master shutterbug Art Wolfe. Travels to the Edge: A Photo Odyssey contains 100 of the Seattle artist’s fave images, including an inter-tribal stick fight in the mountains of Ethiopia and a startled herd of guanacos on the Andean pampas. (Mountaineers Books; U.S.$25)

WRAP IT UP FOR CHRISTMAS All books available at better book-stores throughout the province.

See also:

• Luggage Tags
• Custom Maps
• Top 7 B.C. Reads

by Rob Howatson

The Casa Collection is a Vancouver-based art bank of 600-plus archival prints by 110 artists, most of them from B.C., with imagery ranging from whimsical paper-collage interpretations of iconic Vancouver scenes to early 20th-century travel posters. Hospitality industry heavyweights draw from this pretty pool (as the Four Seasons Resort Whistler did for a recent reno), but the wholesaler is also open to all collectors. Art lovers can order ultra-high-resolution archival ink-jet reproductions in any size to a maximum of 152-by-343-centimetres. Less committed aesthetes may wish to start small with one of the collection’s handsome luggage tags – perfect for highlighting bags on crowded airport carousels and, in the pre-Olympics buildup, for encouraging both fellow B.C.ers and visitors to support the local art scene.

   

WRAP IT UP FOR CHRISTMAS

Luggage tags, featuring vintage travel-poster and B.C. landmarks art, $5. 604-263-8525; casacollection.ca

See also:

• Custom Maps
• Top 3 Worldly Reads
• Top 7 B.C. Reads

by Rob Howatson

There’s a distinct back-to-the-land theme in this year’s top crop of B.C. tomes to own (and give), as the global warming threat has writers nervously testing local soil:

• Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life Small mixed farms, like the one Old MacDonald had, are being plowed under by massive agri-factories. Writer Brian Brett, reporting from the entertaining chaos of his Salt Spring Island barnyard, depicts the endangered lifestyle with poetic flare. (Greystone Books; $35)

• Writing the West Coast: In Love with Place Editors Christine Lowther and Anita Sinner have assembled a collection of first-hand accounts about life in Clayoquot Sound (and a few other isolated B.C. harbours) that is as prismatic as a Long Beach tidal pool. Contributors include Andrew Struthers, who recalls squatting in a homemade pyramid in the bush, and Susan Musgrave, who asks, Where but Haida Gwaii can one watch the Perseids, the northern lights and forked lightning all at once? (Ronsdale Press; $25)

• Spirited Waters: Soloing South Through the Inside Passage Paddle pundit Jennifer Hahn recounts her 1,200-km kayak voyage from Ketchikan to Bellingham, complete with a chapter on seaweed cuisine and tips on battling bearanoia. (Mountaineers Books; U.S.$17)

• Voices from the Sound: Chronicles of Clayoquot Sound and Tofino 1899-1929 Margaret Horsfield, author of Cougar Annie’s Garden (winner of the Haig-Brown Prize at the 2000 B.C. Book Awards), reveals the fascinating cast of characters who inhabited Vancouver Island’s Pacific Rim before the hippies, artists and eco-warriors arrived. (Salal Books; $45)

• Vancouver Island Book of Everything Those who know what an Alberni toothpick is, have survived the Colwood Crawl and worn Fulford dancing slippers, may skip this title. All others will benefit from Peter Grant et al.’s amusing collection of Lotus Land trivia. (MacIntyre Purcell; $15)

• Araxi: Seasonal Recipes from the Celebrated Whistler Restaurant So you lost season six of Hell’s Kitchen and the chance to be head chef at Araxi? No worries. The restaurant’s real head chef, James Walt, shares his culinary secrets in this gorgeously illustrated tribute to local fare. (Douglas & McIntyre; $45)

• Wineries of British Columbia This is the third edition of John Schreiner’s authoritative grape guide, profiling 82 additional producers and enabling oenophiles to intelligently plan their tasting trips. (Whitecap; $30)

WRAP IT UP FOR CHRISTMAS All book picks available at better bookstores throughout the province.

See also:

• Luggage Tags
• Custom Maps
• Top 3 Worldly Reads
  

Skeleton is one of the fastest sports on ice, with sleds reaching speeds of 140 km/h, and Jeff Pain its most decorated Canadian athlete. Pain helped pioneer the sport in the years leading up to its debut as a permanent Olympic event at Salt Lake City in 2002. And the tall, lanky Calgarian landscape architect has nearly 20 World Cup podium finishes, two World Championship wins and a silver medal from the Torino Olympic Games in 2006. The only souvenir missing from Pain’s trophy case is gold, which he intends to correct this February when he dons his raging-beaver helmet in Whistler. Given his mature-for-skeleton age of 39, it will be his last bid for Olympic glory.

WW: Describe the skeleton

JP: It’s bombing headfirst down a twisting, icy flume on a sled that looks like a cafeteria tray attached to two tubular steel runners.

WW: What is the view like from behind your visor during a race?

JP: I imagine it is the same as one would get if duct-taped to the underside of a car that is careening down the highway at ridiculous speeds.

WW: What made you want to do this?

JP: In 1992, I decided I wanted to be in the Olympics, so I went in search of a sport that would get me there. I tried track and field and the bobsled, but I wasn’t good enough. And I was too old to join the luge program, but those guys suggested I approach the skeleton people, because, in the words of the luge folks, “they’ll take anybody.”

WW: Your sled has no brakes. How do you steer?

JP: By humming the old tune “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.” I can tilt my head and use the wind to drift me in a certain direction. Or I can lower a shoulder. Or I can push a knee into my sled that will affect the runner beneath it. Or, for really quick response, I can drag a toe.

WW: Describe takeoff.

JP: We run for 30 metres and fall down. By that I mean we wear spiked shoes, shove our sled along the relatively flat push-area and then dive aboard.

WW: How far off the ice is your chin during the 50-second ride down?

JP: Zero to two inches.

WW: Zero?

JP: There are some steeply banked turns that produce so much G-force that it’s better to have your chin guard on the ice as you enter the curve — rather than have gravity slam your face onto the track.

WW: What was your worst wipeout?

JP: At Whistler in March. I was test-driving a new sled that proved to be wrong for the conditions. I had a small crash in curve six, which led to a big crash in curve seven and, for the first time in my career, I was thrown from my sled in such a way that I couldn’t hang onto it. I slid on my butt down the track at 120 km/h, pursued by my 33-kg sled. Luckily, the board flipped upside down, which slowed it enough that I could grab it and ride aboard to a stop in curve 10. There, I stood up, bent the saddle back out with some help from the concrete wall and continued on to finish in a blistering three minutes and 24 seconds.

WWRAP IT UP FOR CHRISTMAS To tour Whistler’s Olympic venues after the Games, including transportation from Vancouver, lunch at Monk’s Grill, close-up looks at the ski jump and sliding track and a chance to fire a biathalon gun: $139/Enjoy Tour and Travel. 604-719-7161

by Helena Zukowski

Remember the days when “getting there was half the fun” as we flew “the friendly skies”? Well, with in-flight amenities a perk of the past and increased airport security the new reality, air travel these days can be more than a tad trying.

____________________________________________________

“The methodology sometimes veers into the ridiculous: the

– the Disney employee chastised for carrying a snow globe; the mother

refused permission to board with her breast pump and empty baby

bottles because her infant was not travelling with her

____________________________________________________

Of course, travellers expected airport screening to get tougher post 9/11. But the consensus amongst today’s passengers is that the methodology sometimes veers into the ridiculous – the Disney employee chastised for carrying a snow globe, for example; the mother refused permission to board with her breast pump and empty baby bottles because her infant was not travelling with her – and that common courtesy and respect take a back seat in the push for increased security measures.

Though “there is no latitude permitted in a screener’s interpretation of the rules,” according to Mathieu Laroque, spokesperson for the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA), it can be confusing and frustrating for travellers who find that, in reality, there is variance in how airport security rules are interpreted and applied.

______________________________________________

So what’s a disgruntled flyer to do?  Is there any recourse

when airport security personnel neglect common courtesy or

are seen to be acting beyond the bounds of common sense?

______________________________________________

Currently, Canadian airport security is subcontracted by CATSA to local companies such as Garda and Aeroguard. New hires are put through a two-week training program and periodic updates, with advanced training for managers – and “courtesy is definitely one component of the program,” notes Laroque. Still, studies show that most complaints relating to airport security could have been avoided if screeners had been more courteous and respectful. To this end, though travellers still have no choice but to submit to security searches and questioning, passengers are encouraged to talk to airport or airline officials if they feel inappropriately treated. If this doesn’t resolve the issue, fliers can complain directly to CATSA, giving the time and place of the incident and the officer’s name. CATSA will investigate and respond to complainants within 30 days.

In addition, a private member’s Bill (C-310) is now before Parliament for an “Airline Passenger’s Bill of Rights” that would see compensation for last-minute cancellations and flights delayed on the tarmac longer than one hour. If Bill C-310 passes, airlines would also be required to inform travellers regarding missing luggage and the reasons for flight delays within an hour of receiving the information. Canadian airlines are opposing the bill, arguing it would result in higher fares and possible termination of service to smaller communities. However, the legislation continues to proceed: the bill reached second reading in May 2009 and has been referred to committee for final ruling.

New screening technology in the experimental stages at 10 U.S. airports and B.C.’s Kelowna airport (the first in the world to install the device and the test site for all Canadian airports) is another move that supports and enhances the rights of travellers. The Integrated Check Point (ICP) is a full-body scanner that screens liquids and gels in carry-on luggage (these would still need to be stored in baggies), but also shows outlines of what is under passengers’ clothing, such as a wad of money or concealed weapons. The result: less hassle for both passengers and screeners (no more pat-downs, for one). Also on the radar: “one-stop security,” which ensures passengers who have cleared security at one airport are not required to submit to security again before boarding connecting flights. Under the new Canada-Europe Open Skies agreement, by which planes are given open-sky access between any airport in Canada and those in the European Union, passengers flying to Europe would be the first to benefit. (The agreement replaces existing restrictions on routes and prices, as well as eases constraints on control and ownership of airlines.) As for the full-body scanner, Transport Canada will decide by late 2009 whether to expand its use to other Canadian airports.

• What’s your view on enhanced airport security?
• What’s your most aggravating airport security story?
• Let us know!

the official gripe line

Passengers who have complaints about airport security personnel in Canada, or questions about security requirements,  can access the CATSA website at catsa.gc.ca or phone 1-888- 294-2202. Complaints are processed within 30 days. consumer.ca/1753

More Airline Madness.

Lead image courtesy iStock

As founder Charles Montgomery explains it: the BCAA-sponsored* Homes for the Games “opens Vancouver homes to Olympic visitors while raising money to combat homelessness in the city.” More than half of the proceeds from the program will be donated to two local charities targeting homelessness: Covenant House and Streetohome Foundation. www.bcaa.com/hfg; homeforthegames.com

Also see: Profile: Charles Montgomery

*As a silver-level sponsor

by Rob Howatson

  It is our first night at Kona Village Resort on Hawaii’s Big Island, where Leila and I have been assigned a window seat in the property’s quiet but elegant restaurant. As my wife scans the menu, I watch gentle waves roll across Kahuwai Bay, the surf faintly lit by a single floodlight strapped to a coconut tree.

Kona Village prides itself on being unplugged. Its 125 thatched-roof bungalows, arranged around a lagoon and black- and white-sand beaches, are tricked out like five-star hotel rooms – minus the distractions of air conditioning, televisions, radios and telephones. Walkways are lit by low-slung garden lights and the occasional tiki torch. Guests are issued flashlights to find their way after the evening festivities . . . or, as one young vacationer is now doing, to explore the tidal zone after sunset.

______________________________________

“Did you see that?”

My wife glances up from the menu. “What?”

“In the water, just beyond the kid.”

__________________________________

The eight-year-old is dressed in a crisply ironed shirt and pleated walking shorts, his blond mop perfectly combed. Earlier, he had been seated at the table next to us. Now, the beam of his flashlight bobbing erratically, he turns his back to the sea and stoops to examine a shell. As he does so, a blubbery, white, two-metre-long appendage rises from the water and flops about for a jarring moment before disappearing. The boy does not see the apparition. Neither does his family, happily chatting away in the restaurant.

“Did you see that?”

My wife glances up from the menu. “What?”

“In the water, just beyond the kid.”

I try to describe it, but the best I can do is confirm what I didn’t see. It wasn’t a whale. It wasn’t a shark’s fin. It wasn’t a squid’s tentacle.

“Hmm,” says Leila, returning her attention to the menu. “Calamari sounds good.”

Having logged a lot of vacation miles together, my wife is familiar with my nervous travel quirks. When we stayed in Hilo, for example, on the jungle side of the island, and the power went out as we prepared for bed, I sprang to my feet and began cranking our Wind ’N Go flashlight.

“Prepare the rental car for evacuation to higher ground,” I whispered into the darkness.

Leila rolled over and went to sleep. Apparently, she either didn’t know or didn’t care that Hilo had been flattened twice by tsunamis in the previous century, or that the city lies at the base of an active volcano, or that a week before our arrival, the Big Island had been rocked by a 6.7 earthquake. In fact, Leila slept particularly well that night. I popped a Zantac, stared at the ceiling and listened to the coqui frogs.

______________________________________

The appendage, the two-metre limb,

the white blubbery thing, lifts again from

the water, within striking distance.

______________________________________

After that episode, I vowed to relax. But it’s hard when a little boy is tinkering about in the dark beside the Pacific, oblivious to a lurking sea beast. The appendage, the two-metre limb, the white blubbery thing, lifts again from the water, within striking distance. The boy sees the creature and steps toward the bay to investigate. I scan the restaurant for our server, unsure of what to say even if he should materialize. “Kraken” is the only word that comes to mind – the monster in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. As in “Waiter, there’s a Kraken in my view.” As in, “Doesn’t the Kona coast possess one of the steepest offshore slopes in the Hawaiian Islands – a logical place for a leviathan to ascend?!” Leila senses I am about to do something spectacularly decisive and hides behind her menu.

________________________________________

My flailing, untanned limbs propel me

out of the darkness and onto the barely illuminated

rocky landing with such force that the startled boy

nearly stumbles backward into the sea. 

________________________________________

I bolt from the restaurant and race across the lawn, singeing my hair on a tiki lamp as I round a corner. My flailing, untanned limbs propel me out of the darkness and onto the barely illuminated rocky landing with such force that the startled boy nearly stumbles backward into the sea. Whatever has been crashing about in the shallows is gone. But I notice, for the first time, a wooden sign: Please Do Not Swim with, Touch or Throw Rocks at the Manta Rays. I realize the coconut tree floodlight is meant to attract the gentle winged giants, which move slowly through the shallows and sometimes expose the white underside of a wing tip, as if waving hello. The boy shoots me a wary look and resumes beachcombing. I slink back to the restaurant, avoiding eye contact with his family, now crowded at the window. Leila peeks over her menu. I flash the “shaka” signal (back of the hand, pinky and thumb extended) – a Hawaiian greeting . . . and, of course, surfers’ code for “hang loose.”

Lead image courtesy Margaret Butschler/Vancouver Aquarium

by Liz Bryan

Leg One: Victoria to Port Renfrew (107 km)

Head out of Victoria onto Hwy. 1, then west toward Colwood and the start of Hwy. 14. Known as the West Coast Road from Sooke, north, Hwy. 14 is one of the oldest byways in B.C., the first trail to connect Victoria’s fort of 1843 with the pioneer settlements that sprang up along the Pacific coast to Sooke. At the first major traffic light, turn south (left) onto Ocean Boulevard and follow the signs to Fort Rodd Hill, built in 1895 to guard the naval station at Esquimalt. Now a historic park, the fort’s old buildings and gun emplacements are still intact on a wondrous rocky headland, complete with gnarled Garry oaks, arbutus trees, wildflowers and a herd of black-tailed deer. Below is a second historic site: Fisgard Lighthouse, built in 1860 and now housing a museum dedicated to charting the shipwrecks along the West Coast’s Graveyard of the Pacific and the intricacies of the Fresnel lens.

__________________________________________________________

Jaunt: Victoria to Port Renfrew Circle Tour
Distance: Approx. 250 km
Fuel: 1 tank
Duration: Two days
Prime Time: March or April
Tunes: The Bills, Let ’Em Run (Borealis Records); Vivaldi, Four Seasons (Spring)

___________________________________________________________

Continue past the fort along a winding forest road to a humpback bridge and the Coburg Peninsula, a narrow spit of land between the beach and Esquimalt Lagoon (a favourite spot for birdwatchers). Royal Roads University lies across the lagoon. At the end of the spit, turn north (right) along Lagoon Road to Metchosin Road, which curves high above the shore. A side road leads to Albert Head and Witty’s Lagoon, with beachside parks, sandy cliffs, rainforest trails and, again, good birding. As the community of Metchosin nears, keep an eye out for ’Chosin Pottery, Galloping Goose Sausage Makers and St. Mary’s Church, its graveyard shaded by giant mossy oaks and bright with dancing white fawn lilies and pink shooting stars. The church is known locally as St. Mary of the Lilies.

The settlement of Shirley is marked by its 1937 community hall (with any luck there will be a craft sale in progress) and, just beyond the hall, a narrow forest road that leads to red-and-white Sheringham Point Lighthouse (1912), a prime West Coast photo postcard. The forest trail down to the shore is currently a little rough. The lighthouse itself sits behind a wire mesh fence, but improvements are planned to keep the lighthouse and grounds accessible.

Turn right (north) along Happy Valley Road, then Kangaroo Road, to get back onto Hwy. 14. West lies Milne’s Landing, where the general store keeps alive a tradition begun by settler Edward Milne, who started an emporium here more than 100 years ago. Turn inland for a visit to Sooke Potholes Regional Park, a popular swimming spot with rocks sculpted into pools by the Sooke River. The town of Sooke, across the river, has a fine little museum. Adjacent Moss Cottage dates from the 1860s. Walk down to the harbour on Maple Avenue to check out the fishboats and, if it’s coffee time, the Little Vienna Bakery, Serious Coffee (Victoria’s own version of Starbucks) or Mom’s Café, a local institution (though it’s under new management). Sooke is also known to gastronomes around the world for the incredible edibles at Sooke Harbour House. It’s well worth a drive down Whiffen Spit Road just to see the place (and maybe make advance plans for dinner?) and to stroll on the spit at the entrance to Sooke Inlet. West of Sooke, the highway continues along the shore, with several oceanfront B&Bs along the route. The settlement of Shirley is marked by its 1937 community hall (with any luck there will be a craft sale in progress) and, just beyond the hall, a narrow forest road that leads to red-and-white Sheringham Point Lighthouse (1912), a prime West Coast photo postcard. The forest trail down to the shore is currently a little rough. The lighthouse itself sits behind a wire mesh fence, but improvements are planned to keep the lighthouse and grounds accessible.

French Beach is one of the few along here with automobile access. It also has campsites and picnic tables and is a good spot for whale-watching. About four km beyond, Point No Point is a popular resort with teahouse, dining room and cabins on the tip of the windswept promontory of the same name, so called because it was invisible to surveyors from certain angles. The next beach along is Sandcut, reached by a 10-minute trail through steep woods but well worth the effort: A waterfall splashes over a sandstone lip into a freshwater pool (in summer, a perfect shower to wash off salt and sand). The small community of Jordan River is a surfing mecca; north of the sheltering Olympic Peninsula, the waves roll in unobstructed from across the Pacific. Good eats: Breakers Restaurant for clam chowder and sea views. North from Jordan River, the West Coast Road veers away from the shore, narrow and winding and hemmed in with rainforest. Trails lead down to well-marked beaches such as China and Sombrio, both good for picnics and linked, from China Beach to Port Renfrew, by the 47-km Juan de Fuca Trail. Not as rugged or isolated as the famous West Coast Trail, the Juan de Fuca is more accessible for day hikes.

Port Renfrew is an old logging/fishing community at the mouth of Port San Juan, where the San Juan and Gordon rivers flow into the sea. There is a cluster of small homes here, plus a general store, smattering of eateries and lots of history. Beside the wharf sits the newest incarnation of the Port Renfrew Hotel (the original landmark structure was formerly a loggers’ bunkhouse, barged across the strait in 1927), serving decent grub alongside its spiffy new waterfront accommodations. The local church is a reincarnation, too. Built originally in Somenos, near Duncan, in 1875, it was dismantled and trucked to Port Renfrew in 1970; its bell came from the HMCS Swansea, a navy frigate scrapped in 1967. Near the mouth of the bay is one of nature’s marvels: the tidal pools of Botanical Beach. Here the sea has etched deep holes into the sandstone and at low tide the pools are nature’s fish tanks, teeming with tidal life – a marine marvel that brings in almost as many tourists as the West Coast Trail. To reach the beach  (a pleasant 20-minute walk), drive past the trail infocentre and veer left, following the signs to the parking lot. The hotel provides details on tides and the best places to watch the sunset. For another short hike, ask for directions to the legendary Red Creek Fir (73.8 metres high, 12.5 metres in circumference), along the San Juan River. Good eats & sleeps: Port Renfrew Hotel and Resort, on the wharf (250-647-5541); Soule Creek Lodge (1-866-277-6853), up (and we do mean up) Powder Main Road on the top of a ridge, with superb views and an inventive seafood menu with produce grown on-site. (Roadtrippers can overnight in the lodge or a cozy yurt.)

Leg Two: Port Renfrew to Victoria (Approx. 140 km)

It’s feasible now to drive an ordinary passenger car from Port Renfrew along logging roads to Cowichan Lake, as the 52 km of unpaved road (Harris Creek Main) is well graded, though still used by logging trucks. (As it has no services, the road is not recommended for night driving, however.) Take it slowly and enjoy an intimate look at the rainforest and B.C.’s logging industry in all its stages, from clear-cuts to replantings of several vintages. There are two excellent forestry campsites along the way, at Fairy and Lizard Lakes (for good swimming, fishing and nature trails), plus several one-way wooden bridges over creeks – some of them more like roaring canyons. Stop to see the enormous Harris Creek Spruce, approached over a small footbridge. While in the woods, look down and enjoy the forest floor, all mossy green with salal and ferns and woodland flowers, including bunchberry and trilliums. Back en route, the road branches several times but the way is well posted (as it should be; the provincial government is promoting this as a circle route) until it reaches Cowichan Lake at the community of Mesachie Lake. Enlightened mill owners planted some 200 trees of 33 different varieties from around the world here back in the 1940s. These heritage trees give this tiny place an endearing charm.

Cowichan Lake (which enjoys the warmest average summer temperatures in Canada) is 30 km long, with a road circling it, though only the eastern ends are paved. Watch for Cowichan’s mythical lake monster, Stin Qua. Honeymoon Bay, a few kilometres west of Mesachie Lake, is worth a detour for its wildflower reserve, which protects, among other plants, a large stand of pink fawn lilies. Good eats: The Honeypot Pub & Restaurant. If not detouring, turn east (right) to Lake Cowichan. If timed right, the town’s April daffodil festival – known as Delightfully Daffy Daze – is a must-stop, with its antique show and flea market; or walk along the Cowichan River and visit the Kaatza Station Museum for a glimpse of the island’s mining and logging days.

It’s only 30 km from Lake Cowichan to Duncan and Hwy. 1, the return route to Victoria. In Duncan: 40 totems, a farmer’s market, funky new shops and the Quw’utsun Cultural Centre’s native carvers in action. The pastoral Cowichan Valley is internationally known as a foodie haven, with several wineries, a cheesemaker, stands selling fresh produce of all kinds and farms where alpacas, emu and even water buffalo strut their stuff. Drive back to Victoria via the scenic Malahat – a 45-minute drive if driven without breaks. Or, take the ferry at Mill Bay across Saanich Inlet to Brentwood Bay, and spend the last of the day at Butchart Gardens (reserve ahead for dinner or high tea: 250-652-8222).

Lead image courtesy Sooke Region Museum

by Masa Takei 

We’re going fishing, as simple and primal a thing as that. We’re also on a National Geographic-worthy outing, a scientific mission for conservation, a veritable journey back in time. It’s a prehistoric creature that we seek – a living dinosaur, but one faced with imminent extinction.

The Fraser River's sturgeon population ’s is the largest truly wild stock of this species left in the world. Even so, the Fraser River Sturgeon Conservation Society estimates the latter’s numbers have plunged by 25 per cent.

Casting lines from the dock at B.C.’s Harrison Lake, our guide fires up the engine on our seven-metre aluminum jet boat and sets course for the mouth of the Harrison River, just 110 km east of Vancouver. A few raindrops spatter the windshield from low, heavy clouds; tendrils of mist drape the flanks of the surrounding Coast Mountains. “A month ago we’d be able to fish right here,” says 39-year-old Tony Nootebos, who has guided on these waters for the past 14 years. But this late fall afternoon, we don’t even slow our pace as we reach the river mouth and head inland.

The beast we are in search of, the white sturgeon, is North America’s largest freshwater fish. (The biggest caught to date was more than six metres long and weighed 600-plus kilos – about the length and payload capacity of a Ford F-150 pickup.) It’s a species that has plied these waters for more than 60 million years, virtually unchanged. Something that has withstood Darwinian forces throughout the millennia would suggest a robustness of design. Yet within the last century, the sturgeon’s numbers have dropped toward extirpation, mainly due to habitat degradation and overfishing. In 1897, almost a half-million kilograms of sturgeon were pulled from the Fraser River in a single year by the 160 gillnetters licensed to do so. By the mid-1900s, the numbers of these inland-water leviathans had dropped so precipitously that only two local commercial fishing licenses remained active. Given a decades-long maturation period, the remaining sturgeon stock has slim hope of fully recovering.

__________________________________________________

The old black-and-white photo makes it easy to believe

 creatures of such size existed only in another era. Just four

years ago, though, another group of fishermen caught a

specimen measuring 3.3 metres in the Fraser near Mission,

where it took four men six-and-a-half hours to land the goliath.

____________________________________________________

One 1920s shot in the B.C. archives shows 30 men in tweed suits and waistcoats, posing on a dock with a sturgeon laid across packing crates. If the crates were standard issue, then the sturgeon was some four-and-a-half metres long. The old black-and-white photo makes it easy to believe creatures of such size existed only in another era. Just four years ago, though, another group of fishermen caught a specimen measuring 3.3 metres in the Fraser near Mission, where it took four men six-and-a-half hours to land the goliath. A colour photo subsequently ran in the local newspaper, a classic grip-and-grin shot of 10 fishermen standing in a river to support one fish on the surface.

We motor the length of the Harrison River, our wake in the dark jade waters lingering behind us like an airliner’s contrail. A seal colony lounging atop a log boom eyes us as we speed past. Nootebos points to hundreds of dots in the distance: bald eagles fishing on the river ahead. The photographer in our group throws off his fleece and readies his gear. The only other passenger, a woman from Montreal sheathed in a stylish corduroy coat, designer jeans and gumboots, fishes in her handbag for her point-and-shoot.

My pole arcs, pulled down like a divining rod to the motherlode. Line peels out of the reel with a frantic zzz-z-zzzzz. I haul up and reel in, jolted with adrenaline as I get a feel for the size and strength of the creature I’m now attached to.

Concentrations of North America’s last white sturgeon exist in rivers located primarily on the west coast. The Columbia and Snake rivers in the U.S. and the Fraser and Harrison in B.C. are the last sport fisheries; the Fraser’s is the largest truly wild stock of sturgeon left in the world. Even so, the Fraser River Sturgeon Conservation Society estimates the latter’s numbers have plunged by 25 per cent, from somewhere around 62,000 in 2003 to about 47,000 in 2006. The most disturbing statistic, however, is that the greatest drop is among juveniles, suggesting that the population is failing to renew itself.

Today, sturgeon fishing on the Fraser is strictly catch-and-release, while commercial guiding services play a significant role in both stewardship and a tagging program that gathers population stats. “The sport fishery is the eyes and ears on the river,” says Nootebos – and it’s a well-motivated crowd, given that commerce and conservation are inextricably linked. With 90 guides in the area, the industry contributes an estimated $20 million to the B.C. economy.

Arriving at the wide, muddy Fraser, Nootebos finds the spot he’s looking for, kills the engine and lets the boat drift while he produces a plastic bucket of fluorescent-orange salmon roe encased in a nylon stocking. Taking a barbless fish hook the size of his thumb, he nips the top of a sac and, swivelling crane-like with the 2.5-metre fishing rod, casts the bait bomb out across the surface of the river. I picture the orange orb settling on the riverbed, a beacon in the murk. But it is the roe’s sweetish scent and taste that will lure the sturgeon, which has poor eyesight and relies on a keen sense of smell and taste to feed.

____________________________________

Reports claim a half-bushel of onions,

a can of beans and a house cat found in the

stomachs of sturgeon catch.

____________________________________

It was a Canadian researcher who discovered that sturgeon have taste buds outside their mouths (sensitive barbels – four catfish-like whiskers that project from the snout – are used to probe the river bottom for food). The gentle creature is, in fact, a toothless scavenger that spends its days sucking up relatively small protein packets – as Nootebos puts it, like “hoovers vacuuming the bottom.” Lamprey eels, eulachon, ditch eels, crayfish and dead salmon parts are regular fare. Just about anything is inhaled, though. Reports claim a half-bushel of onions, a can of beans and a house cat found in the stomachs of sturgeon catch.

Nootebos baits two more hooks and mounts three rods in holders at the back of the boat. Each of us is assigned our own entry in this lottery. And so it begins.

Our lines out, we wait. The day’s drizzle lends an air of solemnity. We monitor the tips of our respective rods expectantly. But as the minutes pass, our short attention spans are sadly apparent when Nootebos points to two rods now quivering with the nibblings of beasts below. There’s a moment of indecisive panic before two of us leap to pull rods from holders, then lean back to set the hooks: throwing the heavy rods back hard as coached, striving for purchase in the hard, cartilaginous mouths beneath us.

My pole arcs, pulled down like a divining rod to the motherlode. Line peels out of the reel with a frantic zzz-z-zzzzz. Next to me, Montreal also has a battle on her hands. Nootebos takes in the other line, then restarts the boat to orient it favourably for the work ahead. I haul up and reel in, jolted with adrenaline as I get a feel for the size and strength of the creature I’m now attached to. A few metres of line are gained, then the fish is off; nothing to do but let it run. Suddenly, a shudder, then . . . nothing. I reel in slack, hoping it’s just that the sturgeon is swimming straight for us. The hook comes back to the boat bare.

The sturgeon has no teeth, but I pause before grabbing its lower lip – a good 15 centimetres wide – with both hands. It feels rubbery but solid, and, with a leg either side, I embrace this living log. It appears calmed by the unfamiliar experience of floating upside down.

Meanwhile, Montreal is huffing and puffing. She’s hooked onto something big. Nootebos straps a fighting belt around her waist, a white-plastic affair with a cup to brace the butt of the rod. Stylish turquoise-leather gloves strain as she struggles with a force many times heavier than she. The fight draws out. Nootebos, a sheepish look on his face, leans in to support the rod, one hand beneath its centre point like he’s doing a bicep curl. Montreal’s exclamations are no longer self-conscious theatrics. She lets out childbirth-worthy groans.

The photographer and I guffaw like a couple of knuckleheads. Nootebos takes the rod from Montreal and passes it to me; 15 minutes later, I’m eating crow. A lactic burn sears through my arms as I calculate the cost of replacing the thousand-dollar rod and reel about to slip overboard. The photographer steps in and puts in his time. Soon, he too is looking for takers.

___________________________________________________

Nootebos grabs the pole, clamps his thumb down on the

spool of the reel and cranks up hard on the rod, taking in line

by the armload. A massive flash of white suddenly churns

the water alongside, bigger than anything we’d imagined. 

_____________________________________________

The second pass around, we hit upon an ingenious way to double-team the beast: facing each other, one with the rod in both hands, the other propping it up on one shoulder. Embarrassed though he might be for us, Nootebos runs for his camera. Yet despite our chicanery, the fish seems nowhere near as tired as us. Nootebos grabs the pole, clamps his thumb down on the spool of the reel and cranks up hard on the rod, taking in line by the armload. A massive flash of white suddenly churns the water alongside, bigger than anything we’d imagined. Reinvigorated, we resume the fight, alternately reeling in line and letting the fish run. Finally, we bring it up from the deep.

_____________________________

Its snout out of the water,

the sturgeon regards us with a tiny,

baleful, blue-grey eye. 

_____________________________

Its snout out of the water, the sturgeon regards us with a tiny, baleful, blue-grey eye. We’ve been wrestling with the fish for more than an hour and have drifted almost three km downriver. I strip off my down jacket and stuff myself into waders. By the time I get overboard, Nootebos has removed the hook and is holding the colossus by the mouth, belly up in knee-deep waters. I take over while he jumps back aboard for a measuring tape. The sturgeon has no teeth, but I pause before grabbing its lower lip – a good 15 centimetres wide – with both hands. It feels rubbery but solid, and, with a leg either side, I embrace this living log. It appears calmed by the unfamiliar experience of floating upside down. We measure from snout to tail fork (252 cm), then the girth (102 cm). Nootebos’s guess is 140 to 180 kg – less than half the weight of the monster caught four years ago but still the heft of a Shetland pony.

__________________________________________

Nootebos returns with a Sharpie-sized syringe

loaded with an electronic tag. Sliding the tip of the

 needle into the skin behind the sturgeon’s

head, he depresses the plunger.

__________________________________________

Producing a Trekkie-looking, paddle-headed device, Nootebos flips the sturgeon upright and scans behind its head: an untagged virgin. Again, he leaves me holding the fish’s maw. I study the mottled purple, pink and grey back, marked by a line of white ridges. These must be the scutes – armoured plates girding its flanks. A sudden squirming. I clamp tighter with both shins. Nootebos returns with a Sharpie-sized syringe loaded with an electronic tag. Sliding the tip of the needle into the skin behind the sturgeon’s head, he depresses the plunger, then checks with the reader that the tag is operational. Our work is done.

Then it comes, the obligatory grip-and-grin. Nootebos and I kneel in the water to support a creature that weighs more than both of us put together. Montreal looks on, smiling, from the boat. We grip, we grin, as the photographer captures the image for posterity, then release our connection to a primeval time. With a flip of the tail, it glides back into the Fraser’s murky depths.

sturgeon generals

• B.C. Sportfishing Group offers eight-hour guided fishing daytrips for four people at $796, four-hour trips for $518. Everything (including waders and fishing gear) is included; guests need only dress for the weather. With 22 boats, BCSFG can accommodate up to 88 guests at one time – year-round (peak season is April to November). 1-877-796-3345

Photos courtesy Darryl Leniuk

by Kerry McPhedran

Miss Kerry? Phone call! Please follow.”

Phone call?  It’s November. I’m alternately blotting sweat and sipping a chilled Kingfisher on a rooftop terrace four storeys above the Ganges, India’s holiest river, in Varanasi – India’s holiest city. Those lucky enough to die here, where Lord Shiva married, or to be cremated alongside the Ganga Ma (Mother Ganges), revered as a living goddess, are believed to break free of the endless cycle of reincarnation. Peace is theirs.

Fireworks explode overhead. It is the first night of Diwali, the year’s holiest celebration for India’s 850 million Hindus – a good number of whom are now packed excitedly into wooden boats drifting through floating candle offerings and marigold garlands on the Ganges. Sanskrit mantras punctuated by the rattling of conch shells and bells and the beating of drums spiral up from one of Varanasi’s 30 legendary ghats, each a series of stone steps sweeping down to the water’s edge. My friend and fellow traveller, Jill, looks impressed at my summons by the Dolphin Restaurant’s head waiter, but is more interested in eating her freshly baked naan while it’s hot.

“Hello?”

“Kerry! Welcome to India! I am Rafiq! I meet your train in Agra in four days?”

Oh, blessed Google. Before leaving Canada, we had hired Rafiq online to be our driver for the second half of this six-week India odyssey. The clincher? An English couple’s Trip Advisor testimonial, praising Rafiq’s fierce belief in safety – a rare attribute in a country where car fatalities are the major cause of death.

For the first half of our passage through India, we trekked the remote Himalayas of Sikkim (India’s northern state, tucked between Bhutan and Nepal) with a guide, four porters and five dzos (a cow-yak hybrid), the latter’s tinkling bells and the occasional dzo-boy’s call the only sounds. Travelling then by taxi, we journeyed from the sedate Himalayan hill station of Darjeeling down to India’s great plains, then on by overnight train to arrive here in Varanasi, a festival-mad city of crumbling pastel palaces, temples and stone gateways that is half movie set, half watercolour dream – an Alice-sliding-down-the-rabbit-hole experience. On a wild taxi ride from train station to hotel, the driver wove between sacred cows, three-wheeled auto-rickshaws, pedicabs and pony-drawn two-wheeled tongas, taking dead aim at oncoming large trucks, hand on the horn, eyes locked with those of other drivers in a game of chicken.

After the peace of the Himalayas, we have landed feet first in the real India, where driving is a blood sport.

But tonight, we will scrape sacred cow doo and marigold petals off our sandals and fall asleep instantly and deeply, lulled by the city’s blaring mantras – broadcast on scratchy sound systems – and the knowledge that soon, after just one more overnight train, to Agra, Rafiq will be safely in the driver’s seat. In the winding lanes below, the dead, wrapped in gold cloth, will be carried through the night by bereaved sons to the ghats – to be released by fire and the Ganges’ divine waters. And at dawn, we will be woken by the thump of golden monkeys leaping onto the roof from a neighbouring building while, below, the devout already face the morning. Standing chest deep in the polluted Ganges, sipping the holy waters from cupped hands, they will chant the Gayatri to the sun god: Lord, we behold your light that fills the three worlds; and pray for your radiance to illumine our minds.

Four nights later, we are waiting in MGS station for the night train to Agra and Rafiq. It is the usual scene: smartly kitted Indian soldiers rub shoulders with near-naked holy sadhus; sacred cows and beggars scrounge among the crowd; plump matrons trail gold-edged saris past barefoot porters, whose dhotis are gathered between poverty-thin legs, bowed under the weight of bulging suitcases. Legless men in shabby western suits push alongside on trolleys half the size of skateboards; big-eyed shoeshine boys dog us, despite our open-toed sandals.

The delight of riding an Indian train is its passing parade: the 14 million souls who board and depart daily. To take a train, as Lonely Planet says, is to ride India’s bloodstream. Rail regulations detail five pages of those eligible for fare discounts: from circus performers and cancer patients who use an ostomy bag to midwives, widows of martyrs, those with non-infectious leprosy, Boy Scouts in uniform and vegetable vendors earning less than $10 a month. Child recipients of National Bravery Awards travel free in second-sleeper class. A corpse is charged the parcel rate. With luck (uncertainty is a given), chai wallahs will scurry through the cars, offering hot tea, while porters ferry sheets, pillows and blankets to the 2AC berths (air-conditioned cars with two-tiered beds) favoured by tourists.

What is not a delight is the drabness of the train. Thanks to The Darjeeling Limited, that quirky 2007 Cannes festival-winner directed by Wes Anderson, a new generation of movie-goers believes Indian trains are sheathed in hand-painted drawings of elephants and temples, while inside, swaying glass chandeliers tinkle in exquisite dining rooms and private compartments – plump with Rajasthan silk cushions and enormous windows – overlook India rolling past. In the real India, only trucks are lovingly hand-painted (Fox hired Rajasthani truck painters to embellish its movie’s train) and real Indian train windows are infamous for their near-opaque haze.

“Accept no food on the train from strangers!” advised our Varanasi hotel clerk, waggling his head as we checked out. “Even kindly seeming people may drug you and steal your goods.” And so, armed with bananas and Pure Love biscuits (but alas, no cable to chain our luggage) we lie back in the dark in berths 41 and 42, legs bent as if we are seated, suitcases tucked under our calves against would-be thieves. Suddenly, as the ceiling fan whips dangerously close to Jill’s face in the upper berth, two heavily made-up hijras (eunuch and transvestite entertainers who dress in women’s clothing) fling open the compartment curtain to give a Hindi “Oo-la-la!” at our pale faces, then bat their eyelashes before disappearing. It’s all very Some Like It Hot.

Our man in India: the dapper, street-savvy master of all things even remotely significant in the creation of the perfect chauffeured roadtrip, Rafique Sheikh: rajasthandriver.com

Seventeen hours later, the train arrives – two hours late. Rumpled and sticky, we exit the station, trailing other passengers, a downloaded photo of Rafiq’s moustached face in hand. More eager men thrust forward. “Yes, yes, this is the only door, Madam!” “Your driver must be a scoundrel, madam!” “He is not coming, madam!” “Here is my car!” My god! We should have gotten Rafiq’s cellphone number . . . But he does have our photo . . . did he leave because the train was late? A small, clean-shaven man smiles quietly off to one side. He wears a crisp, short-sleeved blue shirt and dark slacks. “Rafiq?” asks Jill. “But where is your moustache?” A bigger, shy smile. “I have shaved it off just now to look younger.”  We like Rafiq instantly for his confession.

“Chalo? – Let’s go?” Rafiq nods to a distinctive, boxy white sedan ensconced in the shade. The Ambassador! Traditional favourite of maharajas and prime ministers, India’s classic national car is now our first choice, too. Styled on the U.K.’s Oxford Morris but built in India, the spacious air-conditioned Amby is bound to draw approving glances on our grand tour.

And so it does, as, in a rush of colour, India comes at us head-on over the Ambassador’s pure retro dashboard. Often unnerving, sometimes truly frightening, it is thrilling, shocking, magical and unforgettable as we fly past buses, trucks, loping camels and motorcycles with entire families piled on, rickshaws, women carrying bricks on their elegant heads, uniformed school kids waving wildly, the occasional elephant, sadhus and more than one wedding, complete with groom on horseback and brass band. Sheep flow around us; bands of monkeys clamber over the Ambassador’s hood as the days fly by.

By the end of week one, the traveller’s inevitable frustrations with India have fallen away as Rafiq transports us from Agra into India’s great northern state: Rajasthan. This is the magical India that foreigners imagine. Women in long swirling ghagharas (skirts) of burnt orange and proud, mustachioed and turbaned men; fairytale palaces and walled forts; half of India’s 500,000 camels, led by tribal people on the move. Here, caste matters and men are still kings in a land of kings, where to speak of a question of honour is to speak of “an issue of moustache.”

Before important undertakings, prayers are said to Ganesh, the beloved, elephant-headed son of Lord Shiva. (above) Elephants at Amber Court.

Like most first-time travellers in India, we trace a route through Rajasthan’s four ancient cities, each besotted with one colour: bubblegum-pink Jaipur, painted to please the visiting Prince of Wales in 1876; dazzling, marble-white Udaipur; hyacinth-blue Jodhpur; and, at the desert’s edge, shimmering, golden-walled Jaisalmer, a 12th-century storybook sandcastle illustration. And always, with wheels instead of rails, we are independent, free of what-time-does-the-train-leave-and-from-which-track-and-will-there-be-food-on-board? Our worries, that we’d be at the mercy of a self-serving driver intent on delivering us to his cousin’s endless shops, fall away. Instead, Rafiq takes us home to his family for dinner in Udaipur. He becomes a friend but remains professional. He finds his own accommodation and meals. And each morning the newly washed Ambassador awaits its rumpled Canadian passengers, with Rafiq, cheerful in a freshly ironed cotton shirt and slacks, standing beside it, ready to answer the day’s endless stream of questions. We tour forts and palaces as he parks in the shade, water bottles readied for our return. He becomes our informal cultural guide, explaining life as a Muslim in 90 per cent Hindu India, revealing how corruption and kickbacks work, advising when to say “No” to professional beggars versus “Yes” to the truly poor and how to discourage India’s legions of street-boy vendors with a mere click of the tongue, eyes forward.

“Incredible, India?” asks Rafiq, leaning forward, brows knit, from the right-side driver’s seat (Britain’s legacy) as an 18-wheeler grazes past. The man drives like an aerobatic pilot. Subtle, confident movements of the wheel. Proudly: “This is the real India – you cannot see India from the train or a plane.”

Jill rides shotgun today. I’m in the back, lulled by the Ambassador’s diesel-engine thrum and the pink tassel swaying from the rear-view mirror, Lonely Planet’s Rajasthan, Delhi & Agra open in my lap. Rajasthan’s history reads like a fairytale. The Rajputs’ bravery and sense of honour were unparalleled. Theirs was a culture of chivalry – part medieval European knights, part Japanese samurais. Rajput warriors fought centuries of invaders against all odds. When no hope was left, honour demanded that jauhar (mass suicide) take place. “Women and children . . . immolated themselves on a huge funeral pyre while the men donned saffron robes and rode out to confront the enemy and certain death.” Medieval foreshadowing of 21st-century driving in India?

On the road from Agra to Pushkar, we witness our first accident when a car clips an oncoming cyclist. A few miles on, we pass two totalled cars. Rafiq, who trained 14 years ago with an Anglo-American company that stressed safety, angrily explains why India has such carnage on its roads. “People do not take responsibility!” – including the government. Anything that can move is allowed on any Indian road. At night, trucks bear down on unlit camel carts, bikes and tractors.

“Look! They are not licensed, they have no lights, no insurance.” Rafiq gestures at a tiny local “bus” precariously stuffed with waving local women. “But if I hit a peacock, our national bird, I am in trouble.” Glum silence. Turning onto a short stretch of six-lane freeway, we’re puzzled by a large sign – “Please do not drive in the wrong direction” – until we look ahead to see a massive truck bearing down on us – on our side of the divided freeway. The old adage “Don’t drive in countries that believe in reincarnation” takes on a new urgency. “They can’t read,” shrugs Rafiq, adeptly curving onto the shoulder with seconds to spare.

Given that Rajasthan is a harsh land with a harsher climate, we couldn’t have picked a better time to journey here. The monsoons are over; daytime is hot but not unbearable, the desert nights cool but not yet cold; and India is everything we imagined, and more.  In tiny, holy “pure-veg” Pushkar (the vegetarian population of 14,000 lives without eggs, meat or alcohol), we are amongst the 200,000 people and 50,000 camels converging once a year for Kartika, the most sacred Hindu lunar month. Pilgrims bathe by moonlight; tribal traders haggle over the length of a camel’s eyelashes. Before dawn, turbaned traders, wrapped in brown-and-grey blankets against the cold, brew tea, stroking their impressive moustaches. At midday, we join the devoted crush to perform puja (prayers) at India’s only temple to Brahman, and emerge with red-powder tikkas on our foreheads.

Just when Jill and I think we can’t take any more crowds, we find ourselves two days’ travel away from the nearest city in a country village, where we join two Parisians on a magical, starlit adventure. We have already crossed the Aravelli Hills?, one of the world’s oldest mountain ranges, which splits east and west Rajasthan. Now we are in search of Narlai, a film location in The Darjeeling Limited,  a tiny village – notable for its free-running, startlingly hairy black pigs – that looks dodgy. But we are soon booked into Number 16, the same room Mick Jagger chose in 2006, at Rawla Narlai, a 17th-century hunting lodge gifted to the Maharaja of Jodhpur – and walled off from the piggies. The elegant manager, a relative of India’s royal family, tells us that the Darjeeling cast and crew celebrated Christmas here when the film wrapped. “It can be a slow time for travel – and I was so pleased to see how you celebrate Christmas!”

Later, the Parisians, Jill and I travel by creaking oxcart – guided by turbaned Rajputs from the warrior caste, swinging oil-lit lamps – to an ancient, vast, sunken stone well that is the size of an Olympic swimming pool but only half full, its perimeter and interior steps lined with flickering ghee candles. Seated at one end, we dine on thali –  deliciously spiced dishes from royal recipes served in round bowls on a silver tray  – while reclining on silk cushions strewn with flower petals. A distant husky voice sings to the gods; a bonfire crackles up to the starry night. Paris and Vancouver seem very far away.

Two days’ drive beyond Narlai, and we are sidestepping open sewage running along the backstreets of Jaisalmer when a man with no legs, no arms, his torso wrapped in thick leather, rolls past on his side, his assistant nudging an alms pot before him. “You must give. He is truly a holy person,” calls a shopkeeper, tucking his own rupees into the pot.

This is India: exquisite carved-sandstone “lace” havellis (mansions); a frail grandmother rushing to stop traffic for jaywalking tourists in hopes of a few rupees; white-marble palaces floating on lakes; milky-marble Jain temples with naked monks; dalits, despite their new self-description as India’s “oppressed,” still trapped by their Untouchables status, doing India’s dirty work; beautiful brides covered in bangles, and bare-wristed widows abandoned by society and family, barely covered by thin, white-cotton saris. India’s middle class may be growing, but more than one third still toil for a dollar a day. Tourists book luxurious rail journeys on board the Palace on Wheels but haggle over a few rupees with homeless taxi wallahs.

An Indian friend in Canada advised we travel as Indians do: “Let India wash over you and take in what you can.” It seems to work. We feel oddly not foreign in this country of 1.13 billion, where the common Sanskrit greeting of deep respect – Namasté, I bow to the divine in you – transcends the confusion of 2,000 ethnic groups speaking 1,652 languages and dialects.

By week two, our days have settled into a relaxed routine. We explore each destination for two to four days, yet don’t feel glued at the hip to Rafiq. Local touts offering postcards, puppets and fabric look surprised, laugh and stop badgering when we wave them away with Lapka! –  a local term for a “tourist catcher” that Rafiq has taught us. We love our road days in the Ambassador. An easy four- to six-hour drive includes stops for lunch, tea breaks and such architectural wonders as Kumbalgarh, the remote 15th-century fort with walls long enough to enclose 360 temples, wide enough for eight horses to ride abreast along its top.

We are comfortable travelling in silence, but sometimes Rafiq tells us a story. It could be the tale of Rajasthan’s bandit-queen-turned-politician Poolan Devi, or Rafiq’s own romance – how he fell in love with the photo of a beautiful young woman not knowing she was deaf and mute; how it took four years to convince both families the marriage could work. Sometimes Rafiq sings along with a CD. He wanted to be a singer, but when his father died young, fate made Rafiq a driver, though a driver with ambition. After a decade at the wheel for many of India’s big tourism companies, he now has his own business, “for my sons.”

It is our last night. Jaisalmer, less than 100 km from the Pakistan border, is the end of the road. Jill and I fly to Delhi tomorrow. A sunset camel ride at the nearby Sam sand dunes was touristy but offered a glimpse of Sahara-like desert. Now it is evening. The Ambassador’s headlights pick up scrubby thorn trees, goats and herdsmen blurring past. Rafiq tips back his head and begins to sing the Bollywood love song we’ve adopted as our driving theme song: Dil kah raha hai tus se yu rishta jod loo . . .  My heart tells me that I make a relationship with you  . . . the real India.

> Northern India in Style: From the deserts of Rajasthan to the foothills of the Himalayas, including Delhi, Jaipur and Agra, with stays at former palaces and modern classics such as the Glass House on the Ganges. 12 guests per tour, November and December. From $2,715 plus local payment.
www.bcaa.com/indiainstyle

the wheelman
To hire a driver and car through Rafique Sheikh: rajasthandriver.com

Tips for hiring a car long-distance
• Hire one driver and an air-conditioned car for entire stay, even if planning on “down days” to explore on foot or lounge poolside at the hotel. Get driver’s cellphone number prior to arrival.
• Get rate in writing. Average for two passengers: $75/day including car, mileage, gas, tolls, driver’s food and separate lodging (driver arranges); suggested tip: $3 to $5 per day, per passenger. Check references: i.e., is the driver safety-conscious, familiar with the area, able to speak English well enough to add cultural insights?
• Expect to pay a deposit (Western Union is best). Drivers have a limited tourist season; without a deposit, they risk being “stiffed” by clients who book and then are tricked into hiring someone else on arrival. Note: Drivers are not designated guides; certified guides can be hired at each tourist site, or see guidebooks for recommendations.
• Drivers can suggest hotels, but it’s best to explore options before arriving in India or ask other travellers along the way.
• Note: many hotels don’t permit drivers to join guests for a meal or drink; respect this to avoid embarrassing driver. Independent restaurants welcome all.

Z-spots
• Varanasi: Palace on River/Rashmi Guest House +91 542 2402778
• Rajasthan: Narlai: Rawla Narlai; Jaipur: Umaid Bhawan Guest House; Pushkar: Raj Resorts (Tip: don’t confuse with other tented resorts with similar names); Jaisalmer: Hotel Killa Bhawan; Delhi: Ahuja Residency (Tip: Ahuja has two locations; request “Golf Links” in embassy area)

Pocket essentials
• Dukoral — travellers’ diarrhea oral vaccine, available with doctor’s prescription (take prior to departure)
• Wet Ones in flat packet; invaluable for wiping hands, dusty shoes and train surfaces
• Flat, universal sink plug and clothesline
• Earplugs (for festivals and sleeping) and black eye-mask (for sleeping on trains)
• Easily removed shoes (frequent temple visits)
• Four-digit PIN number for ATM and credit card transactions (only HSBC recognizes six-digit PINs)
• Lonely Planet’s Rajasthan, Delhi & Agra

Lead image courtesy Kerry McPhedran.

by Tyee Bridge

In his 2004 travel memoir The Last Heathen, Charles Montgomery followed the trail of his great-grandfather, a 19th-century Anglican missionary, to the Melanesian Islands of the South Pacific. (Praised by critics at the New York Times and the Globe & Mail, among many other publications, the book won the 2005 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction.) Five years later, in talking about his current projects, Montgomery recounts one of the book’s early scenes: “There was this village of grass huts at the base of a volcano on the island of Tanna, where I arrived at sunset, alone, not knowing anybody. Some young men saw me and led me to a clearing in the woods, their sacred kava drinking grounds, and greeted me by letting me take part in their kava ritual.”

The generosity of the locals on Tanna Island led to Montgomery's latest project: a 2010 Olympic Games program benefitting both travellers to Vancouver and the city's homeless population.

After he was pleasantly drunk – the root of a local pepper plant, kava has relaxant and anaesthetic properties – the villagers then escorted him, head spinning, to a hut for a plate of steaming root vegetables and a warm bed. It was a pivotal moment. “I was amazed and impressed that these people would be so generous to a stranger,” says Montgomery. And though The Last Heathen includes far more bizarre experiences, it’s that generosity and hospitality that are most on his mind these days. In fact, the villagers’ open-heartedness is what has led Montgomery to his most recent initiatives: a book in progress, tentatively titled Happy City, and a 2010 Olympic Games program benefiting both travellers to Vancouver and the city’s homeless population.

Montgomery grew up in Vancouver Island’s North Cowichan, on a hobby farm with chickens, turkeys and a few cows.  “Looking back, I suppose that was my introduction to the culture of exchange. The rule was, when you come to the farm, you work. But that wasn’t a bad thing. My relatives loved it. They’d fix fences, clear Scotch broom from the fields and till the garden in spring.”

After journalism school and an internship at B.C.’s regional Lillooet Bridge River News, Montgomery then followed a long line of Canadian journalists to a Hong Kong expatriate community where he reported on stories in Southeast Asia from 1996 to 1998. Travelling abroad led to inevitable comparisons with his own culture, and by the time he was writing The Last Heathen four years later, a clear question had emerged. “When I came back to Vancouver I wanted to know, what makes people around the world so generous and trusting, and what stops many of us in North America from being that way?”

“We want folks across Canada to know

they’ve got a place to stay for the Games, and

that just by coming and having a great time,

they’ll be helping Vancouver deal with homelessness.”

–Charles Montgomery

In 2006, Montgomery discovered a group of UBC economists and psychologists, led by professor emeritus of economics John Helliwell, who were studying the nature of happiness and the economics of trust. “The single most powerful correlate of human happiness, they said, is the quality and number of trusting relationships we have with others. So the best way to be happy is to be generous – not just with money, but by giving of yourself, by being open to other people.”

That premise is the core of Happy City, which is set in Colombia, Paris and Mexico City. In Montgomery’s words, the book “explores the intersection of the design of cities and the design of our minds . . . and how cities can make or break happiness.” His encounter with Helliwell also led Montgomery to launch Home for the Games, a project that opens Vancouver homes to Olympic visitors while raising money to combat homelessness in the city.

“At the time I was asking these questions, everyone in Vancouver was talking about the Olympics. So I asked Helliwell, ‘Will the Olympics make Vancouver happy?’ He said the most powerful effect the Games could have on happiness is if they fostered a culture of engagement and generosity. That got me thinking.”

Later, at his kitchen table, Montgomery and a few friends took two related problems – Vancouver’s growing homeless population and the lack of hotel rooms for thousands of 2010 Olympic visitors – and cracked them together like a pair of walnuts. The resulting project, Home for the Games, will enable residents to share their homes in return for modest compensation, with more than half the proceeds donated to two local charities focused on homelessness (Covenant House and Streetohome Foundation). The payoff? Not just money saved and donated, but the chance for visitors and hosts to celebrate together – and get happy.

Get Mobilized for the Games – and Homelessness

Launched in August 2009, the Home for the Games website lists everything needed to register (free for homeowners and visitors) and get connected — whether you’re a Vancouver home-owner or an Olympic visitor.

For more information see: “Lodge in the Heart.”

Lead image courtesy Charles Montgomery

As Geert Mak, one of the Netherlands’ most prominent journalists, says: “The monumentality of Amsterdam exists only in the heads of its inhabitants, not on the streets.” But Mak means no Dutch put-down. He’s talking about the unshakeable inner security Amsterdammers possess, which means they have no need of grand palaces or broad avenues as displays of urban pride. The result: a city that remains a collection of folksy villages where travellers can still find themselves on the cutting edge of global trends.

courtesy Helena Zukowski

Insiders say Amsterdam’s contradictory nature springs from cultural compromise: people have to work together to stop the sea from inundating their land. The byproduct of all this “togetherness” is what the Dutch call gezelligheid – an inner confidence that keeps them open to whatever new style blows northwards. Like cultural magpies, Amsterdammers can always sense the hottest new fashion trend and who will be the next major musical talent. Not surprisingly, perhaps, theirs is a city with more museums per capita than anywhere else in Europe (prodigious in their collections and wacky in their themes) but also a place where one can while away the day in a traditional Delft-tiled “brown café” (so named for their smoke-stained walls and dark furniture), sunbathe in the buff on a canal, wave to a “working girl” in the red-light district or steam in a mixed-gender sauna.

As for great neighbourhoods that best personify the city’s eclectic character: the Nine Streets is a narrow collection of stylish bohemian boutiques, cafés and galleries linking Amsterdam’s western ring of canals; De Pijp, just south of the museum district, is a stew of subcultures, with Turkish, Moroccan and Indonesian restaurants and shops cheek-by-jowl with brown cafés; and the abandoned and decaying 19th-century city gasworks (Westergasfabriek) was recently transformed into Amsterdam’s most dynamic cultural district.

insider’s guide

courtesy Helena Zukowski

The Go Spots

• Amsterdam’s revitalized Eastern Docklands area, dating back to the city’s 17th-century Golden Age, is a progressive bit of urban planning that mixes living space, restaurants, businesses, galleries, restaurants and clubs. For theatre and live music: Panama, a trendy café/resto/nightclub. 311-8686
• Lovers of Delft porcelain will find hand-painted replicas at the Galleria d’Arte Rinascimento. 622-7509
• The newest addition to the city’s Jewish heritage: the children’s museum (opened December 2006) in the Jewish Historical Museum. 531-0310
• Like-a-Local sets visitors up with local hosts. Cruise the canals via private barge or dine with Amsterdammers in their homes. 670-2483

Trendy Vittles
• De Silveren Spiegel Traditional Dutch cuisine (try the lamb trilogy) in a crooked 400-year-old house. 624-6589
• Café-Restaurant Dauphine This transformed Renault garage, now a chic brasserie, features seafood platters, soft-shell crab and crème brûlée. 462-1646
• In a Frankendael Park greenhouse, the roomy De Kas serves fresh, organic herbs and veggies from its own garden. 462-4562
• Pancakes Restaurant — for a taste of the Dutch national staple, served with every filling imaginable, even sushi. Berenstraat 38.

Best Crash Zones
• The Lloyd Hotel in the new Eastern Docklands advertises equal service to all, but rooms range from one- to five-star. From 95 euros. 561-3636;
• The legendary madame Xaviera Hollander has turned her talents to Xaviera’s B&B. 110 euros, including breakfast for two. 673- 3934;
• Two-night city stays for Cdn.$405 (includes four-star hotel, airport transfers, sightseeing tour). bcaa.com/citystay

Lead image courtesy Helena Zukowski.

by  Masa Takei

courtesy Kreg Alde

This must be where the Model T took a tumble. Slopes drop precipitously from either side of the metre-wide ridge beneath my boots. Up ahead, a game trail snakes through a field of chest-high devil’s club and between Jack pine an arm’s-span apart. We’re 56 kilometres into a 63-km hike through the northern Rockies, and two of the guides, Josef Villiger and son René, have stopped to screw in a marker a couple of hundred metres back. I dump my 25-kilo pack and wipe a trickle of sweat with a mud-splashed sleeve. Photographer Taylor Kennedy inspects a trail blaze: a hand-size strip of bark hewn from a Douglas fir, the puckered edges around white flesh long healed. Our third guide, Toni Schuler, of Switzerland, points to a matching blaze on the tree’s opposite side.

It is the sixth day of this week-long trek. By the same time tomorrow the five of us will have reached Hobi’s, a trapper’s cabin on the Herrick River and the end of our journey. We’ve traversed boreal forests, waded rivers, climbed high into sub-alpine meadows then up alpine peaks, and are now alternately slogging through lowland bogs and scrambling across prickly, densely vegetated slopes. Since the expedition started, we’ve met not one other human soul; the only tracks we’ve found have been those of moose, elk, bear and the odd wolf.

But time and again, we’ve all uttered the words, “How the heck did they get the car through here?” For despite the distracting beauty that surrounds us, hovering at the periphery of our consciousness are the hardy men and women who first forged a road through this punishing terrain. Seventy years before us, in the depths of the Great Depression, they came: pushing, pulling, sometimes even carrying, a 1927 Model-T Ford.

The most northerly agricultural tract in Canada, B.C.’s Peace River Country is a 365,000-square-km swath that straddles the B.C.-Alberta border, from Grande Cache in the south to the Yukon and Northwest Territories in the north. Roughly the size of Germany, it has less than half a per cent of that country’s population. The problem with developing the Peace Country through the early 1900s was not a shortage of farmers and ranchers, however, but the exorbitant cost of transporting goods to Vancouver ports. So with the federal government slow to make good on promises of a railway, the pioneers of the Peace took matters into their own hands.

courtesy Kreg Alde

At the fore of this movement: 67-year-old Alex Monkman, a Metis raised in Manitoba and lured west by the gold rush of 1898 who eventually settled here to farm, hunt, trap and trade furs. In fact, it was during a trapping expedition in 1922 that he came across what was thought to be the lowest pass through the Rockies north of Missoula, Montana – a pass First Nations had been using for at least 300 years. Though it would be 1936 before he and a partner launched the Monkman Pass Highway Association and a three-year campaign to cut a 211-km trail from Rio Grande, Alberta, to the railway station at Hansard, B.C. For if no railway was forthcoming, Monkman reasoned, then why not a highway? “If we could cut our way in, we could cut our way out,” he proclaimed. Show that a shortcut through the Rockies was possible, and the government would surely be obliged to build a road. And to egg on the Ottawa bureaucrats: dedicated crews of farmers, ranchers and townsfolk would drag a “Pathfinder” Model T over the mountains, then drive it down the main street in Prince George with a symbolic bag of grain to demonstrate the viability and importance of a highway to farmers in the Peace.

It was a venture that, ultimately, would prove unsuccessful. World War II broke out, men were needed elsewhere, and Monkman’s vision faded into obscurity. But then four years ago, 30-year-old environmental management consultant Kreg Alde embarked on his own wilderness odyssey with a cadre of modern-day volunteer Peace Country pioneers, some of whom took weeks away from work and families to reclaim Monkman’s trail from years of overgrowth. The soft-spoken father of two simply felt, pioneer-style, “that someone should and so why not me?” After all, three generations of Aldes had already left blood, sweat and tears on this land. Kreg’s father, Wayne, an avid outdoorsman, had traced Monkman’s trail in 1977 and hiked it again with Kreg in 2000. The following year, Kreg’s grandfather died in a plane crash on nearby Ice Mountain while flying in to pick up Wayne from a hike through the next pass over. Yet this time, the goal behind the trail would not be a causeway for commerce, but a call to adventure and the chance to build something lasting that would benefit generations to come. At the same time, it would preserve the spirit of those who first cherished such a vision. And three years and 1,900 volunteer hours later, on July 17, 2008, Kreg Alde stood with tears in his eyes at the trail’s grand opening.

But would the people come? A trail unused is one quickly reclaimed by nature. So Alde embarked on yet another campaign of inspiration. Instead of a Model T, three Swiss guides from northern Alberta would convey a photographer and a journalist over the Monkman Trail – in hopes we would compare it favourably to such venerable classics as the Chilkoot and West Coast trails. It was an easy sell. As one, already smitten,  journalist wrote in 1937 of the area’s highlights: Kinuseo Falls is “50 feet higher than Niagara . . . one of the marvels of the Canadian Rockies”;  Monkman Lake is “so similar to Lake Louise . . . that it needs only the poppies and the chateau to be its twin….Yet how many have known these gifts of God, let alone seen them?” Sign me up, Alde, we all emailed back. And so it was, on a warm morning in late summer we found ourselves rumbling out of Tumbler Ridge in Alde’s one-tonne pickup for the drive to the start of the Monkman Pass Memorial Trail. Just a half-hour later, I was standing with Kennedy, gaping at Kinuseo Falls where it plunged past vast swirls of limestone into a pool rimmed with logs polished as smooth and round as baby carrots. How is it we’d never heard of this place?

Day two brought the Cascades: 10 waterfalls suspended above a three-kilometre-long section of Monkman Creek, four of them bearing the names of the original trailblazers: Brooks, Moore, Monkman and McGinnis. At Monkman Lake, we hovered over Schuler’s shoulder as he painted a perfect watercolour of the icefield-cloaked mountains reflected in the vast, clear lake, the plaintive call of a loon echoing through the gathering dusk. On the third day, after a long climb up to the Tarns to meadows filled with wildflowers (purple monk’s hoods, yellow arnicas, red columbines) and a 2,275-metre scramble up Paxton Peak for views of mountains beyond more mountains, including the pyramid of Mt. Robson, we camped by Hugh Lake (named after Alde’s grandfather) on the Continental Divide. By day four,  we’d descended from alpine nirvana to where the vegetation again thickened, the trail became rougher and we squelched deep into muck that threatened to spill over our boot tops. “You’ve got to know Wayne and Kreg. They just walk through everything. Brush, water, anything,” Schuler offered by way of explanation as we ploughed a direct line through bog until dusk.

Two days later, our feet have succumbed to blisters, our packs cling to our backs like morbidly obese monkeys and our knees groan loud complaints. In a perverse way we’re having great fun, particularly when reminded of those who bore a significantly heavier load up these slopes.

courtesy Kreg Alde

Peering down at where the Model T tumbled all those years ago, I try to imagine the men’s exhaustion and panic that day. “We had nearly reached the top when, on one of the shifts, the car jumped its restraining blocks and went careening down the hill. [Then] – just as it was broadside – [it] landed in a clump of tag alder. Its weight and speed caused the trees to bend and, for a moment, we thought the car had stopped. Then, like a springboard, the trees recoiled and flipped the car up and over. It rolled sideways to the bottom.” The steering wheel, spoked wheels and windshield were smashed. No wonder the Model T was little more than a battered skeleton by trail’s end.

Taking swigs of water, the five of us again plunge onward and downward – until breaking out of the brush we come to the Fontoniko River where it meets the drainage from Ice Mountain, the last river crossing of the day. Flapjack, our second-to-last camp, is just 20 metres away across the river, and boots, socks, shirts, pants – all come off. This is the perfect opportunity to get in a cold wash while there’s still daylight to dry us. Once across, we find a steel fire ring and dry firewood (as with the other camps Kreg has established en route), where Josef and René wrestle with the heli-dropped 170-litre bear-proof barrel containing our extra camp equipment and food stash. The rest of us slash ferns, level brush for the tents and build a fire. And as the tents go up, so does a perimeter of twin strands of cord strung between graphite rods – an electric bear fence, developed in Alaska, to keep curious grizzlies out while we sleep. The bear spray, bear bangers, air horn and, our defence of last resort, a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun, will be kept inside our tents for the night. Meanwhile, Josef, 59, climbs eight metres up a dense fir, sawing away branches with one hand as he goes and winding a length of recycled airplane control wire with a pulley around the trunk. He does the same in a neighbouring tree to create our bear-safe food cache.

The fragrance of wood smoke is soon mingled with more savoury aromas. Tonight: a hearty stew with buns baked by Josef’s wife. A cast-iron pan over the flames makes for perfect bannock, eaten with butter and jam. And judging from Monkman’s journal accounts, what we’re eating is of far superior quality to what the original trail builders could expect after weeks of being “wet to the neck every night”: bannock “so hard [the men] heaved [it] into the bushes”; going without meat for 10 days before killing a grizzly for a stew with dried beans –

“slim and poor fare for hard-working men

doing heavy clearing.”

What hasn’t changed, though, is the region’s abundance of berries – huckleberries, raspberries, Saskatoons, blueberries. Each day we have scooped these up on the fly, barely slowing our pace. And the next morning Schuler again returns after a quick foray with a mug full of blueberries, for flapjacks browned in a skillet over the open fire. We’ll need the energy. In this section of the trail, the vegetation has grown primordial: skunk cabbage fronds the size of welcome mats and devil’s club of such proportions the plants are spiny caricatures of themselves. Thorns find their way through pants and into hands. Schuler swings his Shweizer Gertel, a cross between a machete and a scythe, to clear a way through the overgrowth. The trail becomes less defined until it’s just a suggestion. “Yoy, yoy, yoy,” intones Josef in his Swiss, singsong lilt, “Flapjack to here, needs a crew for a month.” Then we’re fanning out, searching for the next strip of pink flagging that marks the trail.

A couple of kilometres on is the hike’s final river crossing: a 50-metre-span with a strong current. Alde had been marooned here three times by high water in what’s now dubbed “Misery Creek.” Today though, a two-person cable car ensures safe passage. The aluminum-and-wood car runs along a thick cable – an elegant design constructed by Josef, likely vetted by civil-engineer René, then tested over a creek on Schuler’s cattle ranch. The tools we’ve humped in are needed to give it a few more tweaks.

Overhead, an ominous sky threatens. Josef immediately sets about hammering 30-centimetre spikes into the base of the cable car’s timber platforms. Thunder growls in the distance. Josef hammers more frantically. All of us then assemble at the cable moorings and, under Josef’s direction, attach the cable wrench to take up a few centimetres of slack. As the rumbling comes perceptibly closer, we scramble to get ourselves, and our packs, across the river.

No sooner are we on the other side, underneath a tarp nailed to the opposite platform, than a deep, rolling boom descends, punctuated with cymbal crashes, followed by a flashbulb-pop of lightning. A rain, of downright biblical proportions, hammers down. We huddle and eat a lunch of German sausage and home-baked buns.

We tramp the last couple of kilometres in a downpour, soaked but jubilant – our hike out a far cry from the “hell” the original trail builders experienced – “working with that car for the last eight miles in nearly two feet of snow with unfrozen bog holes beneath.” Instead, we are soon sitting under tarps with a bottle of Louis Latour 2005 Chardonnay, a souvenir from the last barrel-cache, with plenty of time to relax and explore before the riverboat ride out in the morning. Monkman, on the other hand, arrived here a day too late for his crew’s prescheduled pickup. The boat left with a load of sick men, then was stopped by slush ice on its return trip to ferry out the Model T. After struggling 200 km through the bush over three years, the crew were forced to quit just 85 km short of getting the Pathfinder to Hansard and still needed to get themselves and their horses out over the remaining rough terrain. The Model T was left to rust at Hobi’s until its rescue many years later, when it was restored for the Pioneer Museum in Grande Prairie, Alberta. Finally, in 1960, the wilderness encompassing much of the trail was proclaimed a provincial park – a designation that ensures no cars will ever be driven through, or again tumble down, the pass. Still, though Monkman’s dream of a shortcut to the coast may have died in its tracks, Kreg Alde and his modern-day adventures have preserved its vision.

• ECO FOOTPRINT Low impact. (Note: the ecologically sensitive alpine meadows of the Tarns region are reachable only on foot; helicopter tours are prohibited.)
• GUIDED BY NATURE Kreg Alde and his knowledgeable guides take care of logistics. monkmanexpeditions.com
• GEAR Expedition pack; sandals for river crossings; well-fitting/broken-in hiking boots.
• ADDITIONAL INTEL Tumbler Ridge is well known for its dinosaur “footprints” and skeletal remains.
• GETTING INVOLVED The Wolverine Nordic & Mountain Society managed trail construction; funds are always appreciated at pris.bc.ca/wnms. As for the Peace Country, it has largely succumbed to development, save for the wilderness oasis that is Monkman Provincial Park. But a far larger area still threatened by resource extraction, the Muskwa-Kechika Management Area, lies directly northeast.
• CRITICAL READING People of the Pass, by Madelon Flint Truax and Beth Flint Sheehan – a comprehensive account of Monkman’s highway efforts. (Beaverlodge & District Historical Association, 1988). Exploring Tumbler Ridge, Charles Helm (Tumbler Ridge News, 2008).

by Jim Sutherland

The wind is howling and there’s a chill in the air. What a great day for golf. The course is splattered with what appear to be blown-out sand dunes and there are hardly any ponds. Fantastic!  A forest fire raged through the area a few years back so there aren’t a lot of trees. Beautiful! We are carrying our clubs and there’s not a golf cart to be seen. Bravo! The putting surfaces are a greyish green and so firm a perfectly struck six-iron bounces off the back into some sort of hay. God, could it get any better?

Just another day in golf nirvana – a.k.a. Tetherow, in Bend, Oregon, some 300 kilometres southeast of Portland. The course with the odd name opened just last July. But despite the aforementioned description of play here, devotees of the game nodded knowingly when Travel & Leisure Golf subsequently named it the fifth best course to open worldwide in 2008. Along with a trio of courses on the Oregon coast at Bandon, a track called Chambers Bay in Tacoma, Washington, and another called Sagebrush Golf and Sporting Club, near Merritt, B.C., Tetherow is a premier example of minimalist golf design – the hottest thing to hit the game since Sansabelt slacks.

__________________________

The game’s hottest new courses are

making all the Play Before You Die

lists – and for all the right reasons.”

__________________________

Western Canada certainly doesn’t need to apologize for its golf courses. Still, we have never been at, or even near, the game’s epicentre – until now. This is our moment, a time when it is possible to drive, not fly, to the game’s hottest new courses: beautiful, challenging, inspiring tracks that are making all the Top 100, Best New and Play Before You Die lists, and for all the right reasons.

They’re more fun to play and easier on the environment. And from Bend, the intrepid golfer need merely head west a few hours to the Oregon coast, back through the Seattle area, then up the Coquihalla to plead his or her case (probably a futile effort, but still) at annual-members-only Sagebrush.

courtesy Kings Links by the Sea

The Scottish links-inspired minimalist trend is only a decade or so old, but for the most part its application has been conveniently concentrated in the western states of the U.S. Generally the courses share an unmanicured look and feel, with creased and crinkly surfaces that lead to unexpected bounces and rolls. Often the fairways – and even the greens – are seeded to fescues rather than the common blue and bent grasses, so they require less water and fertilization, feel more natural and play much more firmly. Women and high handicappers like the way their balls go farther and the fact that hazards are all but nonexistent (except for the dreaded bunkers); better players are challenged by strategic considerations and unexpected bounces. And everyone soon appreciates the illusion of walking through meadows instead of chugging about a suburban park (carts are usually banned or discouraged). Avid golfers will have noticed elements of the new minimalism showing up on many courses built in the past 10 years or so, but the 18s on this tour are the models, the ideals, the visions of perfection that designers of more mainstream efforts would create if only developers would let them.

_________________________

Among their many benefits,

minimalist golf courses help protect

wildlife habitats, improve water

quality of nearby waterways and

rehabilitate degraded landscapes.

_________________________

Here in Oregon, for instance, it’s not a coincidence that Tetherow and the Bandon courses are only a few hours apart. David McLay Kidd, the young Scottish designer responsible for turning Bandon Dunes into the most influential course of the late 20th century, recently relocated his design firm to Bend to work on Tetherow and other minimalist courses worldwide (including one, now years in development, near Fernie). Kidd is the son of legendary Scottish greens- keeper Jimmy Kidd and was tapped to design the new links that just opened at, of all places, St. Andrews, so there’s no disputing that the Old Country style has hugely influenced his approach.

Tetherow is one of about two dozen golf courses in the Bend area of central Oregon, a recreational Shangri-La already noted for fishing, hiking, caving and mountaineering – not to mention its five microbreweries. Today, though, the hot pursuit is definitely golf.

I’m out with club pro Martin Chuck, a Toronto native who once played professionally on the Canadian Tour and who can’t believe his luck at having landed in such a place.

Testing the back tees at 7,400 yards, though, he’s having a hard time keeping his drives from drawing too far left while, from the 6,600-yard middle tees (there are five sets), I’m hitting the driver nice and straight. But on approach shots, the pro takes over: striking low, piercing irons that tumble down in front of the green and roll on – even as the lazy moon shots that serve me well on the more receptive greens back home bounce wildly astray or catch gusts of wind, landing my ball in scary bunkers and gnarly rough. If there’s any consolation here, it’s that I get to closely study these annoyances, which at first glance seem to be naturally occurring but obviously cannot be given their diabolical placement. In fact, while minimalist designers pride themselves on moving very little dirt and disdaining such showy features as island greens and artificial waterfalls (and often eschewing water hazards completely), they compensate with rough-edged hazards so aesthetically appealing they seem to follow from the Japanese concept of wabi sabi, or finding beauty in imperfection. If only I’d journeyed here as a photo stylist rather than as a would-be golfer.

The eye tends to focus on such details at Tetherow because the course, though rolling, provides few outward vistas and the surrounding forest is mostly a sparse remnant. That’s certainly not the case at Bandon, where two of the three courses front directly onto the wild, blue Pacific and almost every hole is a postcard waiting to happen. Here, designers Kidd, Tom Doak (Pacific Dunes) and Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw (Bandon Trails) seem to have had an easier time of it, simply letting the holes unfurl across a pastoral landscape that already featured open meadow, stands of picturesque trees and even clumps of gorse, a thorny Scottish staple imported to the area by an early farmer, much to the chagrin of his descendants.

The spot was chosen for a golf course after years of searching by Chicagoan Mike Keiser, who made a fortune back in the ’70s with a line of humorous greeting cards printed on recycled paper. Having played in the British Isles, Keiser had come to believe that great golf courses are largely a function of great sites, a complete reversal of the modern North American view that excellence can be achieved anywhere if one moves enough dirt, pools enough water and landscapes with sufficient vim. Keiser finally found his spot in Bandon, leaving critics to scoff that, sure, Bandon Dunes was a charming track, but no one would journey to an isolated, down-at-the-heels fishing village just to play it. Wrong. From year one it has been a huge hit, and now, joined by two other courses and with a fourth on the way, the Bandon Dunes complex is considered by most authorities the top golf destination in the U.S. – besting such established capitals as Palm Springs, Myrtle Beach and even the Monterey Peninsula and its astronomically priced Pebble Beach.

Playing Bandon with my wife, I can understand why. The firm turf adds a good 20 yards to her drives, and the big fescue greens (so firm golfers are allowed to pull their carts across them) favour the lower-trajectory game that many women and higher handicappers tend to play. Meanwhile, there is a surprise around every corner, whether it’s a stunning view of the ocean or a pot bunker that –  darn it all – we hadn’t figured on. Outside of Scotland, there isn’t a spot in the world with three courses that delivers comparable quantities of pure delight.

________________________________

“Chambers Bay has a similarly raw, Scottish feel,

and takes just as much advantage of its location.”

________________________________

Chambers Bay, courtesy Aidan Bradley

Up in Tacoma, a few minutes from Arthur Erickson’s Museum of Glass, Chambers Bay both does and very much does not follow the same playbook. It has a similarly raw, Scottish feel, and takes just as much advantage of its location, on the shores of Puget Sound. On the other hand, it’s a muni, owned and operated by Pierce County, which must be feeling pretty proud of its achievement – given that Chambers Bay was named America’s best new course in 2007 and has since been chosen to host both the U.S. Amateur (2010) and Open (2015). Designer Robert Trent Jones II didn’t exactly start with a made-for-golf site, either. In fact, the course is layered on top of an old gravel quarry, so the hyper-natural aura is, in fact, completely artificial. (There’s an additional irony to this in that Jones’s father, Robert Trent Jones, is often cited by the new minimalists as one of the chief villains behind North America’s post-World War II stock of crafted-from-nothing suburban-style courses.)

_______________________________

“Crazy bounces and funhouse greens

make playing Sagebrush a hoot. . . . Please,

let this be a model for future courses.”

_______________________________

courtesy Aidan Bradley

But even if Chambers Bay’s minimalism was created only by moving a lot of dirt at enormous expense (more than $20 million in construction costs), that fact doesn’t detract from the experience. Crazy bounces and funhouse greens make playing it a hoot. And while there is no water on the course and precisely one tree, the designers saw fit to leave behind concrete ruins from the old quarry site, which contribute to an ambience that is anything but country club. Please, let this be a model for future courses built by the prolific Jones family.

Finally this epic roadtrip returns to Canada –  though not to one of B.C.’s hot golf destinations but to Merritt, a place where only the summertime temperatures can be so described. Not that the site of ex-PGA Tour player Richard Zokol’s brand-new Sagebrush is anything less than exquisite: it occupies a bench adjacent to the tiny village of Quilchena, overlooking beautiful Nicola Lake. But before whetting appetites any further, a sad disclaimer: not only is Sagebrush private, with only a few dozen annual-fee members, but the road runs below the property so you can’t even ogle it. Indeed, you’re probably wise to skip the futile roadtrip and trust me when I say it will be every bit as influential on our side of the border as Bandon Dunes has been in the U.S.

Sagebrush came about when, back in the early 1990s, Zokol fell under the spell of fellow Tour player Ben Crenshaw, whose Sand Dunes in Nebraska is generally considered the first of the minimalist tracks. With his playing career winding down, the White Rock-based golfer decided he wanted to build a course along similar lines, and, fatefully, Crenshaw suggested he get in touch with Ponoka, Alberta-based Rod Whitman, who may be the best golf course designer no one has ever heard of.

Whitman is unusual in the golf design world: he doesn’t work from plans in a faraway office but rather moves right onto the construction site, personally driving the mini-dozer used to shape the fairways and greens. As a result, he isn’t exactly prolific – but the few courses with his name attached sure are good ones. His collaboration with Zokol is the first to religiously follow the minimalist creed, with big, firm greens, lots of rough-edged bunkers and fescue fairways that meld gracefully with the natural sagebrush-dominated vegetation. Trees are few in the near-desert environment, and a well-sheltered trout pond comes into play on only one hole.

As with Tetherow, Bandon and Chambers Bay, Sagebrush’s true strength is the fun quotient it delivers for golfers of all abilities. But the difference is that here, the fun is being had by – wait for it – maybe 20 or 30 golfers per day. Zokol likes to use the term “perfect moments” to describe the effect he has tried to create for those lucky bastards, and I’m sure they’re having a lot of them, whether the wind is howling or not.

6 More Rugged Good Links

It’s an annoying irony that the first wave of minimalist courses have been expensive to build (those ideal sites; that insane attention to detail) and are in high demand, a combination that renders them expensive to play or, worse, inaccessible to all but private members. Fortunately, there are others that, if not quite the full minimal, give a taste of what the style is like:

1. Shuksan, Bellingham, Washington, U.S.A.
Traditionalist designers are wary of overly hilly terrain because too much earth-moving is required and severe elevation changes make walking difficult. But perhaps because he had the links style in mind and a limited budget to work with, designer Rick Dvorak turned out a modest proto-minimalist marvel with this up-and-down Bellingham-area track from the early 1990s.

2. King’s Links, Ladner, B.C.
Although it lacks the fine detail of the full-blown minimalist courses, King’s Links (pictured), just outside Vancouver, is certainly a spiritual brethren. Original owner Bob Ahoy designed and built it on a shoestring with Scottish courses in mind. Though there’s a little too much artificial water about, the greens are crinkled, the turf is firm, trees are virtually absent and the sea winds blow hard, making it a more elemental experience than most North American-style courses.

3. Wolf Creek and Blackhawk, Edmonton area, Alberta
Rod Whitman, Richard Zokol’s design partner at Sagebrush, is developing a global cult following for his naturalistic approach and incredible skills as a green and fairway shaper — evident at two courses near his home base: Wolf Creek, near Ponoka, and Blackhawk, near Edmonton.

courtesy Dakota Dunes

4. Dakota Dunes, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

Were the surfaces a little firmer and the edges a little rougher, Graham Cooke’s landmark Dakota Dunes near Saskatoon would almost qualify as minimalist. The dunes-land course is a delight to play, in any case.

5. Arthur Vernon Macan courses, Vancouver, Chilliwack, Nanaimo, the Okanagan, B.C.
The interwar period is known as golf’s Golden Age of course design, and eastern designers such as Donald Ross and Stanley Thompson are legendary. Victoria-based Arthur Vernon Macan, however, never achieved his contemporaries’ profile. But he should have. Fortunately, many of his best courses can still be played, including Kelowna Golf and Country Club, Chilliwack Golf and Country Club, Nanaimo Golf Club and Vancouver’s University (plus Stanley Park’s delightful pitch-and-putt).

6. Stanley Thompson & Donald Ross courses
Banff, Jasper, Waterton, Waskesiu, West Vancouver, Winnipeg
Speaking of the golden age, there are also a few Thompson and Ross courses sprinkled around. Thompson was responsible for national park courses at Alberta’s Banff, Jasper, Waterton and Saskatchewan’s Waskesiu, as well as Falcon Lake in Manitoba and B.C.’s private Capilano. The only western Canadian examples from Ross, the Scottish-American legend responsible for Pinehurst No. 2, Oakland Hills and 600 others, are in Winnipeg, but Pine Ridge Golf Club, Elmhurst Golf and Country Club and St. Charles Golf Club are all private. Incidentally, the latter sports nine holes by Alister MacKenzie of Cypress Point and Augusta National fame.

• ADDITIONAL INTEL The best way to promote more sustainable golf? Reassure operators that you don’t mind clover (or even, gasp, weeds) mixed in with the grass, and you prefer your fairways firm and fast — and thus not overwatered.

• CRITICAL READING The best introduction to golf’s new (and very old) wave is online. Golfclubatlas.com features some 1,500 contributors detailing the intricacies of their favourite courses.  —J.S.

Lead image courtesy Dakota Dunes

by Brady Clarke

I turn on the boat’s VHF radio and tune in to the latest marine forecast. Last night the buoys were showing a significant, long-period swell, with the winds predicted to blow offshore at our “secret” reef break up the B.C. coast. But things change fast out on the Pacific northwest of Tofino, with big tides, unpredictable wind shifts and quick swell changes. The first few hours beyond the sandbars, kelp beds and rocks littering the inner waters of Clayoquot Sound are in sheltered seas, but the last third of our trek is an exposed, open-ocean sprint up an isolated stretch of coastline. Fortunately the forecast still looks good.

courtesy Kerry Banks

We weave around the commercial crab traps spread over every sandbar in the sound, before slipping between a barely submerged rock on the portside and two feet of water over a sandbar on the starboard. There’s just enough room to squeeze through, but I have to trust the landmarks to navigate rather than the GPS that can be up to three metres off. Even after hundreds of passes through this shortcut, I still hold my breath at the crucial moment.

“I wouldn’t be the first, or the last, to hit this unnamed rock that has claimed more propellers than I care to count.”

Rounding the point, we’re then met head on with gale force winds. It’s going to be a rough ride from here on. Still, we’re happy: the wind is directly offshore at the reef break we’re heading to. We cut the engine to put on the cruiser suits that serve as life preservers and element protectors, then slog into the one-metre chop with a rolling swell underneath.

The boat-in route isn’t the only option when surfing this coast, but other than being dropped off by seaplane, camping and waiting for the weather to be clear enough for a pickup, it’s the only way to access the quality surf up-island. Unlike the user-friendly beach breaks off Tofino, however, surfing these wilderness waves can have serious consequences. One mistake could be our last. The combination of isolation, wild Pacific weather and hypothermia-inducing cold make surfing here a balance between calculated risk and outright luck. There are many stories of close calls: overturned boats, engine failure, anchors dislodging and boats drifting out to sea.

courtesy Kerry Banks

The few surfers who have the knowledge, resources and cojones to surf up here are a relatively close-knit crew who, on occasion, have saved each others’ lives. Finding the gems – the high-quality surfable waves on a coast this jagged – is next to impossible without someone in the know passing along the coveted coordinates and landmarks. Those secrets are then held close, even within a community where most know one another.  A few Luckys at the pub won’t unlock the vault. And without intimate knowledge of this coast, its coveted waves elude even the most persistent searches. Even with the exact locales highlighted on the chart and flagged on the GPS, the conditions needed to produce both good surf and safe-enough boating conditions are rare.

We pound our way up the coast, rattling every bone in our bodies the whole way. Just when our kidneys have had enough, we spot big white plumes of spray blowing perfectly shaped overhead waves. There’s already another boat anchored in the channel, where we slowly cruise up to the break and set the anchor. I tie the stern line to a strong piece of bull kelp, then wait for a couple of sets with long, long lulls between, to ensure the anchor is holding. If we lose our boat out here we’re done for. While we wait, I pull on a five-mm wetsuit, boots and gloves.

Finally, there’s just the surf to contend with: serious, unhindered, powerful waves that rise abruptly from deep water and explode on shallow rock shelves. We jump over the gunwale and start paddling toward a perfect set of waves, the racing thoughts of how far we are from help inevitable.

“I calculate the time needed to get within VHF radio range, never mind the distance to the nearest hospital. Wave selection becomes critical.  Each drop is a heart-in-throat leap of faith.”

courtesy Kerry Banks

We paddle into the lineup as the two other surfers start the long paddle to their boat. The anticipation builds. A lump shows on the horizon – an approaching set. I’m too far inside, so I paddle hard for the outside. This is easily the biggest set we’ve seen. My pulse quickens, my heart drops. I’m in the worst possible place. I redouble my efforts, taking long, deep, efficient strokes in a race to the edge of the reef. If I make it before the wave I’ll be home free. If not I’ll be pinned to the rocks and will take the rest of the set on the head.

The wave touches bottom and rises, the lip feathering, pitching out toward shore, millions of tiny droplets suspended momentarily, then blown seaward by the offshore winds. I’ve lost the race. The wave trips over itself. Suddenly it’s bearing down on me with menace. I grip the rails of my board as tightly as I can, push my knee into the deck and sink it as deep as it will go, then begin a valiant but hopeless duck dive. Looking up into the guts of the wave about to obliterate me, I’m oddly mesmerized by its beauty. I take a deep breath and brace myself.

“The lip explodes right in front of my face. For a moment there is nothing but whiteness and the sensation of being struck by a freight train, followed by chaos. I’m somersaulting and cartwheeling, limbs akimbo.”

I cover my head. My shoulder slams into the reef, then my knee. Water rushes above me and I’m pinned to the rocks. I know not to fight it, there’s no point. The air in my lungs burns. Each second is an eternity. Finally the violence above me subsides. I kick off the reef toward the surface, now a frothy, boiling cauldron of whitewater.

So why take such risks? Because there is no way to describe what it’s like to sit 45 metres off a reef, miles and miles from even the remotest community, absolute wilderness in every direction – no evidence that the world has been touched by the hand of man. No tourists, no towns, no traffic, no houses, no power lines – hell, not even a fishing trawler puttering back to the shelter of Tofino, just me and my friends sharing perfect waves alone. Surfing becomes something else entirely – a life-altering adventure far removed from the Waikiki and southern California scene. Self-reliance is a necessity; knowledge, skill and experience far more valuable than getting more waves at the local beach. The thousands of hours, the years, spent bobbing in the sea, the money spent on gear, the jobs and relationships sacrificed, all seem worthwhile – even necessary – to snatch these fleeting moments out here in the wilderness, in the surf.

courtesy Kerry Banks

With a nod toward the channel, we start our own long paddle back to the boat. Near the anchorage, the kelp beds thicken, making paddling all the more difficult. The bull kelp grabs at our legs and leashes – it feels as if we’re paddling in porridge. Three hours in the water, and we’re exhausted, cold and hungry. Thankfully the anchor has held, despite the strong ebb tide. I undo my leash and gently place my board in the boat, leaving barely enough energy to haul myself back over the gunwale. We de-suit and pull on dry, warm clothes and cruiser suits. My hands are numb, even with the five-mm wetsuit gloves I’ve been wearing, but I manage to turn the key and the outboard comes to life. We breathe a small sigh of relief. The campsite and protected anchorage is still half an hour away and the seas are building and the wind is rising. If all goes well, we’ll be able to set up camp before dark. We cruise without speaking, with only the drone of the outboard and the slap of the boat as it falls into each wave’s trough to disrupt the silence. After what feels like an eternity, we pull into a sheltered bay with a rocky cobblestone beach that drops off abruptly. Cold, damp wetsuits are put back on; dry bags are packed and unloaded, and all of the camp gear paddled to shore. After a brief scouting of the campsite, we pitch tents and hang the food in a nearby spruce. We’ll probably have a few late-night visits from black bears, and we don’t want them eating our supplies. It’s also not uncommon to wake and find wolf prints around the tent. Thankfully, when we’re out here, we’re usually too exhausted to lose too much sleep over the wildlife.

We hang wetsuits over some driftwood; there’s not enough light left in the day for them to dry, but with any luck they won’t be frosty in the morning. I quickly turn on the handheld VHF radio to check the battery and listen to the marine forecast. It sounds as if tomorrow should be as good as today. I’m sure to double-check that I’ve turned it off. The radio is our only connection to safety and help should we need it.

We get a good fire going – even in this coastal rainforest environment, the driftwood burns well. We heat up the salmon caught earlier and wash it down with cold beer. The sun dips below the horizon somewhere out over the vast Pacific, and suddenly the sky turns on the night lights. There are more stars out here than I remember seeing. A couple of steps into the forest, though, and I’m surrounded by absolute darkness. This is a vast and primordial wilderness and it’s very much alive. There is more biomass here per square foot than anywhere else on earth: gigantic old-growth Sitka spruce, hemlock and western red cedars, the ground spongy, green and alive, not an inch without something growing or decomposing.

“It’s not difficult to imagine we’ve stepped back in time a couple of thousand years.”

courtesy Kerry Banks

Back by the fire, the smoke is blowing offshore – if it keeps up the waves will be perfect tomorrow.  Conversation flows easily as the night grows older. We talk the way surfers do, of travel, waves, love and adventure.  Not much is said about the day, not much is needed. These moments, as brief and as rare as they are, as difficult as they are to obtain, are what it’s all about. They’re the moments we’ll reflect on for the rest of our years.

Photographs: Kerry Banks.

by Jennifer Patterson

The boreal forest stretches out beneath us, broken only by the occasional sinkhole lake, as we leave Fort Simpson and the Mackenzie River behind. The Twin Otter floatplane lifts west, into the sun – still high in the northern sky – and over the Nahanni National Park Reserve, a 4,766-square-kilometre slice of N.W.T. wilderness near the Yukon-B.C. border and the headwaters of the South Nahanni River. Save for the roar of the engine and wind, our group travels in silence. We have waited all day for this flight; some of us have waited our entire lives to raft the South Nahanni – a Canadian Heritage River that moved Pierre Elliot Trudeau to make it a national park reserve in 1976. Two years later, the area became  the first natural region in the world to be designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We fly over the canyons and karstlands of the Ram Plateau in the Mackenzie Mountains, where every ripple of rock is lit golden in the evening sun. Shafts of sunlight burst through the clouds and we catch our first glimpse of the Nahanni, its Fourth Canyon and – with a collective gasp – Virginia Falls. In The Dangerous River, my grandfather’s 1954 account of his N.W.T. explorations, he  writes about feeling the vibration of the “Falls of the Nahanni” from 20 miles away. One week later, on August 25, 1927, Grandpop snapped the earliest photographs of the then-unnamed falls, accompanied by Minnesota prospector Albert Faille. Now a lifetime, two days and four flights later, my father, brother, sister and I touch down in the heart of the Nahanni wilderness, as our plane scuds to a stop on the wide and silty river near the campsite above Virginia Falls. My heart skips a beat. This is where my family’s love affair with Canada began.

R.M. Patterson, courtesy Albert Faille

It was my brother, Jeremy, who planted the seed of this family expedition – to mark the 80th anniversary of Grandpop’s 1927-to-1929 paddle up the South Nahanni. Soon I was calling my sister, Sam, in Victoria, and urging her to join us. Her only reservation: our easy raft float downriver wouldn’t compare to Grandpop’s adventures navigating rapids in a loaded canoe, surviving sub-zero temperatures and living off the occasional kill of wild game – epic stories he recounted in five books, numerous magazine articles and over Sunday dinners at the Victoria home he shared with our grandmother. Raymond Murray Patterson was one of Canada’s foremost adventure writers. A legendary figure in our family, he also inspired a generation of Canadian adventurers, many of whom to this day attempt to replicate his journeys into the wild. His first book received rave reviews: The New York Herald Tribune described The Dangerous River as “an emotion of the north . . . recorded, it is not too much to say, in a mixture of Thoreau and Jack London.” The New Yorker called it “truly enchanting,” while The New York Times said its modest writing “betrays no indication that Mr. Patterson realizes what a remarkable man he is.”

Day Two: Virginia Falls to Strawberry Island

Nothing beats the Canadian North for bringing diverse groups of people together – my grandfather and Faille 80 years ago and now the Patterson clan: me, the writer, my father, a retired B.C. Supreme Court master, businessman brother Jeremy and architect sister Sam. Then there’s the rest of our 15-member group: Wall Street fund managers Jen and Laura; Corin, an amateur photographer; real estate mogul James and his 14-year-old nephew Jacob; journalist Michael and wife Vivien; guides Rob, Kaj, Jamie and Bhreagh.

Awoken early the next day by the camp bustle, we are anxious to pack up the tents and follow the wooden boardwalk through Jack pines and black spruce to Virginia Falls. The black-and-white photographs I’ve seen in Grandpop’s heavy, leather-bound albums soon come alive in full sound and colour: the Sluice Box Rapids, now a roar of whitewater, and just ahead, Virginia Falls, plunging 92 metres into the river’s Fourth Canyon. And at its base, dwarfed by limestone cliffs: the three sky-blue inflatable rafts that will transport us 200 km downriver over five days. From here, they are the size of jellybeans. My 71-year-old father and I stand for a moment, spellbound. Over the din of the rushing water, I ask how long he has waited for this moment. His eyes are fixed on the river ahead. “Forever,” he responds.

We could spend hours here, but the river waits. We strap bags to backs for the 1.2-km portage to lower ground through rosemary-like Labrador tea, northern starflowers and kinnikinnick. A dirt trail descends in a steep series of switchbacks, where the waters’ gentle mist falls on us like fresh dew. Southerners James and Jacob are already lounging on a log below, dressed in camouflage gear. They will spend the better part of this trip waiting for the rest of us.

courtesy R.M. Patterson

The Nahanni is the stuff of legends – tales of gold and adventure, trappers and prospectors, of the indigenous Nahanni and those European adventurers, my English grandfather included, drawn here in the quest for freedom and fortune. After the Klondike Gold Rush, placer gold was rumoured to have been found up the Flat River, a tributary of the South Nahanni. But men stayed away, fearful of the unforgiving terrain and the numbers of dead or missing that led to tales of “head-hunting Nahanni.” In reality, the string of murders and deaths by starvation, accident or misfortune along the river were more likely the result of gold, greed or poor planning – in the wake of the frenzied and lawless gold rush. Even when Grandpop and Faille set off from Fort Simpson in 1925, their dream of paddling north up the Nahanni was considered pure suicide.

From a rocky launching point on the beach, we don wet-weather gear: sou’westers, Patagonia rain pants, rubber boots and life jackets. Packs loaded and secured in the 18-foot Moravia rafts, we then settle in, five to a craft, a guide at the helm. The dramatic rust-coloured Fourth Canyon is the first of four to come. At their greatest height, these sheer rock faces – which escaped the last ice age – rise steeply to 1,200 metres, then curve into natural amphitheatres of dolomite, limestone and layers of sedimentary rock that rival the Grand Canyon.

In one of the other rafts, Jeremy and Sam swap old jokes, leaving me, the baby of the family, alone with Dad. I feel privileged, keen to experience the river through his eyes as he trades anecdotes about Grandpop and the river with the guides. His face lights up as he sees for the first time the landscape he has until now only heard about. “The cliffs and this marvellous, calm water flowing through here – it’s just extraordinary.” He points to the shore: “That’s the sort of spot where Grandpop would have camped, on that grassy bank, with a place to beach a canoe.” Further downstream is Marengo Creek, which Grandpop named after Napolean’s favourite horse.

But it isn’t long before the clouds roll in. And just a few hours later, at a rocky camp on Strawberry Island, I lie in my tent and listen to the rolling thunder echoing off the canyons and mountains like bursts of gunfire.

Day Three: Strawberry Island to The Gate

A light mist rises off the river as we launch the inflatables and head downstream toward the Figure 8 Rapids, a stretch of whirlpools, boils and eddies that Grandpop and Faille, remarkably, navigated without portaging. High water has since changed these rapids – now categorized as class III-plus in difficulty. But by canoe, says Rob, the Nahanni has always been an incredibly challenging river to run, so “you can imagine what it was like for your grandfather and Faille to canoe upstream. That’s why The Dangerous River is so talked about now, because it would have been tough to paddle up. It’s too deep to pole, and in these canyons there are no beaches for tracking a canoe.”

courtesy R.M. Patterson

Travelling downriver at about 10 klicks, we soon pass the Flat River and the site of Faille’s cabin, where in 1927 Grandpop stopped on his way to the falls. Faille spent decades on the river, prospecting for gold and trapping furs. But large quantities of gold were never found.

We fall into a rhythm: awaken early, breakfast and break camp. The guides buzz about, prepping the rafts for another day on the river and, in a place where time is meaningless and cannot be gauged by the sun’s position in the sky,  preparing meals that provide the day’s structure. Pancakes and sausages one morning, eggs Benedict the next. Lunches are eaten  en route – pita stuffed with tabbouleh or caribou smokies roasted over the fire. Dinners feature smoked arctic char and asparagus soup starters, main courses of pork tenderloin, chicken curry or lamb kebabs on a bed of couscous. Later, we perch on camp stools, sip tea and talk well into the evening as Michael shares stories of life in Africa and the guides tease Jen and Laura about Sex and the City. But always, the focus comes back to the river and Grandpop’s books. Vivien encourages my father to read from The Dangerous River while Michael takes notes. Jamie, the son of bush pilots, who now studies at Oxford, observes, “What’s most compelling about these stories is the legend that was R.M. Patterson himself. He’s a great writer, but he was also out there living life in a really big, amazing way.”

Day Four: The Gate to Headless Creek

Rob and Kaj, courtesy Jennifer Patterson

The rafting life is making some of us restless. Keen to climb mountains in search of Dall’s sheep, eight of us scramble to the top of The Gate, a narrow limestone passage with 460-metre-high walls, for a view of Pulpit Rock and downriver toward Big Bend, a 90-degree hairpin turn in the river. At the summit, Corin snaps photos and a shirtless Jamie salutes the sun in a yoga pose. I study the almost-bonsai twists of stunted trees and tundra plants, brittle reindeer lichen and low-lying shrubs laden with crimson berries, thinking of Grandpop and the “dreamy afternoons” he spent hiking here, where “the river was a distant murmur through the warm scent of pines.”

We soon pass through the foreboding Funeral Range to the Headless Range and Headless Creek, so named for two brothers whose decapitated skeletons were discovered tied to trees here in 1908, or so the legend goes. In 1927, strangers again warned Grandpop against setting out on another expedition: “Men vanish in that country,” one cautioned. “Down the river, they say it’s a damned good country to keep clear of . . . a country lorded over by Wild Mountain Men . . . the river fast and bad.” The MacLeod brothers’ murder was but one of hundreds of dark stories about the Nahanni. From 1908 to 1945, many more men disappeared, starved to death or died here mysteriously.

Fittingly, that evening on a river-rock beach under blue and pink brush strokes of cloud, Dad reads a passage about Willie and Frank MacLeod from The Dangerous River – ghost stories in a haunted valley.

Day Five: Headless Creek to Lafferty Creek

We paddle past Headless Creek and through Deadmen Valley, stopping at Sheaf Creek. We’re looking for the site of the cabin where Grandpop and the English trapper  Gordon Matthews, his companion on his second Nahanni trek, overwintered in 1928-1929. We pull the rafts onto the beach, and while Vivien and Jamie investigate wolf, bear and raptor tracks in the sand, Sam stumbles upon a rusted stovepipe and a conspicuous clearing in the trees. Further upstream is the likely site of the men’s food cache, where foodstuffs and fur pelts were stored on high wooden platforms to deter animals. We examine sunken cabin beams and the remnants of a makeshift stove, fashioned from an old oil drum, with the enthusiasm of amateur archaeologists. Kaj is certain we have found the site, exactly as Grandpop described it, in a clearing in the trees. Dad’s chest puffs with pride as photos are snapped for posterity. Even Rob and the guides make a note of the find for future trips downriver.

We lunch at Dry Canyon Creek, ride the high-standing waves of the Cache Rapids where Matthews almost drowned after falling overboard in 1928 and enter the dramatic First Canyon, its towering limestone walls the highest yet. Later, at our Lafferty Creek camp, Dad reads from Grandpop’s journals, written in the form of a letter home to his mother in England and published posthumously as the Nahanni Journals.

Day Six: Lafferty Creek to The Splits, a.k.a. “Bug Hell Island”

It is the last full day on the river and we slip into swimsuits in preparation for the hot springs ahead. From here on, we’re at the mercy of the infamous mosquitoes of the North; Rob warns us to keep bug shirts at the ready. Soon enough we reach Kraus Hot Springs, greeted by the sulphur stench of rotten eggs. The rocks in the pool overlooking the river are covered in a brown sludge, the water warm and brackish. Kaj slathers his face with mud, a Nahanni tradition, as a light river breeze keeps the bugs at bay.

We camp on what Bhreagh dubs “Bug Hell Island” in The Splits, where the Nahanni widens as it braids and weaves in myriad directions. Bug shirts are the preferred dinner attire, as dragonflies dive-bomb our heads, hunting for insects. We bat the bugs away from one another. But when the hordes reach class-IV-plus we escape to the sanctuary of the tents, diving in and quickly zipping up the fly. But I still count – and kill – more than 60 mosquitoes that have somehow followed us inside.

Day Seven: To Nahanni Butte and Fort Simpson

It is with mixed feelings that we leave the river behind. Jeremy, in particular, is heartbroken that the trip is almost over. And all of us feel humbled by the epic journey made so many years ago by Grandpop, without the security of experienced guides or their gourmet meals. Soon we are returning by plane from Nahanni Butte to Fort Simpson, where roads replace rivers and hot showers, flush toilets and bed linens await. The group scatters, to B&Bs and frontier hotels, with promises to meet up for a last supper at the only restaurant in town. But like Grandpop, after months of sleeping in the open air, I cannot bring myself to stay indoors. Instead I lie in a hammock in the B&B’s garden, reading and rereading passages from his books in an attempt to prolong the euphoria of being on the river. Later, unable to sleep, I lie staring at the ceiling fan, plotting my return – this time for two weeks,
in a canoe.

Getting There Yourself

• THE OPERATOR Nahanni River Adventures/Canadian River Expeditions (1-800-297-6927). Cost: $5,022.20 per person for seven-day expedition.
• GEAR Quick-dry clothes, hiking boots, rain gear, insect repellent. Checklist at nahanni.com.
• TO LEARN MORE The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) works to protect the 40,000-square-kilometre Nahanni watershed from mining and to expand the park’s boundaries.
• CRITICAL READING The Dangerous River: Adventure on the Nahanni by R.M. Patterson (TouchWood Editions, 2009; $19.95); Nahanni Journals: R.M. Patterson’s 1927-1929 Journals/ed. Richard C. Davis (University of Alberta Press, 2008; $29.95).
• ON SCREEN Nahanni (1962), a short National Film Board classic, following Albert Faille upriver to Virginia Falls. nfb.ca/film/Nahanni l

Lead image courtesy Jennifer Patterson

by  Andrew Findlay

Ian McAllister and I  drop anchor and lower the Zodiac, then aim for where a tea-coloured torrent spills into the azure waters of the bay. Misty drizzle falls from a sky as grey as the granite ramparts looming above the inlet. Ancient red cedars, like foreboding old men, exchange whispers of wind. As we nudge ashore on alluvial flats and tether the dinghy to a chunk of driftwood, that avian trickster of First Nations legend, the raven, squawks disapprovingly from a nearby cedar-snag perch. We are the only humans at the head of this forgotten inlet in B.C.’s Fiordland Conservancy. But the vast coastal wilderness hums with life, and it’s here we’ll begin our search for that most elusive of wild creatures, the wolf.

courtesy Ian McAllister/pacificwild.org

Our gumboots make loud sucking sounds in the mud along the shoreline, where McAllister, the man Time magazine named one of the “Environmental Leaders for the 21st Century” in the late ’90s, kneels to examine a pugmark – signs of a wolf. But the prints are poorly defined, like smudged pencil markings, suggesting the tide has come and gone since the animal sauntered this way. A few steps further, crammed into a square-foot patch of rich earth: the mingled prints of another wolf and a deer – predator and prey. Clambering up the bank, we enter a field of knee-deep Lyngby’s sedge, cow parsnip and brilliant purple lupines, with a circle of trampled grass where a grizzly has flopped to rest. Bears are opportunistic omnivores that carve chaotic swaths through the estuary as they meander, digging for chocolate lilies and “rice root,” the latter coveted for its starchy bulbs. Wolves are strictly carnivorous and far more economical in their movements, treading purposeful, straight tracks through the grass between rainforest and water’s edge. Two hours slip by. “I’m getting antsy. I haven’t seen wolves for awhile,” says McAllister, his ginger hair damp from the rain, brow creased in lines of concentration – or frustration.

We pause next to the creek, imagining life as a wolf in these wild inlets, where the predator must kill or scavenge daily to survive, armed only with a cunning intellect, speed, agility and jaws that crush with a force of up to 680 kilograms. In a similar spot, McAllister once observed a black-tailed deer grazing within 50 metres of a wolf pack, hidden in the tall grass, that had gone days without a kill. Still, the wolves made no move. Clearly they’d calculated opportunity versus cost and the latter was too high.

I spot movement. “There’s a grizzly!”

McAllister raises his binoculars. “That’s not one grizzly, that’s two, and I think they’re mating.”

I practically tear the binoculars from his hands. Sure enough there are two: a massive boar and a much smaller sow engaged in an unexpected display of spring fever. The bears part and the female walks away, peering coyly at her ursine suitor over a shoulder rippling with muscle. They circle each other in slow, almost choreographed movements, a courtship that continues for a quarter of an hour until the bears suddenly disappear into unseen reaches of the estuary. We too head for the timber, where the acrid smell of carrion drifts on a light breeze, to follow a well-trod wildlife trail running parallel to a stream. McAllister crouches where the path narrows between two tightly spaced hemlocks and pinches a tuft of silver-grey hair – snagged by the rough bark of the trees – between his fingers. We’re travelling a wolf highway. I envision a silent pack of wild canines cantering single file, heading upstream to a den sequestered in the old growth. Walking on, muted light and flickering shadows trick my mind into perceiving movement everywhere. The woods are eerily silent, and I sense why, for many cultures, they represent the dark, the foreboding and the unknown. Somewhere in this wild world, there are wolves.

courtesy Ian McAllister/pacificwild.org

Two days earlier in late June, the two of us had set sail aboard McAllister’s trimaran, Habitat, from Bella Bella on Campbell Island. Ahead of us, a loose eight-day itinerary: to explore and search for wolves among McAllister’s favourite inlets and islands of the Great Bear Rainforest.

An author,  photographer and determined conservationist, the 39-year-old McAllister and his wife Karen have been exploring the B.C. coast for the last two decades, tussling with loggers, government and sport hunters and playing a pioneering role in preserving one of the world’s most ecologically significant temperate rainforests – which 20 years ago was in imminent danger of wholesale industrial logging. The result, his 1997 award-winning work of photojournalism The Great Bear Rainforest: Canada‘s Forgotten Coast, has been credited as the centrepiece for Greenpeace International’s North American forest campaign; Robert Kennedy Jr. wrote the foreword. Yet when he first explored the Great Bear Rainforest, in the early 1990s, McAllister gave little thought to its wolf populations. But that all changed just over a decade ago, when he stumbled across a wolf den, a litter of grey pups bouncing around its entrance, looking confused yet curious. Surprisingly, the adults retreated into the trees and howled anxiously, disturbed by the human intrusion but unwilling to attack.  “If a bear, cougar or any other species had infiltrated a den site it would have been efficiently attacked and likely killed,“ says McAllister. “So the question that immediately came to mind, and that I continue to ponder, is when and where did these wolves learn to not consider humans as prey?” And in the years following, the more he encountered wolves on the coast, the more he was intrigued.

Meanwhile, groundbreaking research by biologists Paul Paquet and Chris Darimont was revealing that the genetic diversity of the grey wolves inhabiting B.C.’s central coast is far greater than that of their interior and northern brethren. So much so that McAllister, along with Darimont and Paquet, became convinced that the wolves are genetically distinct, and that the  biological richness of the temperate rainforest drives this diversity. In a relatively small geographic area, for example, “you can find island-hopping wolf packs eating seals and shellfish, and then just 20 km away,” says McAllister, “another pack subsisting on salmon or tiny sitka deer.”

But something far less tangible than wolf genetics also fascinated McAllister: the fact that B.C.’s coastal canines seem to have no collective memory of the persecution experienced by wolves elsewhere in the province, including indiscriminate shootings by ranchers to protect livestock and by hunters to protect game, as well as government- sanctioned culls aimed at recovering such threatened species as the mountain caribou and Vancouver Island marmot. He read every wolf study he could find, diligently  recorded his own sightings and observations and found inspiration in the writings of author Barry Lopez, who, in Of Wolves and Men, suggests that we know far less about the reality of the wolf and far more about “what we imagine the wolf to be.” And finally, in 2007, after a decade of research, McAllister published his own critically acclaimed work, The Last Wild Wolves.

Yet McAllister’s journey into the world of B.C.’s marine wolves is far from over. Though many environmentalists hailed it as a victory when the provincial government signed its Great Bear Rainforest Agreements in 2006, creating some 55 new land conservancies on the coast, McAllister remains a cautious voice. He believes the agreement falls short of adequately protecting a coastline so rich in biodiversity that American and Canadian philanthropic foundations have directed upward of $60 million toward conservation and sustainable economic opportunities for B.C.’s coastal First Nations. Why? The level of protection afforded wildlife in a conservancy is questionable, he says. Oil supertankers could soon ply the treacherous waters of the Inside Passage. High-grade logging of old-growth cedar continues in valleys and on islands still unprotected. Salmon farms in pristine central coast channels such as Sheep Passage are raising fears of sea-lice infestations among migrating wild salmon smolts. And industrial wind farms are being proposed for wild outer-coast islands that few British Columbians have heard of, but on which McAllister has spent weeks in solitary exploration, where wolves roam windswept beaches, feasting on barnacles and squid.

The diesel engine drones quietly as we leave the bay at dusk and retrace our route back down the inlet, most likely observed by wolves that choose not to be seen by us. McAllister takes the helm and stares fixedly ahead with the air of a man accustomed to spending weeks in the wilds, alone. I go below deck to brew coffee and thumb through sea charts of B.C.’s labyrinthine coast. The persistent, light drizzle  gives way to broken clouds and sunshine, and as the boat chugs slowly up Princess Royal Channel, I can see the trees onshore slipping by. But when we enter McKay Reach, the wind howls down Douglas Channel and wraps around Gribbell Island, transforming the sea from glassy smooth to something rough and recalcitrant. The boat rocks and rolls. Barely an hour later, rounding the northern tip of Princess Royal Island, the ocean is again placid.

The two-way radio crackles. Biologist Janie Wray and partner Hermann Meuter have been studying the whales of Camaaño Sound and recording their sweet voices and subtle communications for the past half-dozen years. Still, Wray’s voice over the radio is full of excitement: humpback whales are feeding near Ashdown Island in Whale Passage. We hurry – as much as is possible in a sailboat with a top motoring speed of six knots per hour – and, 30 minutes later, witness four humpbacks circling languorously, churning the water almost within arm’s reach of Wray’s powerboat. The great mammals exhale – puffs of breath that sound as if they are being forced through a giant snorkel – then dive, their barnacle-encrusted tail flukes slipping silently beneath the surface. Seconds later, one leviathan re-emerges in a burst of bubbling water, great baleen plates exposed, scooping up mouthfuls of krill and other small fish – some of which spill frantically from its jaws. Scientists call this bubble-net feeding: the deft corralling of schools of fish no longer than my baby finger – by a mammal that weighs more than 35 tonnes. It is astonishing to behold.

An hour later we are bucking the tide north up Principe Channel, flanked by two huge, uninhabited isles. Banks Island, to the west, is a brooding expanse of low, rounded hills and weathered trees contorted into bonsai. To the east rise the rugged snowy mountains of Pitt Island, a topography reminiscent of the mainland Coast Range.

“Check this out!” shouts McAllister, pointing off the Habitat’s bow. Killer whales are approaching from the north, a pod of seven led by a massive bull, its elegant dorsal fin proudly protruding two metres above the water line. The pod nears the boat, then divides, and three whales pass rapidly on the portside, four on the starboard, like commuters on a water highway – in pursuit of salmon, perhaps. These “wolves of the sea” are as adept at hunting beneath the waves as wolves are on land.

Two days later, we anchor in a secluded bay near the Tsimshian settlement of Kitkatla. Again the sky is a steely grey, the tide low, the scent of the sea pungent. On shore: a few decaying wooden houses that, along with some rusting farm implements, trucks and a system of dykes, are all that remain of one homesteader’s 1970s utopia.

McAllister is anxious to be ashore in this place where he has spotted wolves many times. Soon we are balancing on stones covered in rockweed, which pops underfoot like bubble wrap, then shadowing a crystalline stream deep into the rainforest past groves of centuries-old trees, their branches laden with witch’s hair and wolf lichen. Canine prints are everywhere; wolves have recently splashed across the stream bed and padded along its silky sandbars. Fresh scat containing bones marks a trail through shin-deep moss of an almost luminescent green. The forest is as peaceful as a monastery, yet I am convinced we are being watched. We lose track of time, until the fading light reminds us that evening is approaching and we are compelled to turn back. Reluctantly, I again resign myself to not seeing a wolf this day, though we have sensed their presence as viscerally as a salmon senses its natal river.

The next morning, the last of our journey, the sun warms the deck where I lie sprawled against the wheelhouse, savouring a coffee. McAllister picks up the binoculars and scans the tidal flats around the bay, then sets them down on the deck. A minute later, alerted by the croak of a raven, he scopes the bay again with keen eyes.

“I see a wolf – a female I think.” He points to a narrow isthmus of sand between brackish pools less than a half-kilometre distant.

It takes a few seconds to locate the  wild  wolf through the binoculars. Without movement she would be perfectly camouflaged against the palette of rocks and sand. She is smaller than the average domestic husky, and lean. Her coat – save for a patch of dark grey on each haunch and an artful white stripe down her nose – is a uniform tan colour, with the healthy sheen of an animal that has only recently shed its winter pelage. I hold my breath as she trots along the beach, charcoal snout pointed our way, until she plops down on a sandy flat. She stays there for half an hour, basking in the sun and observing us with canine curiosity. Then, as unexpectedly as she arrived, she saunters back toward the head of the bay and vanishes ghostlike into the darkness of the forest.

Getting There Yourself:

• Pick a reputable tour operator (all have been given the thumbs up by Ian McAllister):

Ocean Adventures
Maple Leaf Adventures
Mothership Adventures
Ocean Light II Adventures
Great Bear Adventure Tours
Bluewater Adventures
Tide Rip Grizzly Tours
Northern Lights Expeditions

• GEAR Check the above operator websites for requirements.
• UPDATES on Great Bear Rainforest conservation efforts: savethe greatbear.org; raincoast.org; pacificwild.org
• TO LEARN MORE about B.C.’s rainforest wolves and how to protect them: pacificwild.org
• CRITICAL READING The Last Wild Wolves: Ghosts of the Great Bear Rainforest (Greystone Books, 2007; $40/softcover 2009; $29.95);  The Great Bear Rainforest: Canada’s Forgotten Coast (Harbour Publishing, 1997; $40); The Wolf Almanac, by Robert H. Busch (Lyons Press, 2007; $19.95).
• ON SCREEN The BBC video Earth’s Great Events: The Great Salmon Run; National  Geographic’s Last Stand of the Great Bear and Search for the Coast Wolf; Ian McAllister’s “The Last Wild Wolves” video series on YouTube.

Lead image courtesy Ian McAllister/pacificwild.org

by Helena Zukowski

1. Royal Soil

It was in Paris in the Roaring Twenties that exiled Georgian prince Nicholas Abkhazi met and fell in love with Shanghai-born Peggy Pemberton-Carter, launching a romance that would span seven decades, three continents and one world war. Separated when Peggy spent two-and-a-half years in a Japanese internment camp and Nicholas was incarcerated as a POW, the couple reunited after World War II and married, beginning a new life in Victoria on an overgrown, weed-infested lot that, over the next 40 years, would become one of B.C.’s most important gardens. (In 1999, it was purchased by the non-profit Land Conservancy, which protects the province’s historical and culturally significant landmarks.) Today, the Abkhazi Garden is renowned for its harmonious use of site, including the glaciated rock outcroppings and Garry oak trees unique to the southern tip of Vancouver Island.

Major Plot Points:

The tearoom’s Royal Abkhazi blend, created in 2008 by Victoria’s Silk Road tea company, with homemade scones and local organic jam. • A Curious Life: The Biography of Princess Peggy (on-site gift shop). • May 17 Plantaholics Sale — independent growers’ unusual plant specimens. 250-598-8096; abkhazi.com

2. Rhodo-mania

Bryan Zimmerman was a Christmas tree farmer when, 30 years ago, as he was clearing 9.7 newly purchased hectares in Courtenay, he had a vision of “creating something lasting” — a unique woodland garden. So to avoid disturbing root systems, Zimmerman worked the land by hand, then took generous advantage of the island’s reputation as one of the best places in North America for rhodos. The result: the internationally acclaimed Kitty Coleman Woodland Gardens, where, serenaded by songbirds, visitors lounge in rustic gazebos or wander woodland paths skirting water features and 3,000- plus rhododendrons. (“Kitty” is the First Nations woman who paddled ashore here in the late 1800s and for whom a nearby creek is named.)

Major Plot Points:

On-site artisan festival, Labour Day weekend. 250- 338-6901; woodlandgardens.ca

Milner Gardens

3. A Touch Of Class

When Horatio “Ray” Milner purchased this 28-hectare Qualicum estate in 1937, he intended it to be a bucolic escape from his hectic professional life. The World War I veteran, lawyer, King’s counsel, philanthropist and Order of Canada recipient, along with wife Rina, found some time to start a garden. But it was the second         Mrs. Milner, Veronica, who was the true visionary behind today’s Milner Gardens and Woodland. A British aristocrat — related to Winston Churchill — and an accomplished artist, Veronica would spend 40-plus years nurturing a serene, unique escape that has drawn such famous visitors as Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, Princess Diana and Prince Charles. Along with many rare trees, the garden is renowned for its 500-plus rhododendrons and azaleas — anchoring an immense perennial garden.

Major Plot Points:

Art & Photography in the Garden, an artists-at-work event, July 18 to 19, including silent auction, live music and lectures. • Margaret Cadwaladr’s In Veronica’s Garden (on-site gift shop). 250-752- 8573; mala.ca/milnergardens

Ronning Gardens

4. Bernt Earth

In 1910, Norwegian homesteader Bernt Ronning settled a tract of North Island wilderness on a government promise that a road would be put through to Cape Scott. The thoroughfare never materialized, but hikers did — stopping in whenever the trapper, fisherman and camp cook was home to boogie on his hand-hewn “dance floor” and thump out songs on the pump organ. Ronning’s true love, though, was his two-hectare garden — laboriously fashioned out of the rainforest and planted with seeds and tree cuttings from around the world. After his death in 1963, the forest reclaimed the garden, but local horticultural angels intervened. And today the original rhodos in Ronning Gardens bloom alongside trees planted by its founder decades ago.

Major Plot Points:

Twin monkey puzzle trees, once among the oldest and rarest in B.C. (though one of the original pair has died, several others have grown in its place). • North America’s tallest monkey puzzle — 24-plus metres — is also here. 250-288-3724.

Shephard Gardens

5. Beds, Path & Beyond

The garden created by Bill and Marilyn Shephard is a veritable babe compared to Prime Picks one through four, but it has been nurtured with equal lashings of love. The 1.5-hectare property near Port McNeill was a horse farm before the Shephards purchased the land in 1991 and transformed it into the intimate extravaganza it is today — known particularly for its early summer bulbs and perennials (rhodos, azaleas, peonies, tree peonies, wisteria and globe flowers).

Major Plot Points:

Personal tours led by Marilyn or son Joe, with a hand- ful of fresh strawberries or raspberries from the garden. 250-956-4709; shephardsgarden.com

Lead image: Kitty Coleman Woodland Gardens

by Kerry McPhedran

The moon is almost full. Each stroke of our paddles lifts and spi lls lime-green stars.We are stardust. No one speaks.

White talcum-powder beach, turquoise waters – this could be Fiji. Only we’re sun-kipping on tiny island 32, one of the more than 100 islands and islets that make up British Columbia’s world-famous Broken Group off the west coast of Vancouver Island. If there is a sea kayaker’s mecca, this is it. And island 32 is just our lunch stop.

My double-kayak partner, Jennifer, hangs sloth-like, suspended by her pink gumboots and arms off a cantilevered log tossed high by a storm. Guides Natalie and Liz, having packed the leftover guacamole, quesadillas and fruit salad, sprawl in their own sandstone “paradise recliners.” Fellow paddlers Nora, Condrea and Stan are beached in the unexpectedly hot September sun in various stages of digestive dozing, hands folded over bellies. Someone burps contentedly.

On the last day of our trip, I’m rerunning a slide show of trip highlights on the back of my eyelids.

Five days ago, we were seven strangers sizing one another up on board the coastal freighter MV Frances Barclay on her three-and-a-half-hour run down the Alberni Inlet to unload kayakers and their gear at historic Sechart. A whaling station in days gone by, Sechart is now the gateway for the Broken Group and week-long guided camping/ kayaking trips with Batstar Adventure Tours.

Batstar appealed to our phalanx of urbanites because of one key phrase on its website’s “Why Choose Batstar” page: “Unplug from the grid.” Owners Blake and Rhonda Johnson, who packed up professional careers and two kids in Calgary back in 2001 to follow their passion for kayaking, hiking and biking the west coast, understand that time is everyone’s most valuable asset. Seeing us off on the Frances Barclay that morning, Blake cryptically advised: “Forget the city – go to the Happy Place.” We weren’t sure what he meant, but we were willing to look.

Natalie and Liz, hard-core West Coast transplants from Montreal and New Brunswick, expertly loaded a week’s worth of food, drinking water and gear into the single and double Seaward kayaks at Sechart, and our flotilla headed across Sechart Channel to explore the now-protected wild places that make up one third of Canada’s Pacific Rim Park (along with the West Coast Trail and Long Beach). A leisurely hour-and-a-half paddle out of Sechart landed us on the tree-fringed sandy beach of Keith Island – Batstar’s ace in the hole when it comes to competing with the 11 other operators trolling the Broken Group (out of some 60 kayak operators in B.C.). Thanks to the historic 2005 agreement signed by the Johnsons with the Tseshaht Band to train and license Tseshaht youth as sea kayak guides, Batstar guests – never more than eight in a group – have exclusive use of the island as a “no trace” base camp. “There are more than 100 islands in the Broken Group,” explained Natalie, “but only eight have designated campsites and competition can be fierce – especially in summer when paddlers arrive from all over the world.” Not only private, but protected and central, Keith Island is the ideal paddling-off spot for daytrips to the Broken Group’s Inner and Outer Islands. We feel privileged to share this ancestral village site.

An hour after landing, we’d unloaded the week’s gear, hauled the kayaks above high tide and pitched our tents – the only work Natalie and Liz allowed us all week. Not a potato to be scrubbed, not a dish to be washed. I felt like a free-range kid all over again, with grown-ups who let us wander around if we don’t go too far from home, take us somewhere fun every day, teach us new skills and call us when meals are ready.

When Natalie and Liz aren’t planning the next day’s route, cleaning gear or checking weather on the VHF, they’re rappin’ and cookin’ under the white-and-yellow-striped tarp suspended between trees over a two-burner Coleman on a plank. Using local organic ingredients and “a lot of lovin,’ ” they set a folding table with such tasty dishes as curried chicken, basmati rice, wild greens, grilled salmon, even sushi rolls, chocolate cake and fresh-fruit flan. A jar of wildflowers or a sea urchin’s discarded shell decorates our table.

Camp couldn’t be cozier or more comfortable with roomy three-person tents for two, camp chairs around a nightly beach fire and a spotless and discreet cedar outhouse. Montreal-born “Nat” and Liz scamper about like deer shod in bright blue and yellow Holeys, but are amazingly strong, with an easy energy and cheerful friendship that sets the tone: happy campers all.

Each morning we woke to the wild, weird, rattling call of a kingfisher and his blue-winged flash; the smell of freshly brewed organic coffee; French toast and bacon, frittatas and bagels, or pancakes custom-shaped like starfish. At night we sipped wee drams in companionable silence around the campfire and watched sparks fly to the stars. Days ended with Liz handing out hot-out-of-the-pot cloths reminiscent of Japanese restaurants, to wash our hands and face – all part of the Batstar promise of “five-star service, billion-star view.”

But our guides’ true competency played out on the water that first day of paddling, when we opted to explore the outer rim of Effingham Island with its 100-metre-high cliffs and paddle through sea arches, only to find we’d slipped from sunshine into an unnerving wall of thick fog. Next landfall, Japan, and the Pacific swell was building. While the Broken Group’s great appeal is its protected waters for first-time paddlers and open ocean for veteran kayakers, the weather can change from calm to storm in less than an hour. I was grateful we were with guides. Natalie herded us into a tight pod and we made for more protected Dicebox, that day’s lunch spot – peering like Mr. Magoo, barely able to see our kayak’s bow let alone an island.

Once home to nine longhouses, Dicebox today draws kayakers to explore on foot the wave-swept cave whose ocean garden floors are thick with starfish, sea urchins and lipstick-pink lichens. The Tseshaht people called this beach A:ts’:a:tsophshil, meaning “when you’re there it’s so beautiful that you don’t want to leave.”

I wondered what the Tseshaht called Wower Channel, our afternoon paddle alongside a Steller and California sea lion haulout, where hundreds of giant pinnipeds – what Blake calls “eight-year-old bully boys” – weighing up to 900 kilos, groaned, roared, burped and barked fishy-breathed testosterone. “Don’t make eye contact,” I urged Jennifer, paddling in the bow seat.

“Wow! It doesn’t get much better than that,” Jennifer called back over her shoulder as we left the bully boys behind and paddled on into Coaster Channel and back toward camp. “Whale at 2 o’clock!” called Stan. A white flash of belly. Nothing. And then the telltale, heart-shaped spout of a 30-tonne great grey, spraying his valentine from two blowholes 12 metres into the sky. Some 25,000 grey whales migrate north to their summer home in Alaska, and the Broken islands lie smack in the middle of their route. Resident whales, like this one, are visible year-round.

Only Day One, and we were definitely off the grid.

For five glorious September days now, we’ve had the Broken Group almost to ourselves: lazy picnic lunches in sheltered coves, paddling into sea caves, beachcombing for breast-shaped moon-snail casings and hiking past shell middens into an ancient Sitka spruce forest. We’ve gunkholed along rocky shorelines in our kayaks, drifting above the intertidal world of burgundy and orange batstars, pink sunstars, apple green anemones and hermit crabs. Arctic loons, great blue herons, orange-footed oystercatchers and cormorants are just some of the 230 species here. Natalie’s silent raising of her paddle overhead is our cue to stop paddling, be silent and look.

It’s hard to believe the Broken Group was once home to more than 10,000 First Nations people. But the evidence is all around us, in shell middens, in tranquil lagoons where rock-walled fish traps line the shore, in burial caves – and in Ty Marshall, a handsome apprentice Tseshaht guide who joins us halfway through the trip and shares stories his people have passed down from father to son. Traditionally his people have gathered cod, salmon and sea mammals off Keith Island. The island’s timber was used for planks and canoes. Hermit crab shells still rattle from the clothing of Tseshaht dancers.

Natalie interrupts my mental slide show. It’s time to leave island 32 to paddle back to Keith Island for our last night. Magic time: the moon is almost full. Natalie promises bioluminescence – the startling flash of millions of tiny sea creatures always present but rarely visible. We slip into our kayaks and, in the shadow of a neighbouring island, each stroke of our paddles lifts and spills lime-green stars, our hulls cutting the wine-dark sea like laser beams. We are stardust. No one speaks. As we slowly paddle back to our campsite, Natalie breaks the silence. “This is what animals do: eat, travel and sleep.”

Early the next morning, ours is the last boat to slip off the beach. Only our skid marks show we have landed. There is not a ripple on the water. By a trick of light, there is no horizon. The white clouds and blue sky are now the sea. Paddling, I glance sideways at the other kayaks. All are suspended in the Happy Place.

piggy-back paddlers

Not a camper? Check out Mothership kayaking from historic Columbia III.

“The Columbia is coming!” was the welcome cry along B.C.’s coast early in the last century, when a series of stout ships operating under the Anglican church’s Columbia Coast Mission served isolated logging camps, lighthouses, floating homes and First Nations villages, bringing medical help, religious services, Christmas parties and cartoons (an enticement to visit the dentist). Today the cry still goes up, but from kayakers as they paddle around a remote rocky bluff to see the waiting Columbia III, a handsomely restored 21-metre vessel now operated by the Campbell family as Mothership Adventures.

Why this company: To explore the pristine wilderness destinations of Desolation Sound, Broughton Archipelego, Johnstone Strait and the Great Bear Rainforest from the comfort of a mothership, knowing that after a day’s kayaking there are hot showers, freshly brewed organic coffee, Fern’s gourmet dinners with wine in a cozy salon — and a dry bed in one’s own cabin.

Comfort and security for novice kayakers aside, a mothership also equals unique experiences for hard-core sea kayakers. The ship repositions daily for a greater variety of wilderness than camping kayakers can hope to cover. Columbia can also easily access remote stretches of rugged coastline and steep-sided, glacial-carved fiords expedition kayakers avoid (knowing there is nowhere to camp or haul out in an emergency). “We never backtrack,” says Ross Campbell, former coastal logging helicopter pilot and current owner/captain, who knows just where to position guests for their best chance to see pods of 30 orcas in the Broughton Archipelago or beachcombing bears in the seldom-visited Great Bear Rainforest. And while most guests want to paddle rain or shine, they can always opt to stay on board with a book from the ship’s well-stocked library, or to chat with Ross in the wheelhouse as he navigates the many islands and inlets, always remaining out of sight and hearing of the paddlers.

Details pay off: Personal kayaking gear is neatly stowed under cover on the aft deck; a mini-crane system quickly retrieves the double Necky kayaks from the roof; professional sea kayak guides Miray and her partner Luke, born and bred on the West Coast and passionate about their work, help guests embark off the broad stern swim grid — managing the tricky balance between professional service and relaxed informality just right. As one visitor put it: “First class people running a first class operation.”

Day trips can include paddles up river estuaries past lush grassy meadows, lake swims, walks to abandoned native villages, picnic lunches and fresh crab feasts. Wildlife is everywhere. Brightly coloured intertidal life clings to the surf-swept rocks; sea otters and seals play in the kelp beds; osprey and eagles laze overhead and, with luck, wolves or a grizzly lope along a beach. At night, a Celtic tune or two from Luke and Miray and much laughter at anchor in a remote cove, lulled by the cradle that is Columbia III.

Who should go: Beginners and up.

Tips: Book Vancouver to Bella Bella flight early — for cheaper fare (and to guarantee a seat). Take waterproof, not waterrepellant, rain gear; technical inner clothes wick sweat.

Basics: June to October, depending on destination (e.g., Great Bear Rainforest — August and September only). Departures from Campbell River, Port McNeill and Bella Bella. All-inclusive rates (gear, accommodation, guides, meals, wine) run from $1,900 for four nights to $2,850 for six. Themed tours (historical, photographic, natural history) run two, four or six nights ($690 to $2,850). 1-888-833-8887; www.mothershipadventures.com

island fix-you uppers

Why this company: Batstar sets the standard for B.C.’s kayak touring industry; co-owner Blake Johnson is past president of the Sea Kayaking Guides’ Alliance of B.C. Batstar uses the best gear, pays top wages and benefits and rotates staff to avoid burnout.

Details pay off: B&B overnights both before and after each trip allow guests to re-pack gear into supplied dry sacks. Chartering a water taxi back to Port Alberni at trip’s end cuts travel time in half. Only Batstar guests have exclusive use of Keith Island, ancestral site of the Tseshaht Band (a big plus in peak season with only eight campsites in Broken Group).

Who should go: Beginners and up

Tips: Pack everything on Batstar’s excellent gear list; all kayaking, camping and kitchen equipment is provided. September expeditions mean less fog and rain than in summer, fewer kayakers.

Basics: Weekly, May to October. $1,689/person; eight guests, two guides. 1-877-449-1230; www.batstar.com

The portico lights of Spinnakers Brewpub’s 1884 guesthouse exude a rosy glow as we return from what in some circles is known as a night on the tiles. Our upstairs room, with its vaulted ceilings and sneak views of Victoria’s Inner Harbour, is made warmer still by the dozen or so exceptionally tasty microbrews I’ve sampled while traipsing along the city’s unofficial “ale trail.” Having limited myself to sampler-sized flights of these award-winning artisan beers, I’ve not been doing the staggered dance of a sailor on shore leave. Yet after lingering in the city’s quartet of world-class brewpubs over fine food and a succession of remarkable glasses of amber nectar, I’m clearly feeling no pain. “Hoppy and happy” are my final words to my bemused, rather less-soused wife as I slip into dreamland.

North America’s microbrew renaissance, a grassroots movement dating back a quarter century that reintroduced fresh, unpasteurized lagers and ales to a public weaned on the relatively tasteless suds churned out by the major breweries, can be traced directly to Pacific Northwest pioneers in Vancouver, Victoria, Portland and Seattle. Spinnakers, in fact, was Canada’s first purpose-built brewpub when it opened in 1984, jump-starting a trend that has seen real-ale temples established in urban centres across the country. Labatt and Molson Coors still dominate the $8-billion-per-year domestic business, but StatsCan reports that so-called “premium” beers have carved out a 15 per cent share of national sales. And while a portion of this niche belongs to Heineken and other imports, Canada’s feisty micro- breweries represent the one bullish segment of an industry that is otherwise experiencing slippage. (The venerable Molson, for instance, is down four percentage points since 2001 to a current 41 per cent share of the Canadian beer market.)

No statistics confirm it, but Victoria is without question a mecca for beer enthusiasts – a Beervana or Brewtopia by any other name. Case in point: The American Society of Beer Chemists, representing the brainiest, geekiest of brewmasters, returned here in June 2007 for its third convention in the last decade, talking shop and sampling no end of local brews. The Great Canadian Beer Festival draws legions of hopheads to Victoria’s Royal Athletic Park each Labour Day weekend. And, best of all, fans of the amber throat charmer can make a night of it anytime by booking a room, parking the car and undertaking a scenic crawl from one classy brewpub to the next; all four are centrally located near or on the waterfront and separated by no more than a gentle 20-minute stroll. In this time zone, only Portland’s riot of brewpubs tops the B.C. capital for liquid variety and walkable accessibility.

Just as regional organic produce defines Vancouver Island’s burgeoning foodie culture, the same “slow food” philosophy applies to its handcrafted beer. From summery Hefeweizens and a growing array of fruit and spice-infused tipples to heavier stouts, bitters and Belgian-style ales, the house products served at Spinnakers, the Canoe Brewpub, Swans and Hugo’s Brewhouse are produced mere paces from each of their gleaming tapheads. “The whole point of craft ale is that it’s fresh, pure, nutritious and local,” explains Andrew Tessier, the amiable beer guru at Swans who brewed up for the first time as a teenager, refined his talents with a group of friends dubbed “the Raging Grainies” and last year won four golds at the Canadian Brewing Awards in Toronto. In the early afternoon of my big night out, the 35-year-old Victoria native is showing off the brew room where, outfitted in overalls and black rubber boots, he has just finished transferring a batch of his bestselling Arctic Ale into stainless-steel fermentation tanks. “West Coasters demand a bit more flavour and taste than you get in the bland, straw-coloured beer traditionally produced for the mass market. We’ve got some great brewers in this town combined with educated drinkers who appreciate their work.”

Since the mid-1800s, when the province was first settled by non-aboriginals, Victoria has been at the forefront of brewing in Canada. (Next year marks the 150th anniversary of beermaking not just here but in all of Western Canada.) First on the scene was William Steinberger, one of thousands of adventurers lured to the West Coast during the early days of the gold rush. In 1858, the native of Cologne, Germany, opened the Victoria Brewing Company – the first commercial plant west of the Great Lakes. As Steinberger soon discovered, satiating thirsts was an honourable profession at a time when bread and ale were staples of every diet. Beer historian Greg Evans, executive director of B.C.’s Maritime Museum, cites Colonial Breweries owner Arthur Bunster as a notable case in point: An Irishman and outspoken critic of the temperance movement, Bunster served as a provincial and federal member of Parliament. Reputations remained solid for the simple reason that Victoria’s breweries were producing liquid gold. Thomas and Robert Carter’s operation in the 500 block of Herald Street (the Vancouver Ale, Porter & Steam Beer Brewery), for example, won medals at the Paris Exposition of 1889. Such was the city’s reputation a century ago, says Evans, that local ales were being exported to California, the Yukon and even Hong Kong, Shanghai and the Dutch East Indies.

With the mono- polistic rise of the giant beer corps in the first half of the 20th century, however, the arcane and ancient arts of handcrafted ales were lost in a tsunami of stubby brown bottles. The industry would not turn around until June 1982, when John Mitchell, widely known as the grandfather of North America’s craft brewing scene, battled reluctant liquor board authorities for permission to serve two kinds of craft ales at the Troller Pub in Horseshoe Bay, just northwest of Vancouver. Returning from a U.K. fact-finding trip with 14 different beers, Mitchell subsequently hosted a tasting session for friends and ale aficionados. Spinnakers owner Paul Hadfield, then an architect based on Granville Island, was among them. “I was fascinated by the diversity of flavours that we Canadians never got to experience,” he says. “And the homebrews made by John were the best of the bunch. I saw the opportunity right then.”

As the sun drops below the yardarm, Hadfield and his young brewmaster Rob Monk, a fresh-faced new-generation artisan who learned his trade in the Far North, pour samples of their latest concoctions – among them Mon Cherie Ale, a cherry-infused seduction brewed specially for the Victoria Erotica Festival, and a series of bold Belgian-style ales. Sommelier Brian Storen steps up with trays of chocolate and cheese – the former made in-house by a pastry chef with the delightful name of Crystal Duck, the cheeses sourced from the Cowichan Valley and Salt Spring Island. Food and beer pairings are all the rage these days in many foodie hotspots, not just upscale brewpubs. That’s no surprise: In its multitude of incarnations – sweet, bitter, dry, tart, sour, hoppy, fruity, grainy – beer delivers more flavour profiles than wine. While it may sound odd, there’s nothing quite like the taste of a wasabi-white-chocolate truffle washed down with Iceberg Pale Ale, a crisp seasonal brew created for the Royal BC Museum’s recent “Titanic” exhibit.

courtesy Canoe Brewpub

Pleasantly buzzed, my wife and I amble along the seawall as floatplanes make their last runs of the day and local residents take their Jack Russells out for a walkie. Crossing the blue Johnston Street bridge, we veer into Chinatown, descend back to water level and snag two barstools at the Canoe Brewpub. Packed as ever with the after-work crowd, the heritage warehouse space delivers an impressive west-coast fusion menu (check out the B.L.A.T., a supercharged BLT served on flatbread) and a range of traditional lagers, bitters and ales. Like his brethren, affable brew-master Sean Hoyne has an abiding respect for Bavaria’s Beer Brewing Purity Act of 1516, which dictates that “real ale” is made strictly from water, malted barley and hops. Quality was an issue in the early days of the craft-beer revival, admits Hoyne, a fixture at the Canoe since it opened a decade ago and who can often be found sharing a glass with the pub’s regulars. Some of those early batches were no better than “whatever Uncle Harry was fermenting in the basement.” Not so today.

“We now have a generation of experienced brewers backed by state-of-the-art equipment,” says Hoyne, tapping a gauge in his cozy brew room behind the bar. “The craft hasn’t changed in centuries, but today we have all the bells and whistles to make consistently superb beer.” The result is new-breed brews that are appealing to a much broader range of tipplers than ever before. “Our demographic cuts across all age groups and socio-economic backgrounds. Once you taste a craft ale, there’s no turning back. This industry is definitely not a fad.”

While Victoria is clearly B.C.’s beer capital, there has never been a shortage of quaint, English-style pubs dotted across Vancouver Island – some in particularly scenic locations, among them the Crow & Gate (not far from Ladysmith), the Rocking Horse (Nanoose Bay) and the Stonehouse (a short hike from the Swartz Bay ferry terminal). Now, to the delight of real-ale advocates, the brewpub phenomenon is also spreading up-island from Victoria. On the northern fringe of Nanaimo, brewmaster Harley Smith serves up a constantly changing menu of seasonal beers to augment the fine west coast cuisine served at Longwood Brew Pub & Restaurant. (Longwood publican Barry Ladell is the father of former Spinnakers brewer Lon Ladell, who currently operates Fuse Waterfront Grill in Sooke and has plans to open the town’s first brewpub some day in the future.) The Merecroft Village Pub in Campbell River is also now brewing its own. And in the picturesque heart of old-town Duncan, Chris Gress offers pints of his Cowichan Bay Lager and Arbutus Ale at the lively Craig Street Brew Pub, where locals socialize amid a fine collection of paintings by the late E.J. Hughes, the nationally renowned Cowichan Valley artist.

Though publicans and brewmasters alike are a friendly bunch with a deep respect for one another and the craft of brewing, the ale industry nonetheless remains a competitive business. But the rivalry isn’t hurting anyone’s profit margins. As in Victoria, each of the up-island brewpubs also does a booming business in takeaway sales, with various house brands bottled with designer labels in a variety of containers (from old-school stubbies to half-gallon glass “growlers” with clamp-down top.) Indeed, string all these establishments together, and the Island has the makings of a genuine, multi-city “ale trail.” That particular terminology, in fact, was used in the Island’s short-lived brewpub marketing strategy of 2000/01, which earned raves from The New York Times, no less.

Back in Victoria on an evening that is growing increasingly fuzzy at the edges, we walk the few hundred metres from the Canoe Brewpub to its nearby neighbour, Swans. A trio is pumping out blues chestnuts as we huddle with the locals at the gleaming wooden bar, gingerly nursing tasters as everyone else pounds back pints of Andrew Tessier’s finest. An hour later, it’s the Super G Ginger Ginseng Ale that knocks us out at Hugo’s Brewhouse. A stone’s throw from the Empress Hotel in the downtown core, Hugo’s is populated at this late hour by young, hip-shaking partiers. Benjamin Schottle’s current set of brews prove to be a fine nightcap as the DJ spins vintage funk and soul. Armed with a degree in biochemical engineering from the University of Western Ontario, Schottle realized he could combine his studies with what he laughingly tells me was “extensive research” during his student years going through his share of 24-packs. After a stint in Whistler, he moved to Victoria in 1994 and quickly became known for his recipes.

The Super G is Schottle’s signature ale, but lately he has been experimenting with fruit-infused Hefeweizens – notably a mandarin varietal that is popular on summer evenings. With the late great James Brown exhorting us to get on up from our comfortable perch on Hugo’s brown leather sofas, it’s clear that Victoria, and Vancouver Island as a whole, has become one superb place to get down with the best of the microbrews.

the macro view of microbrews

Augmenting Vancouver Island’s brewpub scene are an assortment of first-rate microbreweries — defined as relatively large-scale operations that produce less than 12,500 hectolitres (15,000 barrels) of beer annually.

A snapshot guide to Island brews available in many liquor stores:

Fat Cat Brewery
Nanaimo. Six varieties of “beer made from scratch.” Bestseller: Fat Head India Pale Ale.

Phillips Brewing Co.
Victoria. Founded by one-time Spinnakers brewer Matt Phillips and reigning B.C. Brewery of the Year (as judged by the hardcore enthusiasts who belong to CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale). Bestseller: Blue Truck Ale.

Lighthouse Brewing
Victoria. Brewer Paul Hoyne is the brother of the Canoe Club’s resident beer man Sean Hoyne. Bestseller: Race Rocks Amber.

Vancouver Island Brewery
Victoria. Launched in 1984, shortly after Canada’s first micro-brewery, Vancouver’s Granville Island Brewery, opened. Bestseller: Pipers Pale Ale.

a four-step guide
Victoria’s brewpub crawl (and where to sleep it off)

Hugo’s Brewhouse
Brewpub by day morphs into a nightclub after 9 p.m.
Drink this: The full-bodied Voodoo Porter weaves its magic with scents of chocolate and coffee.
Crashpad: Next door in the lush confines of the Magnolia Hotel (which also houses the Asian fusion restaurant Sanuk, where Ben Schottle’s beers are also served). Hugo’s: 250-920-4844; 625 Courtney St. The Magnolia: 1-877-624-6654; 623 Courtenay St.;

Spinnaker’s Gastro Brewpub
Trendsetting slow-food menu, a lively upstairs pub and postcard views of the Inner Harbour.
Drink this: Fogfighter, a strong Belgian ale to navigate the foulest autumn weather.
Crashpad: Either the Victorian-era guesthouse or the contemporary garden suites — both steps from the pub itself. 250-384-6613; 308 Catherine St.

Swans Brewpub
Victoria landmark and the reigning National Brewpub of the Year.
Drink this: Legacy Ale, a barley wine-style strong beer dedicated to the hotel’s late founder, the renowned entrepreneur Michael Williams. Crashpad: Upstairs in one of 29 uniquely decorated, art-strewn studios and suites. 250-361-3310; 506 Pandora Ave.

Canoe Brewpub Marina & Restaurant
Built in 1894, this heritage warehouse’s brick and timber bones look smashing after a $6-million facelift.
Drink this: Beaver Brown Ale, dark and smooth with hints of chocolate and maple.
Crashpad: No on-site accommodation, but the Bedford Regency Hotel (604-384-6835) in nearby Bastion Square offers boutique rooms at reasonable rates. Canoe: 250-361-1940; 450 Swift St.

Lead photo courtesy of sashafatcat.

In “Canada’s Provence,” the five major food groups are fresh, local, sustainable, seasonal and organic

by Jeff Bateman

Sighs of contentment rise and fall in steady waves as one score and 10 fortunate souls tuck into the fruits of the Cowichan Valley. A collection of leading chefs from this rapidly emerging culinary region has pooled its talents to raise funds for Providence Farm, a 160-hectare spread in the Vancouver Island countryside east of Duncan. For a century, the historic property was run as a boarding school by the Sisters of St. Ann. Today it serves as a therapeutic retreat for those with physical and mental disabilities, where a central part of community life is horticultural therapy. The organic produce sold at the Duncan Farmer’s Market and Providence’s on-site store is the result of willing hands sunk deep into healing soil. In fact, the crisp greens that follow the appetizer platters of Denman Island oysters were plucked from the ground here minutes earlier. As one wag at our convivial table puts it, the salad is a classic example of the “100-metre” diet.

Chef, cookbook author and master of ceremonies Bill Jones interrupts the luncheon to toast Providence’s worthy activities and applaud the largesse of its paying customers. He then turns to the half-dozen chefs in starched whites arrayed beside him. Brad Boisvert of AmusBistro in the village of Shawnigan Lake takes a bow for the rabbit terrine now being served. The roasted butternut squash soup in the on-deck circle is courtesy of Matt Horn, chef at Cowichan Bay landmark The Masthead. Fatima Da Silva from Bistro 161 in Duncan smiles briefly at the mention of her name, then vanishes back into the kitchen to continue preparing her contribution – seared duck breast with blackberry demi-glaze. Welcome, in other words, to a high-end slow-food Cowichan feast. All the ingredients are harvested locally from land and sea and paired with wines from such fine valley vineyards as Averill Creek and Blue Grouse. Glasses are clinked and laughter bubbles up freely, but our attention remains squarely on the white china plates before us.

At the Forefront of the Island’s Culinary & Agritourism Trend

In the burgeoning world of culinary and agritourism, the Cowichan – tucked between Victoria and Nanaimo in the fertile lands on either side of the Trans-Canada – is an upstart newcomer coming on like gangbusters. While retaining its blue-collar, dirt-under-fingernail roots, this region has undergone a shift in the last 20 years as the forestry and fishing industries flounder and a new wave of farmers, restaurateurs, vintners and foodies reinvent what has traditionally been a pit stop for fast food and gasoline. A generation of daytrippers weaned on the Food Channel and equipped with discriminating palates now detours off the highway here to track down fresh-from-the-field veggies, artisan-baked goods, free-range meats and top-notch wine and cider in such pocket-sized communities as Cobble Hill, Cowichan Bay, Chemainus and Glenora.

Beautiful Fanny Bay Oysters (courtesy Edible BC)

“Bring your own shopping bags and an empty car trunk,” advises Kathy McAree, organizer of B.C.’s first culinary tourism conference early this year and a driving force in marketing local foods and wines through her Victoria-based Travel with Taste epicurean tours. “British Columbians are realizing how lucky they are. Rather than travelling to France or Italy, they’re now taking advantage of the amazing food scenes right in their own backyard.”

Fresh farmgate eggs and seasonal produce are available around many Cowichan corners, if not quite every one just yet. In the north of the valley near Ladysmith, herb-laced jellies can be purchased at Hazelwood Herb Farm and berry-laden marmalade at Yellow Point Cranberries. At the Victoria end of the Cowichan, in Cobble Hill, the tasting bar at Merridale Estate Cidery is routinely jammed with tipplers, while antibiotic-free turkey is on the takeaway menu at Mill Bay’s Stonefield Farm. The hub of the region is Duncan, and there’s nowhere better to take the local pulse than at its award-winning farmers’ market, fractured by small-town politics but thriving nonetheless on Saturday mornings in two locations: one in Duncan’s revitalized downtown core, the other up the highway at the Forestry Discovery Centre.

Certainly the Cowichan isn’t the only food-centric region in B.C. – not with emerging slow-food scenes in Pemberton, Vanderhoof, Nelson, the Gulf Islands and other pockets of the Island (notably the Comox Valley and Saanich Peninsula). But this fertile valley, protected by a horseshoe of mountains from the storms that batter the far West Coast, is both easily accessible to the province’s largest population centres and unique in its concentration of producers, chefs and culinary visionaries. “The Cowichan has the most disproportionate number of food-aware people of anywhere in Canada,” states Heidi Noble, one of the new-breed cooks and vintners making an international name for herself in the southern Okanagan. “We’ve got some amazing gems out here, but everyone’s spread out across the great divide between Osoyoos and the Shuswap. By comparison, the Cowichan is incredibly compact. It’s a great place to vacation if you want to sample amazing food and wine right from the source without piling on the mileage.”

The Pioneers

Wineries have been key to the Cowichan’s character since Zanatta bottled its first harvests in 1990. With 10 vineyards now in production, the valley has been dubbed “the new Napa” by excitable tourism reps and headline writers – just like the Okanagan, Ontario’s Niagara Peninsula, Quebec’s Eastern Townships and practically every other emergent grape-growing region north of California. Yet the Cowichan stands alone as “Canada’s Provence,” a widely quoted epithet coined by the late James Barber, the beloved food writer and ebullient host of television’s The Urban Peasant who passed away last December at his Cowichan farm with a pot of chicken stock bubbling on the stove.

As with chefs Mara Jernigan and Bill Jones before him and writer/CBC broadcaster Don Genova shortly after, Barber was among an influx of influential food mavens drawn to the Cowichan by its charm, upside potential and the fact that a small farm holding could then be purchased for not much more than a two-bedroom Vancouver condo. Shortly after planting his first garlic bulbs here in 2001, Barber coined his catchphrase for the valley in a newspaper column, and it has stuck as the area continues to grapple for a marketable identity.

“It’s the only region in Canada with what the meteorologists call a ‘maritime Mediterranean climate,’ ” explains Jones, a French-trained gourmet chef with a quick wit who leads cooking workshops at his Deerholme Farm. Like the fabled southeast region of France, the Cowichan enjoys the kind of dry summers and mild, wet winters ideal for a year-round growing season. Cowichan itself is a Coast Salish word meaning “the warm land” or “land warmed by the sun.” Lavender, sage, rosemary and basil winter nicely here, notes Jones, just as they do in Provence.

Not everyone is fond of the comparison. Jernigan is a pioneer in the West Coast Slow Food movement who, a decade ago, kick-started the Vancouver Island edition of Feast of Fields – the leading foodfest among a growing number of local seasonal events. She feels the ‘P’ word creates unduly high expectations. “I don’t think we need to be imitative,” she says from her kitchen at Fairburn Farm, where she teaches her “field to table” cooking philosophy (read: fresh, local, sustainable, seasonal and organic) during popular culinary boot camps that range from a few hours to five days. “Besides,” Jernigan adds with a laugh, “I haven’t noticed any olive trees around here lately.”

Sinclair Philip, a champion of culinary tourism locally and co-owner of the internationally celebrated Sooke Harbour House, doesn’t like the comparison game either. “We live in a beautiful part of the world with its own character and charm. We don’t have the history or culture of Provence, but then again we’re not overrun with tourists either. We need to develop our own reputation and personality. Every new farmgate and restaurant serving local food is testament to the fact that it’s happening.”

Hilary’s Cheese Co., True Grains Breads & the Udder Guy’s Ice Cream Parlour, Cowichan Bay

Postcard-perfect Cowichan Bay is a good starting point for understanding the valley both historically and in terms of what rates – by my rather proletarian, non-foodie standards – as superior comfort food: chewy ciabatta, other- worldly ginger cookies, cheese so runny it “gallops” (again citing the words of James Barber) and real-deal homemade ice cream. A rainbow arches above wind-lashed waves as the cheesemaking Abbotts hold court in their waterfront lunch spot, Hilary’s Cheese Company, renowned for its homemade soup and rich assortment of creamy, blue-veined cheeses. “Not long ago this little community was in major decline,” says Patty Abbott, a former banker and landscaper who was pulled irresistibly into the cheese business when her husband, Hilary, mastered the fine art of transforming goat and cow’s milk into thick rounds of aromatic fromage. Storefronts were boarded up. The hotel at the top of the hill was closed and the marina was in disrepair. “Now the challenge is to retain the charm of the place without it being overrun with cars and parking issues.”

Today, Cowichan Bay’s colourful main street bustles with life and retail activity as visitors and locals browse the shops and stroll the boardwalk. The renaissance can be credited in large part to Hilary’s Cheese Co., True Grain Breads and the Udder Guy’s Ice Cream Parlour. “I think we’re giving people in the Cowichan and beyond good reason to visit on a regular and even daily basis,” says True Grain’s Jonathan Knight as he expertly shapes raw dough into plump rolls ready for the ovens of his natural organic bakery. After clocking his apprenticeship in North Vancouver, Knight, 33, cycled across Canada and ran a bakery on the northern tip of Cape Breton Island before setting up shop here in May 2004. Most mornings he and a trio of fellow bakers are submerged in fragrant heat and clouds of flour by 5 a.m.; the first baguettes are steaming fresh when his doors open three hours later. Knight currently grinds heirloom Red Fife wheat imported from Saskatchewan. In keeping with his dedication to locally sourced ingredients, however, he is encouraging Island farmers such as Metchosin’s Tom Henry to experiment with crops of their own. A house special called the 30 Mile Loaf uses Henry’s first batch of wheat from last summer, and a Three Mile Loaf will be a blackboard favourite if Providence Farm follows through on its plans to grow wheat.

Artisan Breads for an Al Fresco Feast (courtesy Edible BC)

True Grain is on the site of what was once “Cow” Bay’s general store at the close of the Victorian era. The deep-water port was one of the first landfalls in the area for European settlers in the 1850s, reports Kathryn Gagnon, curator of the Cowichan Valley Museum and Archives. One of the earliest local farmers, William Chalmers Duncan, arrived on the H.M.S. Hecate in August 1862 with a group of men who came to the valley in hopes of taming the wilderness. Though the task of clearing the thickly forested land proved too arduous for most, a few pioneering families with the names Dougan, Drink- water, Chisholm, Bell and Alexander did build cabins and plant crops to feed themselves and their cattle. The local population grew in earnest with the arrival of the Esquimalt & Nanaimo rail line in the 1880s. Experiments with tobacco crops failed, but dairy farming took hold. The Cowichan Creamery was producing award-winning butter by the turn of the century, and milk shipped from Duncan’s Station (as Duncan was  then known) to Victoria and Nanaimo was considered superior to any supplied by other regions because of the Cow- ichan’s lush grass and mild climate, says  Gagnon.

Mara Jenigan & the Archers, Fairburn Farm; Lyle Young, Cowichan Bay Farm

A handful of those pioneering farms are also pillars in today’s slow-food scene. Mara Jernigan’s culinary guesthouse is located on 53-hectare Fairburn Farm, a circa-1884 spread where owners Darryl and Anthea Archer operate Canada’s only water-buffalo dairy despite a rough early ride from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (which dictated that the couple’s first 18 buffalo be destroyed for fear of mad-cow disease). It’s also possible to step back into history while negotiating the rutted road into Cowichan Bay Farm. Poultry farmer Lyle Young’s grandparents first settled the acreage in the 1920s, and the past is charmingly visible in its vintage barns and farmhouse, rusted tools nailed to the sides of outbuildings and classic automobiles housed in open-door garages. Sheep browse in the close-cropped fields and mud-spackled geese honk loudly as visitors pull up to the self-serve farm store to purchase