As I write this it is early March – and the hot sun streams in my window, made hotter by reflections off the meltwater puddles on the street in front of my house. The first flowers of the year are coming out on the warm hillsides in the valley below.

This is not your typical Kootenay winter.  Maybe there is something to this “global warming” thing after all.

The annual Fernie Powder 8 Championships will go ahead full steam on Saturday March 13, 2010. Courtesy Resorts of the Canadian Rockies

However, though the bikes and skateboards are out in force in town and there has not been an appreciable snowfall for weeks, the high mountains are still covered in a blanket of white. In other words, the skiing is still incredible – and the annual Fernie Powder 8 Championships are going ahead full steam on Saturday March 13.

What you’ll see: On an untracked run, pairs of skiers will ski in tandem to leave as many 8s – or an unending infinity sign – as they can.  Skiers are judged on their style, synchronicity and the general appearance of their tracks. Of course, as is the case in Fernie most weekends, the Powder 8s are the catalyst for a fun weekend of skiing for some, heckling for others and partying for all.

Now all we need is some snow.

Lead photo courtesy Resorts of the Canadian Rockies

 • 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 Great Southern Rail

The answer is cold smoke – that white, light, powder snow that falls free all winter long across much of British Columbia, but that’s especially abundant here in the Kootenays.

Nelson's backcountry Cold Smoke Powderfest comes as Whitewater contemplates future ideas for expansion, including plans to expand into critical habitat for the south Selkirk endangered mountain caribou herd. Courtesy Whitewater

Cold smoke. Trailing behind your skis like dust on a summer logging road.

Snorkel-deep on blower days, fresh, light-as-air Kootenay powder has the elevating power to jar relationships, disrupt promising careers and turn fine upstanding citizens into disreputable ski bums. Given that one ski run in cold smoke is enough to change a life, perhaps it’s no wonder that the unrivalled lightness of skiing in the Kootenays has attracted an entire tribe of skidonists – a community where lives revolve around mountains and the need to shred.

Heads up: The good news for newbies is that the cold-smoke scene is the focus of the 4th annual Cold Smoke Powderfest, leaving tracks March 5 to 8 at Nelson’s Whitewater Resort. And with a full slate of clinics – from an Introduction to Freeheel (Telemark) to Steeps in the Backcountry and Advanced Touring Ski and Avalanche Awareness Clinics – there is something for everyone: from the polypro-clad, bearded backcountry tele-rats to the Ditrani-guilded gondola queens who’ve been eying the backcountry.

Plus: the Cold Shot Foto Face Off promises to bring some of the best ski-culture photographers together for a visual orgy of skidonism, a poker run, banked slalom, slopestyle, randonee rally and annual Cold Smoke King and Queen contests.

The good news for newbies is that the cold-smoke scene is the focus of the 4th annual Cold Smoke Powderfest, leaving tracks March 5 to 8 at Nelson’s Whitewater Resort.Courtesy Ralph Grant

Environment alert: Nelson’s backcountry fest comes as Whitewater contemplates future ideas for expansion, including plans to expand into critical habitat for the south Selkirk endangered mountain caribou herd. These critters embody the essence of wild winter backcountry mojo, and indeed help define what the Kootenays are all about. But less than 50 mountain caribou remain in the Selkirks and every kilometre of remaining habitat is critical. So if you bump into event organizers, please ask them to pass on a request to the owners to confine the resort expansion plans to already-impacted Apex Creek and to keep out of pristine Qua Creek. Part of any backcountry fest should entail protecting the backcountry. Caribou love cold smoke, too!

Lead photo courtesy Brian Sproule

Is Amtrak’s Vancouver to Seattle No. 2 a train worth fighting for?

by Rob Howatson

Amtrak passenger trains have been running between Vancouver and Seattle since 1995, offering a scenic roll across the border. But it is only in the past six months that the service has become truly practical for British Columbians looking for a daytrip or weekend in Space Needle Town.

The original schedule had Vancouverites boarding at 5:45 p.m. and arriving in Seattle just in time to check into a hotel for the night. The next day, the only train home left at dawn, unless travellers settled for a bus or a second night in the Emerald City. But a new, second Amtrak Cascades train means Canadians can now arrive at King Street Station before noon, enjoy a ball game at Safeco Field or cruise the malls, then choo-choo home at 6:50 p.m. Better yet, rail lovers can overnight in Seattle and enjoy brunch the next day at Pike Place Market before  even thinking of heading home.

Photo: Cascades at Titlow Beach, WA/courtesy Amtrak

Also read: Vancouver to Seattle the Amtrak Special

Fanorama! As in, Grouse Mountain’s new “View Pod”

by Rob Howatson

The North Shore Peaks have always offered amazing vistas of Vancouver, but now Grouse Mountain Resort is putting a whole new spin on the gawk-from-above experience with the opening of “view-pod” – an enclosed observation platform located atop the Lower Mainland’s first commercially viable wind turbine.

The 65-metre-tall energy tower, dubbed The Eye of the Wind, is perched on Grouse’s highest point, 1,295 metres above sea level. Access is via the Skyride aerial tramway, the Peak chairlift and the world’s first wind-turbine crow’s-nest elevator, from which up to 36 thrill-seekers can squeeze onto the sky-high platform to appreciate the stunning view as three 37-metre-long blades sweep past the window. (The turbine’s 1.5-megawatt generator is expected to provide enough electricity to meet 25 per cent of the ski resort’s energy consumption.)

Guides are on hand to explain how the structure was built in such a lofty setting as well as how the resort intends to minimize the impact on birds and bats. 604-980-9311

Photo courtesy flickr.com/grousemountainresort

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

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

You can bus to Banff cheaper or drive from Vancouver faster. But to fully experience Canada’s first national park, ride the train in a luxury dome car

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.

As we slip into the Grandview Cut and exit Vancouver, the clouds part, as if on cue, and the sun streams down, illuminating the Fraser Valley pastureland in all its dew-besprinkled glory. The mountains here are no more than humps on the flood plain, but they’re covered in trees and, given that it’s autumn, are an explosion of fiery hues. Still acquiring my train legs, I stagger to the front of the car where there is a small outdoor vestibule; here, passengers take turns getting slapped about by the wind and subjecting themselves to the full symphony of creaks and groans the train makes at its maximum cruise speed of 72 km/hr. It’s an exhilarating ride. But I’m still wondering how this two-day Vancouver to Banff, Rocky Mountaineer Railtour (RMR) is going to live up to its brochure promise of being “the most spectacular train trip in the world.”

CANADA'S ROCKY MOUNTAINEER Just before Skuzzy Creek, the train slows to a photo-op crawl and we gaze down into the 34-metre-wide gorge of Hell’s Gate – the only section of the Fraser River that earns a dreaded Maytag 6 rating on the whitewater charts. This is the churning broth explorer Simon Fraser described in 1808 as a place where “no human being should enter.”

Back inside the warmth and relative quiet of my 1954 heritage coach, the onboard attendant distributes snacks to the livening guests. I chat with a retired telecom worker from Hawaii about her vacation in Mongolia as our 22-car-long “consist” (industry jargon for train) abandons its carefree clickety-clack pace of the alluvial delta for a more cautious climb through the Fraser Canyon. Just before Skuzzy Creek, the train slows to a photo-op crawl and we gaze down into the 34-metre-wide gorge of Hell’s Gate – the only section of the Fraser River that earns a dreaded Maytag 6 rating on the whitewater charts. This is the churning broth explorer Simon Fraser described in 1808 as a place where “no human being should enter.” During the construction of the transcontinental railway 74 years later, workers ventured into the canyon to dangle from cliffs and stuff gunpowder into drilled holes, all the while praying they’d got the charge right.

At Lytton, we cross over the Fraser and onto a flank of the Thompson, which calls for another abrupt scenery change. Trees thin out to reveal buff-coloured bluffs and Louis L’Amour vistas. Tina, our onboard attendant – who has an impressive ability to pour drinks without missing her narration cues – dons her mike to inform us that the rock sheds (protective canopies) we’re passing through are part of the route known as Avalanche Alley – eight kilometres of slide detection fences and white-knuckle ruminating that prompt me to move to the car’s leeward side. I prefer to focus on the old telegraph poles that assume various drunken poses alongside us; the creosote stragglers once carried Morse code messages to operators in nearby shacks. Linemen jotted down transmissions on pieces of paper and posted them to a pole so that passing engineers could grab them from the windows of their moving trains.

By the time we reach Ashcroft, our train has clambered up onto B.C.’s interior plateau and the terrain has become stunningly arid. In fact, the ranching community is one of the driest places in Canada with less than 25 centimetres of annual rainfall. Sandy cliffs bleed every shade of the pastel spectrum – from rusty-looking stains of ironstone to purple and green patches of sagebrush. Other cliffs fold and undulate like walls of frozen mud. One particularly dramatic escarpment sprouts pillars from its base – an army of hoodoos rising from the scree.

Kamloops lights up red in the sunset like a Martian lunarscape. We bunk here because there are no sleeper cars on RMR trains. Instead, buses whisk us to accommodations like the Comfort Inn, leaving us just enough time to shower before we board the shuttles for RMR’s dinner cabaret. Yes, the rail tour company has branched out into the musical theatre business. And at the Colombo Lodge Italian Cultural Centre we chow down on a hearty buffet and watch a talented local cast croon and cornball their way through Tales from the Rails, a loose version of the Billy Miner story. The next morning, 21 km out of Kamloop’s station, we pass the spot where, in 1906, Miner and two fellow train robbers tried to intercept a large sum of money destined for San Francisco’s earthquake victims. (They were thwarted by a scheduling change; the train they hit yielded a paltry $15.50 and some liver pills.) Today, there isn’t much to look at on this lonely stretch of rails – no shrine to the gentleman bandit who coined the phrase “Hands Up!” – nothing but the same beguiling ranch country that the 1982 film The Grey Fox used for its account of the elderly legend, who died in a Georgia state prison 88 years ago.

As cowboy country fades behind us, we enter the Shuswap Lake district. The labyrinthine, H-shaped lake and houseboat renters’ delight has spawned every conceivable support service – including pizza delivered to one’s vessel by speedboat. This image of a Mercury-outboard ferrying Hawaiian specials out of Sicamous has me glancing up and down the aisle for our next meal cart. But there is none, because on this second day of the trip RMR has upgraded this travel writer to Gold Leaf Service, which means I’m comfortably ensconced in a bi-level dome car, sun filtering in through the car’s Plexiglas ceiling. For each repast, I merely descend a spiral staircase to the dining area’s thickly upholstered booths and await the chef’s latest creations.

The cramped but resourceful galleys successfully plate elegant courses such as Alberta striploin in a red wine demi-glace and fusilli pasta in a dried banana maple cream sauce. Gold Leaf is clearly the way to go (bearing in mind that with fares starting at $1,179, it’s twice as expensive as Red Leaf). My timing for the dome car move is also perfect; for, as we hit Revelstoke, the geography throws us a new ripple – mountain ranges. Lots of them. The Selkirks, the Purcells, the Beaverfoot range, all in quick succession. Peaks 2,700 metres high warp through the bevelled glass roof, leaning over the tracks like giants inspecting an ant trail.

I don’t hear any mid-mountain yelps so I assume modern travellers are a tamer bunch – unlike the wife of Canada’s first prime minister, Agnes Macdonald. During a trip aboard the transcontinental in 1886, she insisted on riding atop the train’s front bumper. The engineer played along, but he must have been sweating bullets. The first lady had chosen the steepest section of track to be out on the cowcatcher – the drop between Hector and Field known as the Big Hill.

Meekly, we dart into a cave, the eight-km-long Connaught Tunnel, built in 1916 to avoid the heavy snowfalls of Rogers Pass. It’s a long haul through solid rock but not as impressive as the nearby Mount Macdonald Tunnel, which covers almost 14 km (North America’s longest). Our attendant deadpans that in frontier days, female passengers thwarted men trying to steal kisses in the dark by clamping hatpins between their lips. I don’t hear any mid-mountain yelps so I assume modern travellers are a tamer bunch – unlike the wife of Canada’s first prime minister, Agnes Macdonald. During a trip aboard the transcontinental in 1886, she insisted on riding atop the train’s front bumper. The engineer played along, but he must have been sweating bullets. The first lady had chosen the steepest section of track to be out on the cowcatcher – the drop between Hector and Field known as the Big Hill. Before it was replaced by the Spiral Tunnels, this was the CPR’s weakest link for 22 years, a 4.5 per cent grade (twice today’s allowable steepness) that forced long freights to break down into smaller trains to tackle the plunge.

We soon pass through the Valley of the Ten Peaks, a towering picket fence of summits that march off into the distance. As majestic as they are, however, they pale in comparison to Mount Temple – the most massive and highest peak in the Lake Louise area.

Transfixed by the sight of the 1929 Stoney Creek Bridge arching its steel body over the cascading waters of Mount Tupper, I’m glued to the window with each braided river we pass, each jade-coloured lake. And as the train labours up the snow-dusted approach to Mount Stephen and we breach 1,625 metres, I step through the automated sliding door onto the viewing platform – like going from a fireside lounge to a walk-in freezer. My car mates, Laurie and Rachel, stand at the chrome railing and study the small ditch that trickles alongside the tracks. “We’re coming up on the Continental Divide,” explains Laurie. “Watch the flow of the water. When we hit the divide it’s going to stop babbling west and start bubbling east.” That’s the significance of this, the highest point in our journey, which separates the Pacific watershed from the Atlantic one. Although when we actually roll past the commemorative marker on the border between B.C.’s Yoho National Park and Alberta’s Banff National Park, we can’t see the ditch water because it is sealed beneath a thin scrim of ice. Nonetheless, the huddled group lets out a muffled cheer through scarves and zipped-up collars.

The train immediately picks up speed as we begin our approach into Banff. We soon pass through the Valley of the Ten Peaks, a towering picket fence of summits that march off into the distance. As majestic as they are, however, they pale in comparison to Mount Temple – the most massive and highest peak in the Lake Louise area. Like so many of the breathtaking spires we encounter, it is a helmet-shaped wonder etched with powdery horizontal lines and capped with a hanging glacier. Its grandiose hulk stands alone above the forest, defiant. In 1955, seven climbers died on its southwest ridge (Canada’s most costly mountaineering accident), and the cliffs of its north face were left unscaled until the 1960s.

We arrive in Banff at dusk, feeling humbled by the awesome display of nature and eager to de-train so we can experience the Rocky Mountain thrill on foot. Our journey has transported us from sea level to the top of the continent and lived up to all of its brochure promises, except one – we didn’t get to see a lot of wildlife.

No sooner has this occurred to me, though, than a large, beefy elk saunters across the station parking lot. Welcome to the park that rail built.

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

Photos: Rocky Mountaineer

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

The go-to guide — when you’ve barely got a weekend

  by Jim Sutherland

From May to October 2010, China’s biggest, busiest and flashiest city is hosting what promises to be the biggest, busiest and flashiest World’s Fair ever. The only problem may be determining which neighbourhood crowded with pedestrian throngs and architectural marvels is the fair site and which is just Shanghai.

Pudong, for example, an area of town conceived in the 1990s, rivals anything the fair’s designers have come up with. And that’s saying something, with the United Kingdom’s pavilion a fuzzball of pixels that shimmer in the wind and Canada’s turned over carte blanche to Cirque du Soleil. Given that building construction elsewhere in the world is largely curtailed these days, all that creativity is a bonanza for those keen on architecture, design or technology – or who merely like to be whispered to by trees, as will happen outside the Israeli pavilion. On summer days, a half-million people are expected at the five-square-kilometre riverside site, to mingle with robots and ogle such treasures as Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid, relocated for the duration. And just outside the fair gates, Shanghai will bustle as only Shanghai can.

“Ambitious” doesn’t begin to describe this city of 20 million-plus, where vice is tolerated as if it were Bangkok and capitalism pursued as if it were New York. No other place melds First and Third Worlds in quite the same way, particularly given the subtle but nevertheless omnipresent overlay of communist government. (That poster-portrait of a smiling authority figure could be Chairman Mao, still emblematic of the PRC, or, equally likely, Colonel Sanders, emblematic of KFC, a surprise Chinese sensation.) Case in point: Nanjing Road is thought to be the largest shopping destination in Asia, if not worldwide. The kilometre-plus pedestrian mall links the historic Bund district (with the planet’s largest stock of Art Deco buildings) to People’s Square. Of course, nowadays, that vast civic complex might more accurately be called People-Watching Square – one more indication of Shanghai’s emphatic arrival as a global capital.

Shanghai: Insider’s Guide

The Go Spots Shanghai can be frantic, and its summers hot and muggy, so make a point of getting out of town. •  Arrange a day tour to ancient canal-side water villages, including Suzhou and Zhouzhuang. •  Overnight at Hangzhou for a boat ride on beautiful West Lake, once an Imperial retreat. •  Bus, train or fly to Huangshan in the Yellow Mountains. Reach your peak-top hotel by half-day climb, cable car or — for the truly lazy, decadent or romantic — sedan chair.

Trendy Vittles Restaurants of every type abound, but how about, oh, Chinese? Tourists and ex-pats tend to frequent spots such as Xintiandi, a pedestrian complex re-creating the Shanghai of the 1920s and lined with top-notch eateries (including Ye Shanghai and Crystal Jade). But everyday restaurants provide similar fare for far less, typically for under $5 per person. At the most basic you’ll be led to a counter and asked to point out which plucked chicken, wriggling fish or other unidentifiable ingredient you’d like sautéed.

Best Crash Zones Shanghai’s traffic is horrendous, so being central is key.

•  The Seagull on the Bund is a slightly tarnished Art Deco jewel with amazing views of Pudong, a four-star rating and specials dipping well below $100/night.

SHANGHAI The Park Hyatt Shanghai occupies floors – 79 to 93 – of one of the world’s 10 tallest buildings. Courtesy Hyatt Hotels and Resorts

•  The Park Hyatt Shanghai occupies floors 79 to 93 of one of the world’s 10 tallest buildings. Rates: commensurate but lower than they’d be in other countries.

>>Former WL editor and now MyWestworld Vancouver city columnist Jim Sutherland blogs on Vancouver Chinatown’s Centre A, one of the world’s leading exhibitors of contemporary Asian art — and a world-class tea steeper during the Olympics with calligraphy/tea master Brian Mulvihill.

>>Plus: The Perfect Tea at MyWestworld.com/tea

>>For a heads up on Victoria’s fusian tea emporium/tasting bar/spa): An Educated Sip: Victoria’s Top Tea House

Seattle foodie tours, courtesy of the Choo-Choo Yum-Yum

by Rob Howatson

In the spring 2010 issue of Westworld magazine (due out February 19 to 23), I write about how crucial it is to have two Amtrak trains operating daily between Seattle and Vancouver, B.C. (See “Keep the B-Train” in the Fresh Trax section.) This two-train system is the only way to provide a schedule that is amicable for both southbound and northbound travellers who wish to spend a night in either city and have some fun. But as I point out in the article, the current two-train system is a pilot project that will be re-evaluated after the 2010 Olympics. If the second train is yanked, the schedule will likely revert to its pre-August 2009 incarnation, which had Vancouverites arriving in Seattle late at night. And if these same visitors wanted to choo-choo back to Vancouver the next day, their only option was an early morning departure, leaving no time to explore the Emerald City.

So let us hope that the B.C. government, Amtrak, the Washington State Department of Transportation and the Canada Border Services Agency can come to some agreement to keep both train sets running daily – because, most definitely, the Amtrak service is a comfortable and affordable way to access Washington State. Reclining leather seats, video monitors that show movies, a bistro car and the opportunity to stroll about the train during transit make it a far more relaxing way to journey over the border than travelling in a cramped street vehicle. True, the train is not as fast as going by car or bus, but the tracks follow a more scenic route, at times skirting the shores of Puget Sound.

VANCOUVER TO SEATTLE Amtrak's two-train schedule is the only way to provide a schedule that's amicable for both southbound and northbound travellers – at least those who want to spend a night in either city and have some fun.

And, Seattle-bound passengers arrive at the elegant King Street Station, which is nearing completion of a $27-million renovation to restore the clock-towered terminal to its 1906 railway cathedral glory.

I took advantage of Amtrak’s dual-train service this spring and found downtown Seattle full of amazing structures, old and new, and found the best way to get acquainted with them quickly was to reserve a spot on one of the Seattle Architecture Foundation’s walking tours. Typical stops include the late-’70s Rainier Tower, designed by Minoru Yamasaki who also did Manhattan’s late World Trade Centre, and the ultra modern Central Library, which The New Yorker’s architecture critic has declared “the most important new library to be built in a generation.”

Another must-do walk is a Savor Seattle Food Tour. The company offers three different graze-and-gazer options: The Pike Place Market Tour, Gourmet Seattle Tour and Chocolate Indulgence Tour. I did the Gourmet one and it was amazing to see how an invigorating urban dash, interspersed with artisan-quality noshing, can lead a group of strangers to bond in the course of a three-hour tour. It didn’t hurt that our guide was a lovable eccentric with the facial hair of a pirate. Eric also sported an industrial-grade kilt and, at one point in the itinerary, belted out a few lines from a rollicking sea shanty — and that was before we reached the Pike Brewing Company.

The Gourmet tour begins at The Mayflower Park Hotel, where cocktails are served at The Andaluca Restaurant, and then everybody conga lines out into the street, meandering through an upscale pizzeria, a romantic pasta nook, a sausage kiosk, the techno-slick ART Restaurant and a couple other eateries. The final sampling takes place at the tastebud-bursting gelateria called Gelatiamo.

Rating: All the foods and drinks sampled were delicious. The chefs of the different properties were often on hand to explain their processes and culinary philosophies in person. Eric injected titillating bits of Seattle history when he wasn’t cracking us up with his pink umbrella dance. In fact, I was disappointed and shocked at how quickly the three hours disappeared. Fortunately there are two more Savor Seattle tours to try on my next Amtrak-to-Seattle jaunt.

>>More Amtrak reading:  Keep the B-Train

>>What’s your favourite guided walking tour?  Any particularly good ones in B.C. we should know about?

Photo: courtesy Amtrak

by James Glave

“If you’re extra lucky, you’ll get yourselves invited to a kitchen party,” Terri Shea told Elle and me in the days leading up to our Newfoundland vacation. “Friends and neighbours get together and play instruments and sing and tell stories and drink. That’s the real deal out there.”

Shea, a close friend who hails from “the Rock” but now lives just down the street from our home on Bowen Island, B.C., had just “Screeched in” the two of us in her living room. As per Newfoundland custom, the wife and I had each downed a shot of cheap rum and kissed a frozen salmon. The coho was a West Coast stand-in for the cod that Newfoundlanders traditionally pull out of the fridge for the ceremony that awards honourary citizenship to those who, like us, “come from aways.”

So we’d necked with a fish. We’d been made titular locals and had the certificates to prove it – direct from the Internet via inkjet printer. But we both knew we were Newfoundlanders on paper only. We wanted the real deal.

Little did we know that on the last night of our future trip, we’d not only track down a bona fide kitchen party – complete with an old guy crooning fishermen’s ballads out of a ragged coil-bound notebook – we’d do ourselves even better. We’d actually host it. But then, we had a little help from Ken Sooley.

[Newfoundland Kitchen Party]

Porch party at the Mouland house / courtesy James Glave

“We’re providing a brand-new concept in experiential travel,” the 48-year-old president of CapeRace Cultural Adventures had said of his new venture, which was just wrapping up its first full season. “We’ve designed a way for people to become integrated into three local communities, and each has a different take on the Newfoundland lifestyle.” In other words, Sooley’s company could offer what Shea’s gag certificates could not – admission to the inner circle of a variety of small outport communities up and down Newfoundland’s eastern shores, complete with meaningful and spontaneous interactions between visitors and locals. Indeed, the CapeRace experience remains unique in North America, delivering an uncanned and authentic sense of place and its people. So much so, in fact, that National Geographic Traveler magazine last year declared it “one of the Top 50 tours of a lifetime.”

The appeal? Sooley connects his clients with “fixers,” the kind of on-the-ground contacts a journalist might hire to establish local sources and get the inside scoop while on assignment in a far-off country. Want to try squid jigging in a working fishboat? Just call Jerry or Elizabeth. They’ll pop over, introduce you to the neighbours – here’s hoping you can understand a word they are saying – and suggest whom you might call and what you might offer to pay.

Hi-fi at E.J. Sooley house / courtesy James Glave

And so, for 10 days in mid-July, Sooley’s company would “embed” Elle and me in a couple of remote fishing villages, some of which look much as they did in the 19th century when the salted cod trade was at its peak. We’d bunk down in heritage homes that Sooley had purchased and restored over a period of several years, one in the historic Battery neighbourhood in St. John’s, the others in the village of Heart’s Delight and the town of Bonavista – houses as authentic as the communities they stand in.

The E.J. Sooley house in Heart’s Delight, for example, belongs to Sooley’s grandfather. It still contains the original enamel appliances and fixtures, right down to the squeaky cast-iron beds and bare-bulb kitchen light we’d switch on and off via a dangling string. Meanwhile, up in Bonavista, the marvellously quirky Thomas Mouland house once belonged to a man involved in the great sealing disaster of 1914 – a dark chapter of the province’s history in which 78 sealers were inadvertently abandoned on the ice floes to perish in a blizzard.

The cold North Atlantic is just a stone’s throw from the front porch of the Thomas Mouland house, but the closest we’ve come to it so far is the “bergy bit” that Sooley has stashed in the freezer. He recovered the microwave-oven-sized piece of ice off the beach some months prior. On our first of three nights in Bonavista, it has become my routine to chip a few chunks off the salvaged berg and drop them in my tumbler of “Screech” rum, which I’m enjoying on the porch this evening with Lloyd – our designated local contact and Sooley’s sole contractor.

“You know, when we was fixing this place up,” says Lloyd, “there were 13 layers of linoleum on the kitchen floor. When one piece wore out, the old guy just laid himself a fresh piece right on top. It took two weeks to get it all up.” Lloyd decided to pay homage to the Mouland’s century-long chronicle of renovations. And so, each step of the building’s narrow staircase now showcases a different pattern of flooring, one for each decade it lay hidden underfoot.

After a few minutes, Lloyd and I are joined by Dorman,* a neighbour from across the street who owns a nearby convenience store. As the three of us shoot the breeze, a grey whale follows suit in the background, blowing plumes of salt spray into the sky a quarter-mile offshore.

Dorman, 57, explains how it used to be around here. “With the winter starms we get these days, you can har the floor of the ocean rumbling and groaning-like.” He wears dress slacks with a starched shirt the colour of Dijon mustard, his hair Brylcreemed back. “It’s like the whole bottom of the sea is roaring and heavin’. Mam said you never used to har that. It’s changin’.”

Bonavista's Thomas Mouland house / courtesy James Glave

The sea isn’t the only thing in flux here on the brink of the North Atlantic. Lloyd and Dorman and I look out across the fields of swaying long grass, past the “flakes” – spindly replica cod drying racks the local historic society has installed for the benefit of tourists – and toward the houses scattered here and there along the gravel waterfront road that passes in front of us.

“This whole field used to be full of houses, see?” says Dorman, waving his arm at the emptiness.

“What happened to them all?” I ask.

“The people died or moved. Thar houses all either fell down or was knocked down.”

About 3,700 hardy souls call Bonavista home today, but like many other towns across Newfoundland, its population has been shrinking since 1992. That was the year the federal government placed a moratorium on cod fishing in an effort to protect those few fish that remained. With the stroke of a pen, a resource and an industry already beyond the point of exhaustion was legally pronounced dead. Tens of thousands lost their jobs. The province’s economy had become so dependent on the sea that many were forced to pack up and leave, an out-migration that continues to this day. Some 5,000 Newfoundlanders still move “aways” each year, including many of the younger generation, like our neighbour back home, Terri Shea. The remaining population is greying quickly; children represent only 15 per cent of the island’s overall head count.

“It was so different when I was nine or 10,” says Dorman. “This here main road was jammed with people, all of them takin’ in the catch, splittin’ it, houses and stores and sheds all over. And this road here back of us was a railroad track. They’d bring in coal on the ships and load it up on rail cars and deliver it around the neighbourhood, see?”

I almost can, though the tracks are long gone. The lane in question – well above the level of the surrounding fields – is more roadbed than road.

“And that old wharf?” The crumbling pier is just over the fence beyond the front yard. “My brother’s best friend drowned right thar,” says Dorman. “Mam says he was eatin’ a molasses sandwich and jumping ’tween the dories. Went right in. And he was gan. Just like ’dat.”

“He couldn’t swim?” I ask, incredulous.

“None of us could,” he replies, then reflects. “There’s a lot of history thar.”

Indeed there is. And without Ken Sooley and Lloyd making the introductions, I wouldn’t have heard the half of it.

CapeRace appeals to a fairly specific kind of traveller, the sort who doesn’t mind venturing outside his or her comfort zone once in awhile. (The folks who were across the street from us in Heart’s Delight, for example, have a habit of setting up lawn chairs to watch the new arrivals. Evidently, there’s not a lot else to do.) But then, the public’s appetite for such raw experiences is on the rise.

“Ever since 9/11, people have been searching for something deeper,” says Patty Morgan, executive director of the Travel and Tourism Research Association, an industry trade group based in Boise, Idaho. “They don’t want the Holiday Inn with the pool and the continental breakfast.” And though he has not heard of anything else quite like CapeRace in North America, says Peter Yesawich, whose firm Ypartnership tracks emerging travel trends, “the appeal of this kind of deep authenticity has certainly grown. And I only see it increasing,” he adds, “particularly among the Millenniums – sub-boomer travellers in their late twenties and early thirties.”

The key to Sooley’s operation is his self-published Traveller’s Diary guidebook, available only to CapeRace clients. It’s a compilation of local lore and essential info specific to the towns on the CapeRace loop – such as the rules of the classic Newfoundland card game 120s – plus the home numbers of Sooley’s local contacts. “The neighbours are an interesting bunch and may drop by,” he notes in one chapter. “Tell Harv I sent you and ask him about the unusual bingo games he hosts on Monday nights.” (Apparently, with help from Sooley, the wiley pub owner came up with an ingenious scheme to bring in the town’s women, many of whom have husbands working aways in the Alberta oil patch: he doles out adult novelties as prizes.)

Sooley has certainly picked the right place to launch his new-era travel experiment. This trip is my first foray into Newfoundland, and I’ve never felt so much a foreigner inside my own country. Our youngest province is a region apart – a time warp to a more innocent age, largely untouched by the soul-draining crush of mass tourism. It’s a place where the culture has evolved in isolation from the rest of Canada, the result of small outport communities that for centuries were effectively cut off from one another by fierce winters.

As for the Newfoundland dialect, it can be as impenetrable as the province’s harsh interior landscape: the thousands of kilometres of scrub and ponds known simply as the Barrens. Then there are the mannerisms. Newfoundland men greet each other with a quick left-to-right sideways nod, and I know I’m starting to fit in when I experience the tradition first-hand outside the Bonavista Foodland grocery. Considering Newfoundland’s relative accessibility today, it remains one of the most unpackaged and unpretentious places on the continent. Yet for all its distinctive charms, it is refreshingly open to outsiders. That reality was only underscored on 9/11, when the small town of Gander opened its doors to the 6,500 unscheduled guests who found themselves stranded here when U.S.-bound flights were diverted by the closure of American airspace.

Catered "Light House" picnic / courtesy James Glave

We caught our first taste of this legendary hospitality in Heart’s Delight – almost halfway through our 10-day sojourn, after three days traipsing the cathedrals, back streets and hilltop cannon batteries of St. John’s. Elizabeth and Jerry, our designated local contacts, were still travelling back from Nova Scotia when we arrived at the charming oceanfront E.J. Sooley cottage. We’d feared we’d be on our own in this blip-sized outport, with no TV, radio or board games, not even a pub or coffee shop to show up at, and rain in the forecast to boot. The only available source of diversion: a pre-stereo record player tucked away in a cabinet and a copy of Reels and Jigs of Newfoundland – one of a clutch of profoundly scratched-up old LPs, the novelty of which wore thin after just a few cacophonous minutes. But then Donna Reid knocked on the door and introduced herself as Sooley’s cousin.

“Say, you know, the capelin are supposed to star’ rollin’ any day now. Would you like to go out tammara morning to see if we can see ’em?”

The capelin are a needle-thin fish, relatives of the freshwater smelt. For much of its life, the species lives in deep water, but in June and July its numbers “roll” up on Newfoundland’s beaches to spawn by the tens of thousands. The locals show up to watch and pull them out of the surf in buckets, either to smoke and eat or dig into their gardens as fertilizer. The roll is apparently quite a spectacle – a frenzied oceanic orgy attended by hungry gulls, seals and sometimes whales – and certainly one of the highlights of the year for the people of Heart’s Delight, population 663. And, said Reid, as luck would have it, the procreation party might well kick off tomorrow morning.

The dawn was just breaking as Reid drove us down a rutted, unmarked dirt road to a bluff overlooking a quiet cove. We peered out through the wet windshield.

Though Reid assured us that conditions were perfect for getting it on capelin-style – it’s raining, she said, and a frigid north wind was blowing down from Labrador – evidently the fish weren’t feeling particularly frisky that morning.

A neighbour pulled up alongside and rolled down the window. “Hey, Donna,” he said, “see anyting out thar?”

“I think I can see ’em offshore, the water looks dark, but they’re not comin’ in,” our host replied.

“Funny that, you’d think they would.”

“Yeash, we’ve got the narth wind,” she noted.

“Yeash,” the friend answered with a chuckle. “The wind we don’t wont don’t even bring the capelin in.”

The following morning, we were about to motor out of the driveway for the long haul up the Bonavista Peninsula when Jerry and Elizabeth – who is another of Sooley’s cousins – stopped by. They’d just returned from their vacation and were hoping to catch us to say hello before we left. We chatted for a bit, and though we’d had a great time in their village, doing not much of anything except wandering the bluffs, picking wild strawberries and taking the odd day trip, they felt bad for mostly missing us. They wanted to send us off properly.

“Can we talk you into taking some moose sausages with you?” Jerry offered. “They’re really, really good ones.”

If there were such a thing as an official protein census of Newfoundland freezers, moose would doubtless come out in the count way ahead of hamburger. The beasts have thrived here since the first pair was introduced from Nova Scotia more than a century back, and hunting them is for many a way of life. The population is now so healthy that the province’s long-haul truckers weld heavy steel-tube grills – called “moose cages” – to the business end of their rigs to minimize the damage of inevitable collisions.

“That would be lovely,” I told Jerry. “If you can spare one or two links, we can probably tuck ’em into the top of the cooler.”

“Great, I’ll just run over and get ’em.”

Days later, having consumed over the preceding 72 hours somewhere between eight and 10 pounds of moose sausage, moose steak and moose burgers, I am sitting out on the porch in Bonavista watching the light fade. I sip on my Screech and listen to the wind blow through the tall grass that surrounds our tiny house and the pop and crack of the ice in my glass that was last liquid around 11,000 years back.

My cellphone breaks the peace. It’s Lloyd on the line: “How you gettin’ on over thar this evenin’?” he asks.

“Very well, thanks.”

“Good. Say, a group of us boys was thinkin’ of comin’ by tammara night to play a little music thar. D’y think that’d be alright?”

“I think that would be just fine with us, Lloyd,” I say. “Just fine.”

Author James Glave

In addition to being a “titular Newfie,” James Glave is also a former Outside magazine senior editor and the author of Almost Green: How I Built an Eco-Shed, Ditched My SUV, Alienated the Inlaws, and Changed My Life (Greystone Books, 2008; $22).

An interview with author James Glave and an excerpt from his recent book can be enjoyed at MyWestworld.com/jamesglave

Listen in on more “embedded vacation” Maritimes hilarity (a little lobster fishing, “tonging” for oysters or moonshine making, anyone?). MyWestworld.com/podcasts.

the rock-onnoitre experts

CapeRace Cultural Adventures offers 10-day, nine-night packages, including rental car, exclusive use of three coastal homes and a custom guidebook. Circuits begin in St. John’s and conclude in Bonavista, departing every four days between April and October. U.S. $1,495 per person based on four-person occupancy; U.S. $2,600 based on two-person occupancy. Kids under 16 travel free. mail@caperace.com

See also: Bowen Island: One Man’s Eco Quest.

Lead photo courtesy Ken Sooley

by Andrew Findlay

Somewhere in the primordial recesses of a skier’s mind is the memory of a ramshackle operation where the lifts barely limp from one day to the next. There are no double de-caf lattes whipped up by young baristas with Australian accents; instead, hearty bowls of chile con carne are served by a swarthy woman in a white apron who looks like she fells old-growth Douglas firs in her spare time. In other words: this place hasn’t been branded into some generic, four-season destination of over-inflated real estate with slick high-speed lifts whisking skiers to the top of runs as manicured as pressed corduroy slacks. And believe it or not, it exists.

Whenever I need to ground myself with the soul of skiing, I head north 120 km Campbell River to Mount Cain – tucked into the rugged folds of Vancouver Island. Run by a non-profit society, Cain has a total complement of one glove-shredding rope tow and two T-bars. And it’s here at 10 a.m. one morning this week that I stand with my cohorts: Guy, a pilot, and Jan, a local mountain guide, at the “golf clubs ” – a knob of rock that’s a short bootpack above the top T-bar. Snow ghost trees are laden with fresh snow. Below us, the west bowl is a tantalizing sight, unblemished by a single track. Soon familiar faces join us: Tod, Song and a few other bushy-bearded folks with duct tape holding their gloves together, skiing enthusiasts I meet only when I go to Cain.  One by one we drop into a narrow chute funneling into the bowl. Calf-deep snow curls from ski tips, frosting our faces. And together we relish in the shared euphoria of a ski hill that is too far from anywhere to be of interest to real estate speculators. This is where the soul of skiing still dwells.

by Dave Quinn

Kicking Horse Resort's big-mountain triathlon: Wrangle the Chute, February 6 and 7.

Not only do competitors have to style their way down some of Kicking Horse’s extreme, leg-burning chutes, they then face a massive terrain park where the sky is literally the limit for spins and tricks. After that, competitors gear up for the final and most gruelling challenge of this big-mountain triathlon – the bucking bronco. And you can be sure that at a resort with a name like Kicking Horse, this is no easy ride.

To view the huckin’ and buckin’ action in person, get yerself to Heaven’s Door Yurt in Crystal Bowl at high noon on February 6 and 7. And if all that skiin’ and bronc’ ridin’, live DJ’s and western-style bar-b-q don’t tucker you out and fill you up, you can always hit the Texas Hold’em poker contest at the Day Lodge, starting at 6 p.m. 

Yippee Kai-yai-yay!

Photos courtesy Andrew Wheelhouse Photos: moonrakerphotography.com

While most Kootenay golf courses lie dormant and silent under winter’s white blanket, Kimberley’s Bootleg Gap will howl to life on February 20 and 21 with B.C.’s second annual Bootleg Sled Dog Races

I'll be blogging from the races and reporting back on how much money gets raised; so shoot me a line about your own highlights/racing stories and we'll get the word out. –Dave

by Dave Quinn

Last year’s Bootleg Sled Dog Races were a huge hit for racers and spectators alike. Snow flew, tongues lolled, competitors and the crowd hooted, hollered and barked for joy. And best of all, more than $18,000 was raised for the East Kootenay Friends of Children Fund, which helps offset travel costs for families of children who need to travel for specialized medical treatment.

Noticeably absent from this year’s February event, however, will be the canines from local Adrenaline Dog Sled Tours – they’ll be at the Olympics on an important and covert mission, delivering “as-yet-unspecified” performers to the outdoor stages in Whistler (while showcasing B.C. tourism for Olympic spectators from around the world, of course). But even without the celebrated Adrenaline racers, the event remains a fabulous chance to experience one of the most unique winter sports attractions in B.C., with high-speed, family oriented competition, a glorious setting at the foot of the Purcell Mountains in the expansive Kootenay Valley – and all for a good cause, to boot.

So harness up the team and mush your way to Bootleg Gap Golf Course in Kimberley – for one of the most memorable winter events of the year. See you there! 

>>I’ll be blogging from the races and reporting back on how much money gets raised; so shoot me a line about your own highlights/racing stories and we’ll get the word out

Photos: courtesy Bootleg Sled Dog Races

Most of  have heard of Cirque du Soleil. But what about the smaller – yet equally astonishing – Cirque Sublime? The Toronto-based acrobatic troupe relies not only on athletic prowess to pull off breathtaking performances, but also incorporates vibrant costumes and makeup, visually stunning sets and a heart-pounding score. Shows feature fire, dance and death-defying acrobats for an experience that stimulates the mind as well as the senses. The end result: one of those rare performances that leaves audience members gasping, “Did you see that!?”

Vernon, February 7. Ticket info: 416-935-0037

DUNCAN  February 6, 2010 – Bigleaf Maple Syrup Festival

DUNCAN The B.C. Forest Discovery Centre's now-annual tribute to Canada’s iconic sweet stuff: the Bigleaf Maple Syrup Festival. Courtesy Gary Backlund

Time to slap on the beaver hat and break out the red-and-white attire – for the B.C. Forest Discovery Centre’s  now-annual tribute to Canada’s iconic sweet stuff: the Bigleaf Maple Syrup Festival. The curious can master the art of tapping, sit in on cooking demonstrations and compete for the Best Maple Syrup prize in a contest judged by Vancouver Island celebrity chefs. Highlights: live music and a scenic trundle aboard the B.C. Forest Museum train. (Admission includes train rides and food samples.)

Info and tickets purchases: 250-715-1113

VICTORIA  February 13-14, 2010 – Victoria Tea Festival

Henry Fielding had it right when he declared: “Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.” For socializing over a cup of steaming brew is a tradition revered the world over; there’s something universally soothing about cradling a warm mug and indulging in a hearty chat. And every year, B.C.’s Victoria Tea Festival pays homage to the mighty tea leaf by inviting enthusiasts to sample exotic flavours from around the world, with representatives from tea houses, bakeries, chocolate shops and restaurants on hand to answer questions about pairings and provide sips and nibbles. Bonus: a crash course in Chinese tea ceremonies (courtesy of Victoria’s Silk Road), a silent auction and reflective readings by author Earlene Grey.

Weekend passes: $20 in advance, $25 at the door. 250-370-4888

Further reading: An Educated Sip; Silk Road Reverie

VANCOUVER Gearing up for Canada's third Olympic Games, with 600-plus free and ticketed performances and exhibitions. Photo courtesy VANOC-COVAN

VANCOUVER  February 12-18, 2010 – Winter Olympic Games

The anticipation has reached fever pitch, now that the countdown to Vancouver 2010 is on the home stretch – with Canada gearing up to host its third Olympic Games. After the opening ceremonies (February 12, 6 p.m. at Vancouver’s B.C. Place), more than 5,000 athletes from nations around the world will go on to represent their home countries in 15 winter sporting events – cheered on by lucky fans who have managed to snag seats. However, even those without event tickets can take part in the festivities: Vancouver, Whistler and Richmond are presenting 600-plus free and ticketed performances and exhibitions, and cities across the province are getting into the spirit with their own community-oriented entertainment. Bonus: the Vancouver Art Gallery is offering free admission for the duration of the Games.

Detailed list of entertainment options and venues: Cultural Olympiad 2010 Program Guide, at community centres and cultural venues throughout Vancouver.

Tickets, transportation, accommodation and athlete info: 1-800-842-5387

GRANVILLE ISLAND, VANCOUVER  February 19-27, 2010: Winterruption Festival

VANCOUVER Granville Island’s annual Winterruption Festival celebrates the city's vibrant arts culture – including kids' workshops on musical instrument-making. Photo courtesy Granville Island

Granville Island’s annual Winterruption Festival celebrates the city’s vibrant arts culture with free musical and theatre spectacles, brewery jigs, workshops, jugglers, stilt-walkers and kids’ events (including sessions on crafting musical instruments) – fuelled by  savoury wares and foodie seminars. Bonus: free Theatresports matinees.

604-666-5784.

INTERNATIONAL PICK: NEW YORK CITY  February 26-28: New York Times Travel Show

The New York Times hosts the mother of all travel shows, and in the process provides would-be jetsetters with hundreds of ways to answer the question, “Where should I go next?” The main attraction: 500 exhibitors highlight the world’s top destinations, cruises and hotels/resorts, with experts answering questions and offering insider travel advice. Plus: travel seminars held by industry heavyweights, including guidebook gurus Arthur and Pauline Frommer and Patricia Schultz, author of 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. Not to be missed: international stage performances and culinary presentations focus on foods and flavours from around the globe. And bring the kids along: instructors will be on hand to teach scuba diving and rock-climbing skills, while animal-lovers can sit in on the Busch Gardens’ live show.

Tickets and info: 1-800-322-9332

Lead photo courtesy VANOC-COVAN

As the entire Lower Mainland rumbles and hums with Olympic anticipation, my home town of Kimberley feels a long way off from all the hype and excitement of the world’s greatest winter sports extravaganza. Some 907 kilometres away, in fact.

courtesy Bruce Kirkby

This daunting distance from the Kimberley Nordic Trails to the Olympic Nordic Ski venue in the Callaghan Valley isn’t fazing a group of young Kimberley athletes, however. The cross-country skiers of the local Jackrabbits Track Attack Program are getting into the Olympic spirit by skiing 907 km on Kimberley’s world-class Nordic trail system. Aged nine to 12, the skiers have divided the daunting distance into 180-km sections and are charting their journey one kilometre at a time on the Kimberley Nordic Club’s warming-hut wall.

While they may not be front and centre as Olympic athletes from around the world cross the finish line at the Callaghan Valley Nordic events, these young athletes from the B.C. Interior embody the essence of the Olympic spirit, and are willing to ski nearly 1,000 km to celebrate it, one kick and glide at a time.

The lower mainland is caught up in medal fever. While the rest of us from “beyond Hope”, may not feel the impacts of the games directly, most of us feel strongly, one way or the other, about the Olympics. What are athletes/sports fans/artists in your community doing to celebrate the Olympics? Send me a tweet @KootenayDave to let me know.

Lead photo courtesy Bruce Kirkby.

Heritage Vancouver has a knack for hosting weird events in wonderful locations. Or perhaps they are wonderful events in weird locations. All I know is that I always come away from their functions feeling giddy, having learned some new secret that helps me better understand the city, having accessed some place that few people get to visit now and having met people who know about Vancouver’s past because they were actually there.

Such was the case last Wednesday with one of the non-profit’s most popular fundraisers: An Evening at the Penthouse. (The event sold out so quickly that Heritage Vancouver has scheduled a don’t miss follow-up for January 27.)

A Brief History of The Penthouse Nightclub

The Penthouse Night Club was founded in 1947 by the Filippone brothers, Joe, Ross, Mickey and Jimmy. It quickly grew to become one of the city’s hottest supper clubs, attracting headliners such as Sammy Davis Jr, Nat King Cole and The Mills Brothers. Today the business is a strip club run by Ross’s son, Danny. And the 47-year-old impresario, looking down-to-earth chic in blue jeans and untucked dress shirt, seemed genuinely happy to host a crowd that was there more for the built heritage than the built hotties.

He gave us an extensive tour of the establishment, starting right out front on the sidewalk at 1019 Seymour near Nelson. Anyone who has been downtown at night has seen this pink-neon-trimmed, three-storey building with the red flashing arrow on its marquee, beaconing partiers to enter the chrome-quilted doors under the smiling visage of two show girl cut-outs affixed to the pansy-purple façade. But Danny wanted us to note the old house engulfed in the shadows next door. 1033 Seymour was purchased by Danny’s grandfather in 1932, and one of the last remaining single-family, detached homes in the neighbourhood, though “single-family” might be a bit of a misnomer. The narrow abode stretches back 120 feet, far enough to accommodate eight bedrooms and three kitchens.

It was in this house, in 1983, that Danny’s uncle Joe was shot and killed by a 25-year-old unemployed plumber from Ontario. The gunman was after the contents of Joe’s home office safe and he made off with $1,200 before being arrested at Hastings Park Racetrack a few days later. But Danny prefers to dwell on the good memories he has of 1033 Seymour. Such as launching Halloween fireworks from the property’s deeply sequestered courtyard and watching the police circle the block in a futile attempt to locate the source. Or discovering a hole in one of the home’s walls, reaching in and pulling out a small chest containing a stack of autographed celebrity photos — a who’s who of Penthouse visitors. To see the 8×10 glossies and hear the stories they represent, we follow our guide back into the iconic club.

___________________________________________________

We tour abandoned rooms, such as the small

lounge with a baby grand that once serviced the ivory ticklers

of jazzlegend Duke Ellington.

_____________________________________________

Danny leads us up to the building’s second and third floors, areas normally closed to the public. We tour abandoned rooms, such as a small lounge space with a baby grand piano that once serviced the ivory ticklers of jazz legend Duke Ellington. Down a hall and through another doorway, we encounter a derelict charbroiler in a room once called the Steak Loft. Customers chose their own cuts of meat, which were cooked and served on wooden platters. “This was,” Danny says proudly, “before Hy’s carved their space in the steak market.” (The club also claims to be the first in Vancouver to offer pizza by the slice.)

In the Green Room, named for its gaudy, green wallpaper, a small button on the wall is labeled Beverage Bell. VIPs such as Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn and heavyweight champ Max Baer would have used it to summon drinks.

And there was another buzzer system at work in the club. Prior to the Penthouse landing a liquor license in the mid-50s, Uncle Joe employed spotters on the roof to watch for police raids. If they saw cops approaching the entrance, they rang to alert wait staff, who in turn instructed patrons to hide their bottles under the tables. The police conducted deliberately feeble searches, perhaps because they were on the take or perhaps because, as drinkers themselves, they didn’t want to enforce B.C.’s bizarre liquor laws too heartily. When the authorities left, the festivities resumed – as they did for us on Wednesday night, when Danny led us back down into the functioning portion of the Penthouse, the Gold Room.

Tales of Oscar Peterson and Other Penthouse Regulars

The original red-and-gold curtain still backdrops the stage, but a 2001 facelift has contributed an impressive, glowing bar to one side of the room and a surprisingly understated glittery paint to the walls.

While Heritage Vancouver supporters queue for an Indian buffet arranged on the club’s pool table and redeem their martini vouchers, I table hop in search of stories. A diverse crowd is in attendance. The history buffs range from seniors who have come to reminisce about Vancouver’s night club glory years to young hipsters eager to learn about Rat Pack-era fashion trends. At a plush booth overlooking the stage, I encounter choreographer and B.C. Entertainment Hall of Fame inductee Jack Card. The soft- spoken, impeccably mannered gentleman stands to inspect a row of three photos along a wall. He then returns and announces quietly, “I worked with them all.”  The images are of singers Johnnie Ray, Harry Belafonte and Louis Armstrong. I nearly choke on my naan bread.

________________________________________________________

B.C. Entertainment Hall of Fame-inductee Jack Card inspects

a row of photos:  of singers Johnnie Ray, Harry Belafonte and Louis

Armstrong. “I worked with them all.”  he says, quietly.

________________________________________________________

Next up on the agenda, Helga Pakasaar, curator of North Van’s Presentation House Gallery, hosts a slide show exploring imagery from Vancouver’s nightclub golden years: the 1940s to 1960s. There are photos of feather-and-sequined burlesque dancers, of tux- and gown-attired guests in the snazzy Palomar Supper Club (which once stood at Burrard and Georgia) and, somewhat inexplicably, a portrait of a young Terry David Mulligan looking like a beatnik about to embrace full-on hippiedom. It’s an informal talk, periodically augmented by additional info from Danny, who had taken up a post near the bar. “God handed out cigars the day I was born,” shouts the club owner. He was referring to the comedian George Burns who played the title role in the 1977 film Oh, God! Burns was doing stand-up at the Penthouse the day Ross Filippone’s son arrived and, to celebrate, the Oscar winner passed round his signature stogies.

I relocate to another booth and meet Joanne Randle, who has brought her 81-year-old mother, Edna, to reminisce about the Penthouse’s early days as an after-hours hotbed of jazz super-jams. (Edna was one of the original six members of the New Jazz Society) has a sharp memory and recalls witnessing Canada’s two premiere jazz pianists, Oscar Peterson and Chris Gage go head to head for harmonic supremacy in the club circa 1950. A “carving session” she calls it.

________________________________________________

Today, of course, late night jazz sessions are a thing of the

past, So too are the Vegas showgirl-style dancers, who were

replaced by total-nudity exotic dancing in the 1970s.

_________________________________________________

Today, of course, late night jazz sessions are a thing of the past at The Penthouse. So too are the Vegas showgirl style dancers, who were replaced by total-nudity exotic dancing in the 1970s. Also in that decade, the Penthouse was charged with conspiracy to live off the avails of prostitution, and  the club shut down for four years as the case dragged through the courts. But in the end, the Filippone brothers were able to fend off the accusations and the Penthouse re-opened. (Read coverage of this famous court case at the Penthouse website.)

Danny introduces the special entertainment of the evening: a scantily clad woman wearing Minnie Mouse ears who struts and writhes around a brass pole to the tune of “Hey, Mickey.” She has a walnut-size crystal lodged in her navel. I wonder what the strip club etiquette is should the gem stone pop out and roll across the stage into my drink? No worries. The rock holds.

________________________________________________

The Penthouse earns additional revenues as a film

location – for movie and TV shoots such as CBC’s Intelligence

and the upcoming Halle Berry flick Frankie and Alice.

______________________________________________

In a quieter corner, at the back of the room, I ask Danny about the Penthouse’s future. Giant condo towers are sprouting up all along Seymour. The land the club occupies must be valued in the double-digit millions, and the family has received offers. But Danny says, “As long as we’re making money, we’ll continue to operate.” (The business earns additional revenue by renting the building for film and TV shoots such as CBC’s Intelligence and the upcoming Halle Berry flick Frankie and Alice.)

A few hours later, I step out onto Seymour Street into the brisk, cold air. Eight-seven-year-old freelance writer Rudy Carlson, who has come alone all the way from North Vancouver to attend the event, is making his way slowly to the bus stop. I walk with him and he tells me his own Penthouse memory.

“I brought my father-in-law here in the ’60s when it was still a bottle club. We forgot to bring our own liquor so we gave $20 to a working girl in the room and she said she would head out to find us some booze. It was a wintry night like this one so my father-in-law, being a trusting guy from the Prairies, lent her his jacket. It was only after she was gone that he realized he had also given her his wallet – it was in is coat pocket and loaded with cash. There was a long, awkward wait, and she finally came back with the whiskey, the jacket and the wallet, intact. She was the hooker with the heart of gold,”says Carlson, “from the heart of the Gold Room.”

>>Do you have any glorious or notorious memories of the Penthouse in its pre-stripper days?

>>Do you think this building should be preserved as a prime example of Vancouver’s entertainment history?

Let us know.

Do you have any glorious or notorious memories of the Penthouse in its pre-stripper days or otherwise? Do you think this building should be preserved as a prime example of Vancouver’s entertainment history?

Lead photo courtesy Heritage Vancouver Society.

Nestled between the Monashee and Selkirk mountains, Revelstoke was once known as the capital of Canada’s Alps – so it comes as no surprise that its Revelstoke Mountain Resort was selected to host of one of the world’s most popular skiing events. The Canadian Freeskiing Championships is a new addition to Subaru’s Freeskiing World Tour – the longest-running Big Mountain freeskiing tour in the history of the sport and one that attracts the sport’s top athletes on a global circuit that includes stops in Chile, Colorado and California. Revelstoke’s 200,000-hectare mountain playground should satisfy even the most veteran skiers, however, while the site showcases Canada’s glorious outdoors – just in time for February’s Olympic games. 1-866-373-4754

VICTORIA January 7-23, 2010 – History Boys

History, sex and anarchy – welcome to grammar school. Courtesy Langham Court Theatre

History, sex and anarchy – welcome to grammar school. Alan Bennett’s witty British comedy History Boys follows a class of too-smart-for-their-britches schoolboys as they prepare for university entrance exams. Taught by professors who hold opposing views on the purpose of education, the students learn to challenge the very nature of their schooling. Bennett’s provocative play comes to life at Victoria’s Langham Court Theatre, January 7 through 23. Tickets: $18. 250-384-2142.

KELOWNA January 9, 2010 – “Elvis Generations”

Slap on your sideburns and squeeze into your jumpsuit: the King of Rock ‘n Roll is reborn at Kelowna’s Creekside Theatre. “Elvis Generations” – a stage spectacle celebrating the legendary crooner’s 75th birthday – features three nationally competitive Elvis tribute artists. The award-winning doubles will perform favourites from throughout the singer’s career; a tribute deemed so authentic that fans will wonder if Elvis has really left the building after all. Tickets: $22. 250-766-5669.

108 MILE HOUSE January 8-10, 2010 – Cariboo Challenge Sled Dog Race

courtesy Cariboo Challenge Sled Dog Society

Dog sledding enthusiasts unite!  This year’s Cariboo Challenge Sled Dog Race has been rerouted to incorporate 108 and Sepa lakes into the racing circuit, allowing additional room for spectators and creating more challenging trails. Also featured at the family friendly event: face painting, auctions, a 100-metre mini-dash for the kids and a celebratory bonfire. The nearby Hills Health Ranch, one of the province’s top backcountry spa-vacation resorts, provides accommodation for participants and also hosts a Racers’ Ball. Details: 250-791-5225, ext 225.

KAMLOOPS January 16-24, 2010 – Sun Peaks Resort Winter Wine Festival

What’s better than swilling the best of Okanagan’s vineyard bounty? Easy: imbibing said vintages at B.C.’s Sun Peaks Resort, named by Conde Nast Traveller as Canada’s second-best ski resort. And starting January 16, Kamloops’s alpine village hosts the 12th annual Winter Wine Festival, where both amateur and seasoned vino enthusiasts converge for a week of pairings, tastings and colloquiums. Bonus: after gorging on regional cuisine, attending savoury seminars (check out Cadbury Chocolate & Heavenly Wine’s sweet treats) and taking part in the winter wine brunch, visitors can work it all off with an afternoon of the region’s top snowboarding and skiing. Ticket info: 1-877-212-7107

VANCOUVER January 22 – February 28, 2010 – LunarFest

Vancouver’s 2010 Olympic Games are also an opportunity for Canada to share its cultural diversity with the world – and what better way to kick off the festivities than with a city-wide Lunar New Year’s celebration. Part of the Cultural Olympiad programming, the free public event includes the re-creation of Granville Street as a schoolchildren-created Lantern Forest; artists from Korea and other Asian countries performing acrobatics and dance; a First Nations tableau of lanterns showcasing indigenous designs and an event wrap-up lantern procession led by Public Dreams. See website for information.

Canada’s first theatre made entirely of snow and ice hosts the Only Animal's premiere of NiX. Photo courtesy Trudy Lee/The Only Animal

VICTORIA January 22, 2010 – NiX

Created for the Olympic Games’ Cultural Olympiad, this frozen winter wonderland – Canada’s first theatre made entirely of snow and ice  – will host theatre troupe The Only Animal’s premiere of NiX, a unique love story that promises to thaw audience hearts. Staged on the shores of Whistler’s Logan Lake, the show follows the adventures of two survivors and an arsonist as they face an ice age that threatens the end of the world, with fireworks, dying snowmen and explosive fire. Ticket info: 1-800-838-3006

INTERNATIONAL: SHETLAND ISLANDS January 26, 2010 – Up Helly Aa Festival

On the last Tuesday in January, the townsfolk of Lerwick, Shetland Islands (off the coast of Scotland), dress in their Viking best and converge in the town square to celebrate their Norse heritage. Holding flaming torches and surrounded by as many as five thousand spectators, male villagers march toward the town’s replica Viking Longship, which builders spend more than four months creating just for the occasion. The boat is set aflame, mimicking the ancient Viking tradition of offering a burning ship to the Sun God. And after the audience watches it sink into the sea, the revelry can begin: a melee of dance, drink and feasts that lasts well into the wee hours. Consider it a Viking-style Mardi Gras. Contact: Shetland Tourism, +44 (0) 1595 693434.

Over the past few years, B.C.’s Flathead valley has slowly but surely risen to the top of the controversial list of “Canada’s Most Threatened Valleys” (Kimberley photographer Patrice Halley and I covered the Flathead for the summer 2007 issue of Westworld). The Flathead is home to the highest diversity of carnivores in North America, some of the purest water on the planet, the highest density of grizzlies in inland North America and the most diverse mixture of plant communities in the Rocky Mountains.

The Flathead is home to the highest diversity of carnivores in North America, some of the purest water on the planet, the highest density of grizzlies in inland North America and the most diverse mixture of plant communities in the Rocky Mountains.

All this seems at odds with open-pit coal mining, coal bed methane development and gold-mine proposals in B.C.’s portion of the Flathead – some places are just too special for the heavy hand of heavy industry. Which is why for 10 days this July, photographers and filmmakers with the International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP) conducted a Rapid Assessment Visual Expedition (RAVE) into the Flathead Valley to document its landscape and wildlife, and to help distill a vision of hope for a solution to protect it. This proposal includes National Park status for a third of the valley and a wildlife management plan for the entire region.

With 60 “fellows,” including the likes of Wade Davis, Art Wolfe, Frans Lanting and Flip Nicklin, the ILCP represents some of the most accomplished, well-recognized names in photography. And when these pros turn their lenses to an issue, that issue is certain to garner a lot of attention – both for the insightful and poignant images ILCP photographers capture but also for the compelling stories their photos reveal.

The gala opening of the ILCP Flathead RAVE photography exhibit was held New Year’s Eve at the Fernie Arts Station, with the exhibit moving on to Cranbrook on February 4^th at the Key City Theatre, then to Kimberley on February 25^th at Centre 64. The marquee evening in Cranbrook will feature presentations by local photographer and mountaineer Pat Morrow, ILCP photographer Garth Lenz, and Spirit Bear phenom Simon Jackson. These local showings will be followed by RAVE exhibitions at galleries both in the region and abroad, showcasing one of B.C.’s critically threatened landscapes to as large an audience as possible.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Since 1911,when Waterton Park’s first superintendent John ‘Kootenai’ Brown called for it’s protection, conservationists have working to gain protection for southeastern British Columbia’s Flathead Valley. Following Parks Canada’s identification of the Flathead as an area of interest for a new park, Flathead National Park has been inching its way closer to reality. Do you think that National Park status is a good solution to this century-old debate, or perhaps you’d prefer to see a Provincial Park, a simple Wildlife Management Area, or no protection at all?  Tweet me at @KootenayDave to let me know what you think!

Related reading: Northern B.C.: The Last Wild River; Flathead on the Mind

Also, visit your local MEC store to check out the in-store display highlighting the Flathead Valley and the need to protect it.

Photos: Garth Lenz

The raven ranks among the world’s most intelligent creatures, displaying high learning ability and use of logic for solving problems, in some tests even surpassing chimpanzees. (courtesy Kerry Banks)

Ravens may be common in the Rockies, but they remain a novelty to me. I find them to be impressive birds: large, intelligent, playful and talented mimics. I remember sitting beside a beach in Tofino one afternoon listening to a raven imitate a dripping faucet. The same bird then made me jump when he did an uncanny and eerie impression of a human voice, calling “Tommy. Tommy.” Actually, it sounded just like the vocal in The Who’s song, so maybe the raven had been listening to the tune on someone’s stereo.

I stroll down the main drag, Banff Avenue, which may be the only street in town not named after an animal. The critter roll call includes Squirrel Street, Caribou Street, Lynx Street, Wolverine Street, Whiskey Jack Crescent and Porcupine Place. The town itself is named after Banffshire, Scotland, the birthplace of  Lord Strathcona and George Stephen, two major financiers of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Able to accomodate 1,700 guests in 700 rooms, the baronial Banff Springs Hotel has been described as having “corridors for the invalid, turrets for the astronomer and balconies for lovers.”

My destination is the Banff Springs Hotel, a gothic castle at the south end of town. And the man behind the creation of this five-star luxury hotel: William Van Horne, General Manager of Canadian Pacific Railways, who viewed the hot springs near the railway station of Banff as a potential tourist attraction. His vision was fuelled by the philosophy “If we can’t export the scenery, we will import the tourists.” Hence, in 1886, Van Horne commissioned Bruce Price of New York, one of the foremost architects of the day, to draw up plans for a hotel to be built above the confluence of the Bow and Spray Rivers overlooking the Bow Valley. Construction began in the spring of 1887, and the palatial resort opened on June 1, 1888. At the time it was reportedly the largest hotel in the world.

Like any grand old hotel, the Banff Springs is said to have its share of ghosts. For example, there are frequent sightings of Sam Macauley, a bellman who died here in 1976. It is believed that he still haunts the upper floors of the hotel. Several people have identified him as a real person and have spoken to him. But then, suddenly, he disappears right in front of their eyes.

And too there is the story of infamous Room 873, which no longer exists, though the hotel does have rooms 872 and 874. According to the legend, a family was murdered in Room 873, and strange things kept taking place after the room was cleaned up and re-opened, including a mirror hung in the room that displayed the fingerprints of the little girl who died there. No matter how many times the staff cleaned the mirror, the fingerprints constantly reappeared. Coupled with the reports of guests who claimed to see the family on occasion, the management decided to close off and wall up the room. Today, staff and guests still reported seeing the spirits of the family near where the room has been closed off.

I spend a couple of hours looking around the hotel and taking photos from various vantage points. I don’t encounter any ghosts, but in the hotel’s flower garden I do find a ghostly coloured moth that looks like it fluttered right out of the pages of a children’s book of fables.

Not all moths are nocturnal, as is clear from this photo. But the identity of this silvery species found in the flower garden outside the Banff Springs Hotel is a mystery to me. Does anyone know the answer?

By the time I meet up with Masters in a coffee shop back on Banff Avenue, I have a headache, the result of tramping around like a maniac in the high altitude air. (At 1,463 metres, Banff is the town with the highest elevation in Canada.) Mysterious as always, Masters refuses to tell me what he did all afternoon. We drive over to the Pox, er the Fox Hotel, where, thankfully we find that the desk clerk’s face is not melting. She has an Australian accent, like about 70 per cent of the people we have met so far who work in the Rockies’ service industry.

Dinner is at the upscale Maple Leaf Grille and Lounge. The Maple Leaf was recently awarded “Best Resort Restaurant, North America” at the United Kingdom’s 2009 Hardy’s Skiing and Snowboarding Awards. I’m not exactly sure what this means, but it is proudly noted on the restaurant’s website. I order the barbecued rib-eye; Masters opts for the Wild B.C. Salmon. “We are in Alberta—the land of beef. Why are you ordering B.C. seafood?” I ask.

“I felt like salmon,” he replies.

The front balcony of the Banff Springs Hotel looks out over the Bow River and the gap between Mt. Rundle and Tunnel Mountain.

“OK, salmon boy. Let’s head back to the Pox. According to our official itinerary we have to be in Lake Louise by  8 a.m. for our hike.”

(To be continued …)

Part I, II, III

Photos: Kerry Banks

courtesy Whitewater Ski Resort

Nelson’s Whitewater Ski Resort (WH2O) is one of the last of a dying breed. Purely and simply, WH2O is a ski hill. Period. No on-hill accommodation facelifts. No lifestyle-oriented real estate tummy tucks. No Rundle-rock and timber frame implants. Just one valley, two lifts and enough snow to choke a mountain caribou – 140 cm at the time of writing. Not bad for November 23.

At the other of the rugged Selkirk Mountains and the ski resort spectrum lies an altogether different beast, the much-touted Revelstoke Mountain Resort (RMR). Rescued from receivership last year, the new development  boasts 1,700-plus metres’ elevation – the highest lift-serviced vertical in North America – and, at full capacity, zips skiers all over the mountain on 20 different lifts while allotting skiers their choice of 5,000 beds to sleep off all that vertical. If that’s not enough, with its cat skiing and heli-ski partners, RMR also offers 200,000-plus hectares of terrain to choose from. Different slopes for different wallets.

The only things these two vastly different resorts share are the sick skiing of the Selkirk Mountains and an opening date: Saturday, November 28. These are the first Kootenay hills to fire up the lifts this season.

So take your pick: bigger-better-higher-faster at the ‘Stoke, or the very chill, very real aura of Nelson’s Whitewater (don’t forget its Fresh Tracks Café – for some of the best lodge food on the planet). Winter is here. See you on the boards this weekend – bring your snorkel!

Lead image courtesy Whitewater Ski Resort

The Spray Lakes Reservoir began as a series of small lakes. In 1951, a hydroelectric dam was then built, raising the water levels to create one beautiful lake. Today, this 88-kilometre stretch of water is used both for recreation and to generate power for Canmore and the rest of the Bow River Valley.

From Three Nuns to the 1988 Winter Olympics: Canmore to Banff

The metal jangle of Ry Cooder’s slide guitar serenades us as we motor through a corridor of giant stone crags. It’s a beautiful morning, clear and crisp, and there are dozens of photo opportunities. But once again it’s a tight schedule. Though bound for Banff, on way we’re stopping in Canmore, where the road into town descends sharply for a spectacular vista of the valley and Canmore’s signature landmark: The Three Sisters. Originally called the Three Nuns, these three peaks are now known by the locals as Faith, Hope and Charity.

Formerly a coal-mining town, Canmore has experienced a boom since the 1988 Winter Olympics – when it served as the site of the cross-country and biathlon events. Although Masters is generally vague about his past, he now admits to spending time here some 20 years ago. Evidently it was a tough place back then, he recalls, and the town’s main social hub, the Canmore Hotel, “was a good place to have a beer or get into a fight.” Most of its young people were here because rent was cheap and the town was close to the ski hills around Banff and Lake Louise. But now Masters wants to see how the town has changed. He expects he won’t recognize it.

Besides coffee mugs, Seattle-based Authentic Hendrix also markets a Jimi Hendrix lava lamp, a Jimi Hendrix afghan patterned after the musician's second album, Axis: Bold As Love, and Jimi Hendrix infant wear, including an “Are You Experienced?” diaper cover that comes in three sizes.

A stroll down the main drag confirms his worst suspicions. There are a lot of gift shops. In fact, just about every second store qualifies. “Very boutiquey,” he sniffs. He walks more quickly, his disgust growing. Then something catches my eye in one of the windows. I tell him to wait, and a few minutes later emerge with my first souvenir from the trip – a psychedelic Jimi Hendrix coffee mug that proclaims “Do Your Thing” on the inside rim. I’m pretty sure Henrix didn’t coin the phrase. Still, this is the first Jimi Hendrix mug I’ve ever seen. It’s made in China and sells for a ridiculous $13.95.

We resume walking and Masters spots the Canmore Hotel. “It’s still here,” he says, surprised, “and it looks pretty much the same.” Inside is the dark atmosphere and yeasty smell of your classic Canadian tavern. There are pool tables, a horseshoe-shaped bar, and even though it’s not yet noon, several patrons who look like they’ve been here awhile. “It doesn’t look like they’ve changed the upholstery in the last 20 years,” concludes Masters.

“Well, I’ve never been here before, but I’m sure  at least one thing is different from 20 years ago.”

“What?”

“I bet that they didn’t have that back then,” I note, pointing to the “No Smoking” sign affixed to the front door. 

As much as it has evolved into a tourist haven since 1988, the recent economic recession has hit Canmore hard; we pass several massive resort developments standing unfinished as we roll out of town. It’s not exactly a boulevard of broken dreams, but it is a sobering dose of reality.

Back on the highway, I pull out the itinerary. I don’t have my reading glasses on and I mistakenly tell Masters we’ll be staying tonight at “the Pox Hotel.” He quickly corrects me, “That’s the Fox Hotel.” (He probably stayed up all night memorizing the itinerary.) “It would be interesting though,” he adds, “if it was actually the Pox Hotel and when we arrive the desk clerk’s face is rotting off.”

Aspen, the leaves of which turn bright yellow in the fall, are the staple food of beaver. The tree's buds and shoots are also favourites of moose, while its bark and underlying layer of cambium are eaten by elk and deer in winter.

I scan for more names in the blurry pages and announce my distorted findings. “I see that tomorrow night we’ll be staying at the relaxing Migraine Lake Lodge. The day after that is a pleasant hike to the Lake Agony Teahouse.”

Masters laughs. “It all sounds delightful.”

We make it to Banff in time for lunch at the Coyote Deli and Grill, where our greeter informs us we’re 40 minutes late. It’s a rather pointless observation since the place is half empty. Fortunately, the chow is better than the service.

Banff is a town I’m more familiar with. I first came here in the late 1970s during a cross-Canada roadtrip with my pal High McEachern. We were camping, and while we paid our night’s fee, the ranger told us that bears had been spotted in the vicinity. He wasn’t kidding. The next morning, as we cooked breakfast over our fire, a big black bear wandered into the campsite area, looking for a snack. He disdainfully knocked coolers over with his massive paws as made his way between sites. We tossed our frying pan in the trunk and jumped in the car. It seemed a reasonable response, but the other campers chose a different tactic: they hurled rocks at the bear and yelled. Luckily for them, it worked. The bear left, but it could have been a bloody scene.

There are no bears on the menu today, but we are scheduled to join another trail ride. “I’ve decided that I am too sore to do two more hours in the saddle,” I tell Masters. “Besides there are some things I want to see in Banff. He agrees and we cancel the cowboy outing, arranging to split up and meet again at 5 p.m.. I set off down the street headed for the Banff Springs Hotel, but as is so often the case, I get distracted.

(To be continued …)

Part I, II

Photos: Kerry Banks

In hindsight, a sudden, low “whumph” should have been my first warning that I was about to be buried in an avalanche. Yet all I really remember is arcing my skis toward safe terrain in the trees – as, instead of slowing, I, and the entire snowslope around me accelerated – over the lip toward the steep terrain and trees below.

No way . . . 

Yep. Avalanche.

Get to the trees on the right. No – moving too fast! Trees at this speed mean a broken femur or worse. Avoid the trees!  Get left – away from the trees! Dig in! Slow down!

Snap! One ski releases. Head over heels. Again, and again.

Boot heels, fingers, elbows scrabbling into hard surface below. Got to slow down! Light. Dark. Mouth full of snow. Gasp . . . breath of air.

Fight! Dig in! I am not going to die in an avalanche.

Finally slowing.

Sudden stop.

Silence.

I laugh. Scream. Bawl. All that adrenaline has to go somewhere. I’m OK –minus a ski, poles, goggles and hat, but OK.

After nearly 20 years of skiing, including more than a decade teaching avalanche awareness courses, the mountains sent me a warning, a shot over the bow. But I was lucky – I skied away from it.

But last year, 26 people in Canada alone were not so lucky, including an unprecedented 19 snowmobilers who lost their lives to avalanches.

But the good news –

This weekend in Fernie, anyone can learn how to safely experience the backcountry – on skis, snowshoe or a sled – at the Canadian Avalanche Centre and Columbia Brewery’s (of Kokanee Beer fame) annual public Backcountry Avalanche Workshop. 

• When: Saturday, November 21
• Where: The Arts Station, downtown Fernie
• Coordinates: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Cost: $20 registration fee, payable at the doo
• For more info on this and other backcountry avalanche awareness aorkshops throughout the province:  http://www.avalanche.ca/cac/events/backcountry-avalanche-workshops

I’ll see you there, in the mountains – and, most important, at the bar for a Kokanee at the end of another safe backcountry day.

Photos: Dave Quinn

A popular haunt for X-country skiers, hikers and mountain bikers, the Smith-Dorrien Trail is a gravel road that winds through the heart of one of the wildest and most scenic landscapes in Alberta's Kananaskis Country.

Back in the car, plotting our course to Mt. Engadine Lodge, I say: “Everyone on a roadtrip has to have a role. Why don’t you be the  take-charge guy.”

“Who are you going to be?” asks Masters.

“I’ll be the distracted, laid-back guy. I’ll be Good Time Charlie.”

Luckily, Masters consulted the road map while I was shooting photos of the lake, and confidently predicts we’ll be at our destination soon. He’s right. From out of nowhere, the road to Mt. Engadine Lodge suddenly appears on our right.

The lodge is a major surprise. I was expecting antlers, cowboy paraphernalia and massive wooden beams and split-pine finishes everywhere. And there is a lot of wood, but nothing else is predictable. For starters, the place is not a working-ranch-cum-guest house but a sophisticated boutique backcountry operation operated by Chris and Shari-Lynn Williams, a pair of professional innkeepers. (Chris, a former air-traffic controller, and Shari-Lynn, an accountant, left their day jobs to run resorts a decade ago.)

The lodge's dining room windows afford a spectacular view of the Rockies rising sharply across Moose Meadows – a natural habitat for coyotes, moose, elk, deer and beavers.

Before coming to Mt. Engadine(www.mountengadine.com) in 2007, the couple worked for five years at the Wickaninnish Inn in Tofino, B.C, where Chris was the chief concierge and Shari-Lynn the front-office manager. The well-travelled couple have also worked as innkeepers in Vermont, New Mexico, Cape Cod, on Prince Edward Island and on St. Lucia in the Caribbean. Here at Mt. Engadine they also supervised a major renovation, with the lodge’s nine rooms transformed from dorm-style bunk beds to luxurious suites complete with king-size beds, living areas and private baths. And the rooms are now named (and decorated) after indigenous animals, which are easier to remember than numbers. I’ve been assigned the Moose room, which is appropriate since the lodge is reputedly the best place in the Kananaskis to spot moose. The ungainly beasts like to congregate in a mud wallow adjacent to the property, supposedly attracted by the minerals in the soil.

I have a half-hour before dinner so I wander off down the road to a nearby bridge to take photos. The lodge has an incredible setting, on a hill overlooking a broad meadow and surrounded on all sides by soaring mountains. I’m enjoying the peace and solitude when two tour buses suddenly pull up and disgorge a pack of noisy German tourists. Their timing could not be better: minutes after they unload, a mother moose and her calf begin approaching across the meadow. The sight silences the crowd.

Spray Valley Provincial Park (along with neighbouring Peter Lougheed Provincial Park): more than 100 km of hiking and mountain biking trails, plus canoeing and kayaking on easily accessible lakes and rivers.

It’s occasions like this that make me wonder what European tourists think of Canada. This is the first moose I’ve ever seen in the wild and I’ve lived here all my life. This bunch of Bavarians may well be under the mistaken impression that you can order up exotic wildlife here at will.

_______________________________________________

“A visit to this mud wallow, where the moose

come every day about now, is like a once-a-day vitamin,”

says Engadine manager Chris Williams.

________________________________________________

I make it back just in time for dinner. The roast chicken is delicious, the wine terrific. Masters and I share a communal table with a group of Americans touring Alberta with an outfit called Country Walkers. The company (www.countrywalkers.com) offers 75 worldwide walking itineraries, and on this one, local guide Dave Holder spearheads daily, rigorous hikes into the wilds. Judging by the speed with which the day’s survivors are wolfing down their food, all that walking must work up a serious appetite.

After dinner, we talk with Chris about Mt. Engadine’s niche in the backcountry market, and how the level of personal service and attention to detail is what he thinks sets it apart. For example, he hand picks the wines, seeking out moderately priced, tasty stuff that most guests will not be familiar with. Likewise, the beer is from small, local Alberta breweries. And during the summer months, he brings in musicians – overlooked Canadian talents such as Suzie Vinnick, recipient of the 2008 Canadian Maple Blues Award as Female Vocalist of the Year. “The musicians stay here over the weekend and interact with the guests,” he says. “It’s all very casual.”

Local moose gather daily at the mud wallow alongside Alberta's Mt. Engadine Lodge. The site is rich in selenium, a nutrient the animals need for bone development.

The overall goal is to provide visitors with a unique experience. Of course, the wildlife also contributes. Later that night, as I’m savouring a glass of wine on the outdoor deck, a large owl makes a screeching descent into a nearby pine tree. This intrusion instantly attracts the attention of the country walkers, who are diligently keeping track of Canadian fauna spotted on their trip. They’re still debating whether the bird is a great horned owl or not when I finally stumble off to my Moose room and climb into my Moose bed.

Part I, III

Photographs: Kerry Banks

For the past 11 Remembrance Days, retired pilot and vintage aircraft restorer Neil Davidson has been paying homage to Canada’s war veterans in his own way. On the 11th day of the 11th month, at precisely 11 a.m., Neil buzzes the crowd at Kimberley’s cenotaph in his completely refurbished 1940 Tiger Moth biplane.

Growing up in the lap of the Purcell and Rocky mountains in Cranbrook and in the company of exceptional people like Neil, I always had some sense that this part of the world was somehow unique and special. Over the years this vague idea has cemented into a very real awareness that the essence of the Kootenay region runs deeper than our world-class golf and ski resorts, and our postcard-worthy vistas.

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The Andean towers and icecaps of Patagonia arguably match
the Kootenays’ for sheer visual inspiration, but Patagonia’s native
wildlife was long ago displaced by the introduction of non-
native fish in its streams and by sheep and cattle across its landscape
___________________________________________________________________

I have yet to find a region as rich with the seemingly incongruous values of intact wilderness and creature comforts, wealth and freedom, frontierism and safety. The jungles of Colombia emanate an unrivalled sense of vibrancy and mystique, but you sure as heck don’t want to be caught on a backroad at night in the country with the highest number of kidnappings per capita in the world. The Andean towers and icecaps of Patagonia arguably match the Kootenays’ for sheer visual inspiration, but Patagonia’s native wildlife was long ago displaced by the introduction of non-native fish in its streams and by sheep and cattle across its landscape. The Himalayas boast some of the most jaw-dropping mountainscapes on the planet, along with an inspiring history and culture, but nearly every square inch of that vast region has been modified in some way by humanity, and desertification and human health issues are rampant.

The Kootenays truly have it all: the freedom to explore, express and inspire as you will, and as much or as little adventure as one cares to search out, all with a glass of wine and a warm bed at the end of the day.

Wherever you are, this week in particular gives us cause to pause and thank those who worked hard and sacrificed all this, even their lives when needed, to allow us to continue to enjoy it. If you happen to be near Kimberley this Wednesday morning at 11 o’clock, look up and enjoy a piece of history floating through pure mountain air, over some of the wildest landscape in the world, and be thankful.

Note: Dave Quinn will be posting weekly from the Kootenays starting the week of November 11, 2009

For more aviation tales: Skydiving Newbie

Lead photo courtesy Brian Clarkson (cranbrookphoto.com)

by Kerry Banks

From 1921 to 1945, Jericho Beach was home to the Pacific Coast Station of the RCAF, and a concrete wharf was built as part of its seaplane base. The structure’s perimeter was later enhanced during the 1976 Habitat Forum, using the original 1938 railings from the Lions Gate Bridge.

___________________________________

“But many complained that the wharf

had become an eyesore, and in July 2008,

 the Parks Board voted to demolish all

but the most eastern section of the structure

____________________________________

But many complained that the wharf had become an eyesore, and in July 2008, after a public consultation process, the Parks Board voted to demolish all but the most eastern section of the 0.6-hectare structure, which would be repaired to create a viewpoint overlooking the harbour. Interpretive signs would outline the wartime history of the dock and its postwar evolution, while the remaining area would be restored to a natural beach. However, since 2008, a new Parks Board has been elected, and a group of citizens – who want the wharf repaired and made available for public events – have mounted a fresh campaign to save the relic. As a result, a second consultation is being held this fall to decide the Jericho landmark’s fate.

What’s your view? Should this B.C. landmark be saved?

savejerichobeach.ca; kendalkendrick.com

Painting by Kendal Kendrick

“Just give her a kick in the belly,” says Dayleen. Our trail guide is growing impatient with my mare’s plodding pace. But I feel sympathy for Hazel, who is 16 and has been humping tourists through these Alberta hills for a decade. If the mare wants to take her time, it’s all right with me. I’m in no great hurry, and staying a few paces back keeps me clear of the goofy antics of Champ, who is second in our three-horse procession.

____________________________________________

“We are a few hours into a five-day roadtrip

through the Alberta Rockies and, just to make it

perfectly clear that we are in cowboy country,

our hosts have made sure our adventure kicks off

with a two-hour trail ride.”

__________________________________________

It appears that Champ wants to run, or else bite Dayleen’s horse in the ass, neither of which is making it easy on John Masters, a my travelling companion. A freelance writer, Masters isn’t fond of horses and is an inexperienced rider – a bad combination when climbing ridges with steep fallaways while trying to control a skittish gelding.

We are a few hours into a five-day roadtrip through the Alberta Rockies and, just to make it perfectly clear that we are in cowboy country, our hosts – the folk at Travel Alberta – have made sure our adventure kicks off with a two-hour trail ride. In fact, tomorrow’s schedule features yet another two-hour ride at a locale outside Banff, which would be fine if we were ranch hands or had titanium buttocks, neither of which happens to be the case.

In addition to the Boundary Ranch, Alberta's 4,211-square-km Kananaskis Country features campgrounds, golf and two alpine and X-country ski areas developed for previous winter Olympics.

There was supposed to be other journalists on this trek, but for some unknown reason a tour of Alberta’s Rockies inspired little enthusiasm. In fact, of the 120 international and Canadian travel writers who signed up for this fall’s Go Media Canadian Tourist Commission-sponsored tours, I was the only one who selected “Working the Rockies.” Masters is here by default – he was booted off his first choice, a VIA Rail trip across Canada – because he had done it before. And since there are only two of us, Travel Aberta has opted to dispense with the customary escort, supplying us instead with a road map, directions, booked accomodations, a rental car, unlimited gas and – just so we don’t get too footloose – a 13-page itinerary.

Our car, a Mitsubishi (and I thought the company only made TVs and computers) has a couple of attractive features: good acceleration and a sweet sound system, which means we can better appreciate the CDs I burned for the trip. Of course, Masters, who is no audiophile, would prefer to listen to CBC news. It’s one of his daily rituals, along with reading the Globe and Mail and drinking a double espresso in the late afternoon. Incredibly, he requires no caffeine in the morning.

The toughest part of our trip so far has been getting out of Calgary, a city that doesn’t see any need for coherent signage, and which apparently believes that endless urban sprawl is what God intended. However, once we escaped from Cowtown’s cement runways and headed west into Kananaskis Country, the drive suddenly changed for the better. Set in the foothills and of the Rockies, the province’s 4,211-square-kilometre recreational district boasts numerous provincial parks and some spectacular natural beauty. And though the area is open to tourists year round, fall may be the best time to visit because the highways aren’t clogged with camper trailers.

Before we reached our first stop – Boundary Ranch – I had already made Masters stop a couple of times so I could snap photos of the stunning landscape. Interestingly, we both have the same model of camera, a Panasonic digital, and even odder we both have the same model of backpack, a piece of swag we both scored on a previous media trip. Fortunately, no one is going to take us for twins. We look nothing alike.

Masters (in green shirt) and Dayleen. An hour later, waiting for the circulation in his legs to return: "Ice picks in the knees," Masters groans while hobbling about in the dirt.

I’m not the only person who finds this rugged terrain visually inspiring. Kananaskis Country has served as the setting for many movies, including Russell Crowe’s Mystery, Alaska; Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven; Brad Pitt’s The Assassination Of Jesse James and Heath Ledger’s Brokeback Mountain.

Boundary Ranch www.boundaryranch.com/ has a connection with the movies as well: the owner, Rick Guinn, a former rodeo star, also had a brief acting and modelling career. He starred in Buffalo Rider, a 1978 film that dramatizes the true life of Western legend C.J. “Buffalo” Jones, who worked to prevent the extinction of the American buffalo during the 19th-century. ”Guinn landed the role largely because he was the only actor the producers could find who could actually ride a buffalo.”

_____________________________________

“Guinn landed the role largely because he

was the only actor the producers could find who

could actually ride a buffalo.”

_____________________________________

After finishing our trail ride and waiting for the circulation in Masters’  legs to return – “Ice picks in the knees,” he groans while hobbling about in the dirt – we tour the grounds. Boundary Ranch is a major operation with about 90 horses, so it can accomodate large tour groups. In addition to trail rides, which last anywhere from one hour to six days, the ranch also offers hikes, canoe trips, rodeos, gunfight re-enactments, chuckwagon races and chili cook-offs. The outfit has even partnered with another company to provide a “Surf & Saddle” package to those who want to combine trail rides with whitewater rafting.

Under the savvy tutelage of its buffalo-riding owner, film and rodeo star Rick Guinn, the Boundary Ranch has expanded its amenities since the 1930s to include gunfights, Wild West rodeos, photo safaris, sleigh rides, calf and horse roping, mountain biking and more.

We don’t have time for the Surf & Saddle combo, unfortunately. We have to get to Mt. Engadine Lodge before dark. It’s located about an hour’s drive away along a gravel road called the Smith-Dorrien Trail. And as we accelerate into the afternoon sun I plug in a CD. Elvis Presly’s voice fills the car – “A hunk a hunk of burning love …”

“A little rock n’ roll for the Rockies,” I say, and put on my shades.

Continued…Part II, III

Photos by Kerry Banks

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

For the top-ranked O'Neill Coldwater Classic tour, surfers must perform radical, controlled manoeuvres in the critical section of each wave – with speed, power and flow – to maximize their scores.

All this past week, Tofino’s rugged shores have been invaded by more than 120 international surfers on this fourth stop of the 2009 O’Neill Coldwater Classic tour. It’s the first time a professional surfing competition has been staged on Canadian soil, and the locals are stoked, not only because Tofino surfer Peter Devries has unexpectedly made it through to the event’s quarterfinals, but because it proclaims to the world that the tiny outpost is the surfing capital of Canada.

If you haven’t visited Tofino in a while, you may be surprised to see what a hold surfing has on this West Coast town, and how the sport has become an important plank in the local economy. In fact, the place resembles Waimea in Hawaii, with surf shops and burrito joints scattered everywhere. Of course, Tofino doesn’t have the breed of monster waves that regularly hammer the north coast of Oahu, but they are definitely big and narly enough to have earned the town a berth on this year’s tour, with $140,000 in prize money up for grabs.

For each wave ridden, surfers are scored on a scale from 0.1 to 10.0, broken into one-tenth increments.

“The Cold Water Classic event in Tofino is the one all the surfers on the tour have been talking about,” says O’Neill global event manager Bernhard Ritzer. “It represents all that we have set out to achieve with the O’Neill Coldwater Classic Series, which is about providing a unique and challenging experience for the world’s best surfers by pushing the boundaries and exploring new remote and spectacular locations.”

The prestigious cold-water surfing series, which concludes early this November in Santa Cruz, California, made stops earlier this fall in the inhospitable waters of northern Tasmania, northern Scotland and the western cape of South Africa, but the conditions in Tofino might be the most formidable of all. Unpredictable waves, bone-chilling winds and pelting rain make its surf a strenuous physical test. Simply paddling out to the waves while encased in thick neoprene requires strength and stamina. And then too there are the bears, whose presence inspires a mixture of fear and fascination amongst the series’ organizers and surfers, who have trekking to a nearby salmon hatchery to watch the beasts feed.

It’s certainly not the sort of conditions most of these world-class athletes are accustomed to. In fact, it’s only within the last few years that the technology of wet suits has improved to the point where boarders can survive the elements and still surf competitively in them. Even so, the surfers’ feet were bare for Tuesday’s competition, and with the sun shining, most were not wearing anything on their heads while doing battle with the raging froth at Chesterman Beach.

In the Coldwater Classic format, athletes compete against one another in 25-minute heats. In the early going there are four boarders in each heat, but as the field is whittled down it becomes three, then finally gets down to head-to-head match-ups. Surfers can ride as many waves as they want in their allotted 25 minutes, but only their top two scores count. The judges, who sit in a covered wooden booth on the beach, rate the boarders on their creativity, technique and daring, on how many manoeuvres they complete and the speed, control and power they exhibit in the most critical section of the wave.

When he's not competing, Australian surfer Shannon Brown lives in Tofino, where he teaches at the Westside Surf School.

One of the keys to achieving a high score is picking a solid wave, so there is often a fair bit of time in a heat when nothing much is happening. That’s where announcer Dom Domic comes in, filling the dead air with updates on the surfers’ times and standings (which the surfers need to know as well), counting down the remaining minutes and offering commentary on the competitors and the surroundings. When the surfers get up on a wave, Domic, also president of the B.C. Surfing Association, describes the action using a vocabulary that is awash with surf  jargon – backside air, lip bashes, hacks, acid drops, fakeys and fat closeouts. And when a rider takes a tumble, he doesn’t fall but “comes unstuck.” The other unusual thing about Domic’s delivery is that he does it with a hand-held mike the front seat of a truck parked surf-side.

In fact, as I stare out my bedroom window right now, I can hear Domic’s throaty voice rising in excitement. Something big must be happening outside. I guess it’s time to suit up and jog down to the beach to see what’s causing the commotion. Let’s hope a bear hasn’t eaten one of the surfers.

Postscript: The waves broke perfectly for Tofino and local Peter Devries, who defeated Australian Jay Thompson on Saturday (October 31) to become the first Canadian to win a professional surfing event. Half of the town showed up to watch the final. Die-hards were also talking about the ‘out-of-bound’ surfing just north of Tofino. Local surfing enthusiast Brady Clarke puts that scene in perspective with Vancouver Island: Surfing the Wild Side

Got your own surf story? Or your own sweet spot – on the coast or elsewhere? Drop me a line.

Announcers describe the action using a vocabulary that is awash with surf jargon – backside air, lip bashes, hacks, acid drops, fakeys and fat closeouts. And when riders take a tumble, they don’t fall but “come unstuck.”

Critical Reading: The Driftwood Coast: Surfing Vancouver Island by Brady Clarke.

Surf Schools:

• Tofino’s Pacific Surf School Lessons, rentals, camps for all ages and skill livels, 250-725-215

• Tofino Surf School Comprehensive tutorials, from fundamentals to wave-pattern interpretation, reading tides and “surf etiquette.” 250-725-2711

• Surf Sister Founded by Canadian women’s surfing champ Jenny Stewart. 250-725-4456
• West Side Surf School Personalized coaching by superstar Sepp Bruhwiler. 250-725-2404

Photographs: Kerry Banks

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.

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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)

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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.

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 Sonu Purhar

The morning of the jump, I’m peering through the windshield at scudding storm clouds, wondering if I’ll be devastated – or relieved – if we have to cancel, though there’s plenty of time to mull over both possibilities as we navigate the seemingly endless hectares of the Fraser Valley’s rural heart. Two weeks ago, I resolved to start my own “bucket list” – now-or-never goals to accomplish before kicking the bucket, so to speak – à la Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman’s 2007 film of the same name. Swan-diving from a plane seemed a good place to start. But after persuading a friend to accompany me and booking with Skydive Vancouver, all I can see clearly now are clusters of moody cows.

We’re greeted at Skydive’s Abbotsford office by instructor Gerald Harper, a leather-skinned Aussie with an impressive 14,000-plus jump record and several New Zealand and Canadian skydiving championships. With 32 years in the jump business, he assures us, Skydive’s safety record is equally impressive.

___________________________

What Harper doesn’t reveal, however,

is that two to three skydivers die each

year in Canada.

___________________________

The preliminaries taken care of, he then ushers us into a barn-like hangar hung with world flags and daunting equipment, where, as if signing on for a suicide mission, I shakily scrawl my name across a death waiver.

Just weeks ago, the now-vacant skies droned with the military and civilian aircraft of Abbotsford’s annual July air show, performing aerobatics alongside the 100-plus skydivers who jump daily in summer. The sport isn’t exactly booming, but in 2007 more than 40,000 first-timers took the plunge in B.C., some as old as 85 – no doubt crossing items off their own bucket lists. Today there’s only one other newbie, and once she’s down we’re up.

My friend Carla and I trek to the middle of the field on which we’ll soon be landing and eagerly scan the skies. A plane shoots out of the clouds; minutes later, something drops and falls like a brick before an enormous pink parachute unfurls and the snapping wind weaves our predecessor through the clouds like an erratic Mary Poppins. We’re enthralled, rooted to the spot. But Harper hauls us back to the hangar for “training”: a two-minute demo of awkward poses practised belly-down on a battered wooden vaulting horse, followed by “suiting up” in bubblegum-pink overalls – tighter than a disco jumpsuit – with matching cap and goggles. Within the hour, Harper and fellow staffer – and son – Jess, a gold-medal-winning New Zealand skydiver, are herding us across the sodden grass to a rickety-looking Cessna. I squeeze into the cramped hull; the others crowd round like stacks of cargo as the plane taxis for takeoff.

First jumps are always completed in tandem with an instructor, but I’m still caught off-guard when, after just 14 minutes of flying, Harper clips the front straps of his jumpsuit to those on my back. There’s no time to dwell on this abrupt intimacy, however. My new free-fall mate manoeuvres me to the ratty curtain that serves as a makeshift door and pushes it aside. I freeze: cold wind whips my face as I gape at endless kilometres of slate-grey sky. Far in the distance, the earth stretches like a strip of carpet.

Arms crossed tightly over my chest, I crouch on my knees, ankles crossed, as if in rapturous prayer (which maybe I should be). Sprawled 12,000 feet below, Abbotsford’s agricultural expanse appears hazily through accumulating clouds, the airfield just another postage-stamp speck in a checkerboard of green. A screaming wind fills the tiny Cessna, echoing my jumbled thoughts, one more frantic than the rest: Am I really going to jump? For one infinite moment, I hang suspended over the door jamb, staring into a vast gulf of cloud; then we plunge down.

Earth and sky fuse. I’m jerked in 10 different directions, free-falling at 200 kilometres an hour. Air floods my lungs, the wind a giant boot crushing my face. Just before I can panic about death by suffocation: a body-wrenching jolt as the parachute abruptly snaps taut – and suddenly we’re drifting peacefully, the dazzling metropolis of Vancouver sprawled wondrously before us. Harper spins us in a slow circle, pointing out the sights: the white dome of B.C. Place, Vancouver Island’s bumpy ridges and, far in the distance, the hulking mass of Washington’s Mount Baker.

Giddy with exhilaration, I mentally scratch “skydiving” off the list. Next up: bungee jumping!

TAKE ACTION

• Skydive Vancouver: Tandem and advanced skydiving; also offers solo courses for those ready to go it alone. $272. Abbotsford, B.C.; 1-888-738-5867
• Pacific Skydivers: Perfect for newbies (half-hour of ground preparation). $239. Pitt Meadows, B.C.; 604-465-7311
• Whistler Skydiving: Soar over snow-covered peaks. $270. Pemberton/Whistler, B.C.; 604-698-7120
• Victoria Skydiving Adventures Inc.: Bonus: ask about the Exhibition Jumps, which raise money for local charities. $375. Victoria, B.C.; 250-655-4434

Lead image courtesy Sonu Purhar

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.

Janice in the forest; courtesy Tom Ryan

Our final day in the East Kootenays begins with a hike through an old-growth forest. Not a difficult hike, mind you. Our guide, Steve Kuijt, operations manager at Island Lake Lodge, assures us it is “a leisurely jaunt.” Of course, Steve is impossibly fit, just like just about everyone on the staff here, most of whom happen to be female. “Fernie mountain girls,” is the way that Tom describes them. “They are a special breed,” he says.

I am still pondering that remark as we ramble into the woods. At least there is not much chance of getting lost. Steve is a certified mountain guide, which means he is proficient in all things involving the outdoors. Apparently it takes anywhere from five to 10 years to complete the program, and mountain guides have to work in several locations to receive their accreditation.

Steve Kuijt; courtesy Tom Ryan

The trail leads through a shadowy world of towering 800-year-old Western Red Cedars. Light filters down through the canopy in celestial shafts and everything smells like has been bathed in air freshener. This pristine forest, which was never logged, has also miraculously escaped the wrath of forest fires. It’s one of the natural gems of the lodge’s 7,000-acre property.

As we plod along, Steve relates some of the local history. Many people, he says, believe this trail was the same one used by the legendary Sam Steele when he came though the area with Division D of the Northwest Mounted Police in 1887. His mission:  to establish the site of what would be the NWMP’s first permanent post west of the Rocky Mountains, and to diffuse tensions between white settlers and the Ktunaxa tribe. Steele, who was front and centre in a number of pivotal historical events in the opening of Canada’s west, including the battle with Big Bear at Saskatchewan’s Loon Lake, and the Klondike Gold Rush, settled the dispute with typical efficiency.

Sam Steele; courtesy wikimedia.org

And what is the evidence that the famous Mountie rode this path? Trees along the trail have been marked with hatchet slashes, and beside one of theses Steve shows us where the name “Steele,” has been carved into the wood.

An hour later, we are back at the lodge. Janice tells Joe and myself that we have a couple of options for the rest of the day. We can join her and Andre on a six-hour hike up into the Lizard Range, or we can stay behind and hang out and have a massage in the spa. Gee, tough choice.

My massage, administered by one of the lodge’s attractive young mountain girls, is very relaxing – so relaxing, in fact, that midway through it I notice that I am drooling. We discuss travel and she tells me, “Wow, iIt sounds like you have a fascinating life.” Afterwards, feeling pretty good about myself, I enyoy lunch on the outdoor patio. Tom drops by to join me.  Joe, however, is nowhere to be found. “He said he had some work to do,” says Tom. “He has to file a story today about his trip.”

“Ah yes, the spectre of the deadline rears it ugly head. I wonder what he’s going to write about?” 

“Probably about how everything out here is not quite as tall as the CN Tower,” says Tom.

Early in the evening I meet up with Janice and André, who have returned from the heavens with sunburned faces. The pair excitedly recount their ascent. The words “steep,” “slippery” and “snow-covered” are mentioned repeatedly. André proclaims it to be “the best day of hiking I’ve ever had.” 

I figured that was the case,” says Janice, “because when we got near the top, he kept stopping, and looking around and saying, “Merde!”

Just as our pre-dinner cocktails are being served, Joe re-surfaces wearing a brown blazer and a blue-and-yellow striped tie.

________________________________________

“Hey, did you get your massage?” I ask him.

“Yeah,” he says. “But to tell you the truth,

it was one of the most difficult things I’ve done.”

____________________________________

“You’ve got to be joking?”

“No, I’m serious. The whole time I was on the table it was like I was on a roller coaster. It felt like I was going to fly over the edge. The masseuse kept saying, “Your body is really tight.”

Tight is right. It sounds like Joe needs 10 massages.

As the conversation veers into the latest methods of avalanche control, Joe suddenly decides that he has to get a picture of the mama moose that everybody else has seen. He gulps down a tumbler of scotch and charges out the door, heading to the lake with his tiny camera. The sun is starting to slip behind the mountains and so Steve scrambles after him.

They return 40 minutes later. Joe proudly proclaims that he not only got a photo of the moose, but also of her young calf. He then goes on to boast that he was the first to spot the wild beasts and not the accredited mountain guide. “I saw them first, right Steve?” he says.

Steve  just smiles.

Part 6

Part 5

Part 4

Part 3

Part 2

Part 1

(Lead image by qyd; wikimedia.org)

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

It is late afternoon when we arrive in Fernie, and the town’s brick buildings are bathed in a soft, golden glow. It is the perfect evening to see the Ghostrider. Many of B.C.’s frontier towns have legends attached to them, but none are more colourful than the “Fernie Curse.”

The tale begins with mining magnate William Fernie, the town’s founder. During one of his prospecting trips in the area, Fernie met a tribe of First Nations people, and  noticed that one of the chief’s daughters was wearing a necklace of shiny black stones. Knowing these stones were coal, Fernie asked about their source. The chief agreed to show Fernie where the stones had been found, with the condition that the prospector marry the princess. But, after learning the location of the coal deposits, Fernie reneged on the deal. The angry chief responded by putting a curse on the valley, saying it would suffer from fire, flood and famine. In April 1904, fire reduced Fernie’s wooden commercial district to smouldering rubble. Four years later, a second fire gutted the entire city. In 1916, more damage was done when the Elk River overflowed and flooded large sections of town. The near-famine conditions of the Great Depression made residents believe the curse would never end.

courtesy library; flickr.com

That’s the way the situation remained until August 15, 1964, when members of the Kootenay tribe, led by Chief Ambrose Gravelle (Red Eagle), assembled in Fernie for the ceremonial lifting of the curse. Mayor James White made amends for the wrong done by William Fernie by smoking the “pipe of peace” with Chief Red Eagle.

Though the curse has now been banished, the memory lingers. On sunny summer evenings a spectacular shadow appears on a rock-face high above the city that shows the form of the jilted princess sitting on a horse with her father, the chief, who is walking beside her. They call it the Ghostrider.

Fernie: Coolest Town in North America – According to Rolling Stone magazine

Today, of course, Fernie is more popularly known as a mecca for skiers, snowboarders, hikers and mountain bikers, and tourism is on the rise – thanks in part to some glowing media coverage. Rolling Stone magazine have dubbed Fernie the “Coolest Town in North America” and Outside magazine ranked it among its “Top 20 Dream Towns,” two points noted by British Columbia magazine when it did a 2006 cover story on the town, entitled “Coolest Fernie.” However, my first impression is that this is one of the sleepiest places I have ever been to. The downtown sidewalks are deserted and it’s so quiet you can hear yourself think. All that’s missing is a dog asleep in the middle of the main street. I dunno, maybe you have to see it in winter.

Joe finds a store that is actually open – a head shop – and begins interviewing the owner, an attractive woman who came here from somewhere else, which seems to be the secret to Joe’s heart. I wander off and end up in a saloon where I drink a beer and watch dust motes drifting in the air.

courtesy patrick 444; wikimedia.org

National Geographic Traveler 2009 Pick: Island Lake Lodge

A 10-kilometre drive up into the mountains gets us to Island Lake Lodge. Situated at the 1,400-metre level, the remote setting packs a visual punch: green-roofed wooden chalets dwarfed by the towering, grey mountains of the Lizard Range, and everywhere you look ramrod straight evergreens rising up out of a blanket of emerald green. There is a beautiful lake in front of the lodge, bald eagles circling overhead and jackrabbits in the parking lot. The air feels like it is composed of pure oxygen.

The lodge www.islandlakeresorts.com/ is famed for its powder snow and cat-skiing operations, but its summer pleasures – fine dining, fishing, hiking and a full spa – are also attracting a following. Recently, the travel magazine National Geographic Traveler published its “Stay List 2009 Guide,” an elite list of 129 hotels around the globe with a transcendent vision that goes beyond traditional hotel-keeping. Island Lake Lodge was one of only 13 Canadian hotels included on the list.

We have dinner on the lodge balcony. Head chef Kelly Attwells recommends the steak. He can personally vouch for the beef, because he bought it at auction. He means he bought the entire cow. “Her name is Midnight,” says Atwells. Hearing that, Janice decides to pass on the steak. She doesn’t want to eat anything that she knows the name of.

courtesy Tom Ryan

During dinner we learn that the area boasts one of the largest concentrations of grizzlies in the province. There is plenty of other wildlife as well. At the head of the trail that leads down to the lake a blackboard lists the latest animal sightings. Today the board reads, “Moose, bear, cougar spotted this week. Make noise on the trails! Keep dogs on leash.” The moose, a 1,000-pound female, is a local celebrity. Every year or two, she swims out to the little island on the lake and gives birth. She stays there until the calf is ready to get around on its own. Apparently, the cow has already has already had her baby this year.

Midnight is delicious and the wine is first-rate. It should be, considering that the lodge has 3,000 bottles in its wine library, ranging from $40 to $600 a bottle. Even so, I’m not sure how Joe can enjoy his. Beside the vino, he also has a glass of coca-cola, a beer and a scotch in front of him. And his foul-smelling cigars are back.

I stare out across the valley at the Lizard Range and its three most prominent peaks, popularly known as “the Three Bears.” A thought comes to mind. “Hey Joe,” I say, “standing out there are the three bears: Papa, Mama and Baby Bear. Which one are you?”

“Bears?” he says. “I don’t see any bears.”

(To be continued …)

Part 5

Part 4

Part 3

Part 2

Part 1

Lead image by Island Lake Resorts

courtesy chiloa; wikimedia.org

We are motoring south on Highway 95 and Tom is telling us that he once worked for Pierre Trudeau. “I used to have to get him a red rose for his lapel every day,” says Tom. I can’t say that I am buying this story, but I nod like I am. Joe, who is evidently not a Trudeau fan, mentions the one-finger salute that the prime minister gave to protesting strikers from his train car in Salmon Arm. ”Yes, but less widely remembered is that the protestors were shouting anti-French slogans at the train,” I note. “Still, all in all, another heart-warming piece of Canadiana.”

Continuing the Canadiana theme, at Joe’s urging we pull into a Tim Horton’s.  He returns a few minutes later carrying a coffee and a bag of donuts. “They don’t move like they do in Toronto,” he says, between mouthfuls.

Back on the road, Tom tells us about a recurring dream he has been having in which he is dating the Queen of England. “This is the queen as she looked in the 1950s,” he quickly points out. At any rate, Tom is waiting for the queen in his car. She gets in and says, “Tom, I can’t take it anymore. I want to leave the palace and hang out with you.”

But Tom replies stoically: “No Liz, you’re the queen and I’m just a little guy. It would never work out.”

None of us know quite what to make of this. I offer some helpful advice. “You know Tom, they say that all the characters in your dreams are parts of your own personality. Maybe you want to be the Queen, or maybe a queen.”

Any further probing of Tom’s subconscious is abandoned when Joe poses a football trivia question. “Which NFL player was Howard Cosell referring to on Monday Night Football when he said, “Look at that little monkey run.” Joe is disappointed that I know the answer. Cosell was referring to Washington Redskins receiver Alvin Garrett, who was black. That controversial 1983 remark ultimately caused Cosell to leave Monday Night Football a few months later.

Why Howard Cosell’s name has popped into Joe’s mind in the midst of the B.C. Kootenays is a mystery, but it provokes a round of sports trivia that causes Janice to groan in frustration. Tom laughs at her discomfort. “This isn’t turning out be much fun for you is it Janice?”

courtesy Hollylewi; wikimedia.org

Flanked by 3,000-metre snow-capped peaks, we roll through the Columbia Wetlands. Considered the last intact portion of the Pacific flyway, the 27,000-hectare expanse was designated a wetland of international importance in 2005. In spring and fall, the area attracts up to 60,000 mallards, 20,000 northern pintails, 10,000 swans, 15,000 sandhill cranes and 50,000 Canada geese.

We pull over to admire the panorama of the glittering green floodplain and get into a conversation with an aboriginal woman. She is wearing pigtails, a straw cowboy hat, a grey T-shirt, baggy, checkered purple shorts and pink Crocs. She is here trying to find some friends who are re-creating explorer David Thompson’s exploration of the region by canoe in the early 1800s. “They have one token white guy to play David Thompson,” she says. “He should be easy to spot.” She shakes her head and chuckles, “That David Thompson, he wouldn’t know where he was going. He would have had to ask his squaw wife.”

A bit of revisionist history? Well, Thompson was married to a Métis woman named Charlotte Small, and she did accompany him on some of his expeditions. Their marriage lasted 58 years, the longest Canadian pre-Confederation marriage known, and they had 13 children together, so this was definitely no summer fling. Still, during his many years of surveying, the man the Natives called “the Stargazer” mapped more than 3.9 million square kilometres of North America, so I’m guessing he must have had some sense of direction. Unfortunately, Canada’s greatest geographer died blind, penniless and in virtual obscurity in 1857 in Montreal.

Our final destination today is Island Lake Lodge near Fernie, but we have time to make a few stops along the way. The first is Radium Hot Springs. I’m not sure that naming your town after a radioactive element was a wise business decision, but the springs are popular. There are two large pools, one with hot water for soaking (usually around 39°C), the other a two-thirds-size Olympic swimming pool that is kept at about 29°C. There is also a hot-tub sized pool that has been dubbed the “Plunge Pool,” because the water can be hot – right from the source at 44°C – or cold, right from a creek running beneath the pools.

After we enter the complex, Joe pulls out his tape recorder, approaches one of the employees and says, “Well, the first question I have to ask is how many people have you saved?”

While he asks his questions, I wander off to check out a tourist shop that looks like it has been preserved in amber since the 1960s. Feeling nostalgic for the family road trips of my youth, I buy myself an Eskimo Pie.

Later, we stop for lunch in Invermere, which is also known as Calgary’s “Whistler.” The permanent population of the town is only 4,000, but on summer weekends it swells to 40,000. This may be why it takes us about an hour to be served lunch. Joe doesn’t appear to mind. Excited by the fact that so many of the people working in these parts are from southern Ontario, he is now interviewng everything that moves.

Hit man? courtesy Riley Banks

After eating, André and I don our sunglasses and walk off to explore, eventually ending up gazing at a statue of David and Charlotte Thompson. When we come back, Tom says, “Geezuz, everyone is staring at you guys. You look like a couple of hit men.” I’m wearing a green sports jacket, a black shirt and black slacks, while André is clad in a black track suit. I guess it doesn’t take much to stand out in Invermere.

(To be continued …)

Part 4

Part 3

Part 2

Part 1

Lead image by sallylondon; flickr.com

So after a two-year hiatus,  I felt like it was about time for a visit, so I peeled myself off the couch and my eyes from the computer screen, and headed back to the buzz. It was Saturday and Robson was in full swing: jam packed with slow-moving tourists, giggly teenage girls taking Facebook pictures of themselves and muscled meat heads honking at skimpily dressed 20-somethings from their gas-guzzling SUVs.

The first place that caught my eye was The Candy Aisle. This brightly coloured sugar palace is childishly fun. I explored the shelves and shelves of gummy animal-shaped treats and those red ones shaped like lips and big feet. Yum. It really takes you back to your childhood, then reminds you of that trip to the dentist when they took that little screaming drill to your back molars… Ick. It was worth it? Right? Maybe not, but at least now you are a grown up now and can set alarms on your iPhone to remind you to brush your teeth.

Bang-On

Next, I trekked over to the massive disaster that is Granville Street. What a mess! It’s a minefield of rubble, wires, cement and construction debris. Next time I’ll wear boots and not flip flops. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Bang-On, an eclectic, retro, custom T-shirt shop packed to the rafters with funky tees, accessories and the friendliest store employees around. You can spend hours perusing Bang-On’s collection of rockin’ retro prints and picking the perfect tee to complement the print. There are also fabulous sunglasses, belts, caps and a very nerdy collection of vintage electronics. I may have swooned when I spotted a Commodore 64 in the middle of the store.

El Kartel

A few blocks down from Bang-On I found another cool clothing store, El Kartel. This hot spot isw definitely funky, perhaps a bit too funky for me and my wallet, but their 50 per cent-off sale rack had a few pieces I could manage, though maybe not the small, gold, sequined halter top I tried to squeeze myself into. Luckily, there was a DJ spinning hip hop beats, so no one heard my profanities when the zipper jammed and  I got stuck in said small, gold, sequined halter top.

Cupcakes

After wrestling with possessed halter tops, I was feeling bit peckish. My hunger radar lead me directly to the new Cupcakes shop on Robson and Thurlow. If you haven’t tried these delicious $3 bites of heaven yet, you haven’t lived! Diet Smiet, these are worth a few extra bulges in your bikini bottoms. Just suck it in, no one will know

I was almost done savouring my last bite of  the pink and sprinkled “Sweet 16″ cupcake, when I ran into a mob of Japanese exchange students taking pictures of their new monkey balloon hats. In front of me was a very happy Balloon Man (Robson and Bute), blowing up a dozen heart-shaped balloons and counting the stack of $20s in his hands. I’m not sure if he’s there every day, but if you see a large, slightly smug, balloon Elmo, poking his head above the crowd, you’ll you’ve struck gold.

Balloon Man

Candy, cupcakes, funky tees, DJs and balloon animals? Maybe Robson isn’t so bad… I’ll definitely come back for a gander and some sugary snacks this summer!

courtesy Tom Ryan

Twin Falls is a sweet piece of eye candy: water spilling through two grooved chutes at the top of the chasm, falling through air, then merging into the same flow farther down, before crashing over the rocks and becoming a frothing cauldron. There is a bench that offers a head-on view of the show, so I sit down and soak it all in. Tom hauls out his camera and snaps some shots, including one of the three muskeeters.

Within seconds, a golden-mantled ground squirrel appears and stands on his hind legs peering up at me. I suppose he figures this is his turf and he is looking for an admission fee. Feeling rather good about having survived the hellish hike to Twin Falls, I open up my pack. ”Do you like pretzels, little guy?” Turns out he does. He takes one of the salted snacks and begins munching away, holding it aloft in his paws like a steering wheel. To complete the picture, he even has a pair of snazzy racing stripes.

courtesy damclean; flickr.com

Since our rodent pal is eating, we decide to follow his example, devouring the lunches that the lodge packed for us. The spray from the falls is having a soothing effect and I am starting to feel very relaxed. Janice, however, is disappointed that the tea house isn’t open. Yes, out here in the middle of nowhere there is a tea house that serves scones with jam. It’s a national historic site, built in stages by the CPR, beginning around 1908 with a one-storey cabin for patrons taking backcountry tours. In 1923, the company added a two-storey log structure to create a larger and more attractive chalet. A woman named Fran Drummond has owned and operated the place since 1964. Constructed from local spruce, the chalet now houses a main-floor kitchen and eating area with bedrooms on the second floor. The menu includes a selection of soups, sandwiches and desserts, which are served daily during the summer months.

Denied her chance at high tea, Janice decides that that we should start back. Man, the girl just can’t keep still. But the phrase “start back” comes as a jolt. It is an unpleasant reminder that we have only reached the midway point of our circular 17-kilometre hike. Janice also mentions that we will be taking a different return route.

My thinking is that this trail has to be much easier since we will now be descending. Once more I am proven wrong. Ten minutes into the return hike, things are already looking grim. There is no trail. Instead, we must traverse a moonscape of huge, jagged boulders on an upward diagonal. Why “up” I don’t know, but we are climbing again, and once again trying to keep pace with the long, machine-like strides of Janice and André.

This time, however, the pair lose interest in stopping to let us catch up. They vanish over the ridge, leaving Tom to deal with the stragglers. ”Would you take a cripple up these rocks?” asks Joe, a reference to Tom’s earlier anecdote about the Filipina journalist. The moraine is unforgiving stuff and it is not long before Joe, despite his trusty walking stick, begins to complain. He says that he has a bum leg and doesn’t think he is going to be able to make it.

courtesy Tom Ryan

Since we’re not equipped to camp, I wonder how feasible it might be to get a helicopter in here for an evacuation. Would the Toronto Sun foot the bill for that? Tom calmly urges Joe to continue, promising that this nasty section of rubble ends shortly, while steering the conversation away from the current situation. He also begins offering Joe pretzels as a reward for completing each new stretch of terrain. The pretzels work their magic and Joe, his lily-white knees glowing like headlamps in the afternoon sun, makes it through the moraine.

From there we descend through the forest, where I quickly remember that descending is no easier than climbing. I start gobbling ibuprofen tablets, but by the time we finallly make it back to the car my legs still feel like someone has been pounding on them with ball-pen hammers. Janice asks everyone what they thought was the highlight of the hike. I spoil a unanimous vote for Twin Falls by stating that I liked Takakkaw Falls best. “Of course, we saw that in the first five minutes,” I point out.

We dine that evening at Cilantro at Emerald Lake Lodge, overlooking the lake of the same name. The upscale resort attracts a large international clientele and, judging by the fleet of red canoes tied up at the dock, a healthy contingent of Japanese tourists. The restaurant’s location is stunning and everyone’s mood is upbeat. Even silent André has started talking, his tongue loosened by several glasses of fine Okanagan red.

Joe has made a miraculous recovery from his ordeal in the Yoho Valley, either that, or the experience has tipped his mind over the edge. He is still carrying his walking stick and he goes around the tables with it, chatting openly to total strangers. “I almost died today,” I hear him tell one couple in a happy voice. “I hiked for 55 kilometres.”

I must admit, the guy has a writer’s instincts. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

(To be continued …)

Part 5

Part 3

Part 2

Part 1

Takakkaw Falls, courtesy Xevi V; flickr.com

We are trudging up a forest trail somewhere in the Yoho Valley, just west of the Continental Divide. I am sweating buckets and gasping for air. We are on the hike that Tom and Janice earlier described as “pretty easy.” I now know that these two can’t be trusted. The lone consolation, and it isn’t much, is that Joe is having an even tougher time of it than me.

The hike might not be so bad if we didn’t have to keep up with the maniacal pace that Janice and André are setting. The duo appears to be competing to see who is fitter. As for Tom, a former college track athlete, he comes and goes, merrily firing off wisecracks and taking pictures along the way, and, hopefully, keeping watch for bears.

“Bears?” Joe repeats loudly when informed that some had been spotted recently in these parts. He seems genuinely astonished to learn that bears inhabit the wilds of B.C. I suppose he figured the big fellows only show up to beg for sandwiches along the roadside, like you see in the postcards. At any rate, the struggle to keep within eyeshot of the two marching metronomes has made it too difficult for him to talk, which is a blessing. But then again if he had enough wind to converse, we would have less reason to worry about bears. The booming sound of his voice would have sent them scurrying.

Admittedly, the trail started out promising enough– the first kilometre of it was paved. The route took us past thundering Takakkaw Falls, a long, narrow, horsetail-shaped slice of glacial melt water that makes a spectacular plunge down a narrow channel fed by the Daly Glacier. Takakkaw Falls has a height of 384 metres and a vertical drop of 254 metres, making it Canada’s second-highest waterfall after Della Falls at Della Lake, B.C., which has a vertical drop of 440 metres. In comparison, Niagara’s famed Horseshoe Falls drops a pitiful 57 metres, though it has a much greater volume of water.

The sight of Takakkaw Falls was certainly uplifting, but what I didn’t realize then was that “up” was going to be the operative word for the day. The trail we are on does nothing but climb. This might be fine if you run a few miles every day, not so good if you job keeps you chained to a desk. Thankfully, there is some beautiful scenery enroute to relieve the pain. The water at Laughing Falls, for example, was an amazing milky green colour. Even knowing that the hue is caused by silt deposits carried down from the glaciers didn’t detract from its magic.   

Our destination is yet another waterfall-–117-metre high Twin Falls. The view, according to Tom, is supposed to make the hard slog worth it, but then this is the guy who called this a “pretty easy hike.” Meanwhile, the sight of all this dazzling, glacier-fed water has stirred up a fresh obsession in Joe. He desperately wants to stick his feet in B.C. mountain water. “How cold will it be?” he asks. “Will I be able to stand it?”

“It will be this cold,” says Tom, making a tiny circle with his thumb and forefinger.

Kicking Horse River, courtesy Feffef; flickr.com

Another kilometre on, we cross a babbling creek and Joe indulges his wish, taking off his shoes and socks and jumping in. He then bends down and begins happily slurping handfuls of the stuff into his mouth. When Tom, who has paused to take some shots of a trio of pretty female hikers, catches up with us and spots Joe in the water, he says, “OK. Just tell me that you didn’t?”

“Didn’t what,” asks Joe.

“Didn’t take a drink.”

“Yeah, I did. Why?”

“I’m guessing you haven’t heard of ‘beaver fever,’” replies Tom, who promptly launches into a very detailed, gory and highly exaggerated description of the intestinal infection’s effects.

Joe’s exuberance over his mountain-water baptism is instantly swept away. “How long before I know if I’ve got it?”

“Could be a couple of hours. Could be a couple of days,” says Tom.

We plod on, eventually reaching the base of a series of steep switchbacks that lead up to Twin Falls. The climb is a killer. Halfway up, Joe drags a branch out of the brush and uses it as a walking stick. Dripping with perspiration and caked with dust, we finally make it to the top and stare out across the yawning gorge.

(To be continued …)

Part 1

Part 2

Lead image by Keith Young; wikimedia.org

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