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

A beautiful Kootenay weekend brought out more than 2,500 onlookers to take in the action at this year’s Bootleg Gap Sled Dog Races in Kimberley.

Kimberly's Bootleg Sled Dog Races raised close to $18,000 for the East Kootenay Children’s Fund. Photo courtesy Bruce Kirkby

“We had three less competitors than last year,” explains a grinning event volunteer John Boucher, “but at least two of those were in Whistler doing Olympic duties, so we can’t complain.”

The event, which included a silent auction, raised close to $18,000 for the East Kootenay Children’s Fund. This money will help cover expensive travel costs for children and families who need to travel for treatment.

The success of this event sure gives the many organizers, racers, and volunteers a lot to wag, er, brag about.

Lead photo courtesy Bruce Kirkby

by Jim Sutherland

1. Movement toward mininalism is … minimal

Last spring Westworld magazine published an article I wrote on the minimalist movement in golf design — the trend toward rougher-hewn courses more reminiscent of Scottish links than the suburban country club style popular in North America. Prominent examples include Oregon’s Bandon Dunes, Tacoma’s Chambers Bay and Richard Zokol’s new Sagebrush, near Merritt. However, it appears golfers will have to wait awhile for other B.C. examples, which have been sideswiped by the current slowdown as well as more specific issues. It will be two or three years at least before anyone gets to play Union Bay Golf Links, south of Comox, designed by Gil Hanse (Golf magazine’s current designer of the year); and the design of Blackstone, near Fernie, appears to have been shifted to Greg Norman’s firm from that of David McLay Kidd (Bandon Dunes). There is a flipside to all this, however. Zokol’s Sagebrush was originally intended to be exclusive. But last summer, and again this year, he opened it up to “invitees” (which means anyone who asks). The course is just up the hill from the Quilchena Hotel, B.C.’s oldest, which offers basic but very characterful accommodation at a reasonable price. Playing Sagebrush is a treat, and the deals ain’t bad either, all things considered.

2. Clip those coupons, name that price

Over the winter, through judicious coupon clipping and by sticking to twilight golf, I averaged about $10 per round. Obviously no-one can pull that off during the summer, but operators are getting more and more aggressive with pricing and discounting, especially during off-peak hours and when the weather is poor. One I spoke to for the BC Business article told me “If you want to play golf, we will try to find a time and a price to suit,” which practically invites haggling.

3. Competition from south of the border

One reason operators here have to be flexible is the situation in Bellingham, where the economy is poor, the courses are emptier and the cost to play not much more than half of the norm on our side, given the strong dollar. If border waits don’t intervene, the parking lots at courses like Shuksan, Semiahmoo and Avalon will be crowded with B.C. plates this summer.

4. The environmental imperative

Sustainability hasn’t exactly been a buzzword in the golf industry, and indeed there are more than a few golfers who like the idea that their footprint is bigger than yours. But change is in the air. All the operators I spoke to for the BC Business article wanted to talk about the little things they were doing to make their courses more environmentally benign, though none of them mentioned the much bigger things that are just around the corner. Especially in the U.S., there’s a new mantra, currently being promoted by USGA president Jim Hyler: “Brown is the new green.” Courses are being urged to cut back dramatically on the use of water and chemical inputs, a movement that has the triple-threat advantage of saving money, promoting sustainability and making the game more fun to play, thanks to those fast, firm fairways. Golf Digest magazine has even just changed its course ranking criteria to reward exactly those kinds of playing conditions, in effect penalizing courses that are too lush and overwatered. Golfers: do us all a favour and complain about the conditions the next time you arrive somewhere to find the fairways all manicured and weedless.

Read my lips: No new courses

That’s right. As far as I could determine, not a single brand new course is certain to open in B.C. this year. There are several in the works, mostly in the Interior, and a couple might be playable later in the year, but developers are going slow — very slow — as money is tight and prospects are poor. That said, so many courses have opened in recent years that no-one touring B.C. will feel deprived of fresh experiences. My own list of favourites includes Sagebrush (see above), Kelowna’s Tower Ranch, Salmon Arm’s Canoe Creek and Rossland’s Redstone.

Lead photo courtesy Jim Sutherland.

by Andrew Findlay

The Courtenay River estuary is an ecosystem under siege – hence the formation of  the Estuary Working Group back in 2008 to bring together environmental groups, individuals and government to safeguard this biologically diverse heart of the Comox Valley.

Estuaries form where rivers greet the sea, forming a rich interface of fresh and saltwater that teems with life. These biologically diverse bodies of water are also where humans generally settle, because they are where nature tends to be at its most generous, and the waters of the Courtenay River estuary are no exception. Five species of salmon, blue herons, bald eagles, loons and trumpeter swans, as well as many more migrating waterfowl and shorebirds, frequent the estuary itself, while on its fringes, incoming freshwater braids into numerous channels that thread through tufts of pondweed, Widgeon grass, Lyngby’s sedge and cattails.

And when the tide is out, the sprawling mud flats of the estuary are revealed, along with evidence of a remarkable, extensive pre-historic First Nations fishery, supported by a vast system  of cedar-staked fish weirs in chevron, spiral and other patterns. Some of these stakes date back more than 500 years, a testament to the important role the estuary has played in sustaining life in the region. Ingenuous in their simplicity, these fish weirs worked in a way that allowed First Nation fishers to collect as much fish and other seafood as was needed without the rapacious practices expensive fossil fuel-powered fishing fleets, which are the hallmarks of modern commercial fishing. In this way, the estuary and the  peoples who lived off its abundance for generations hold valuable lessons about sustainability.

Today, the estuary is also the watery link between the municipalities of Comox and Courtenay, two rapidly growing communities that are putting increasing development pressure on this vital ecosystem. However, the environmental degradation of the Courtenay River estuary is not a new problem. For many decades the Courtenay River has been dredged upstream to allow for the passage of tugboats, log booms and barges, destroying vital salmon habitat in the process. And more than 20 years ago, municipal governments authorized the construction of a Superstore on prime agricultural land upstream of the estuary, opening the door to intensive big-box and strip-mall development on adjacent properties. Invasive species such as Himalayan blackberry and purple loosestrife have also altered and damaged the natural plant communities associated with the estuary. And shellfish harvesting in Comox Harbour is permanently closed because of contaminants such as fecal coliform. Most recently, a fierce battle has been fought over a proposed gas station on Dyke Road, which runs next to the estuary between Courtenay and Comox.

In many ways, it is argued that the estuary defines the Comox Valley both topographically and spiritually, making it easier, perhaps, to take this ecological treasure for granted. It’s just there:  we see it, we drive by it, we boat on it. And this is why the Estuary Working Group is encouraging Comox Valley residents as well as visitors to get reacquainted with the estuary through non-motorized recreation, whether by foot, paddle, bicycle or sail. Putting on our walking shoes and rollerblades, or saddling up a bike on the paved trails of the Courtenay Air Park, for example, provides an unparalleled shoreline view of the estuary, while paddling it by  sea kayak imparts a last sense of the power and beauty of this natural system, as one experiences close up the freshwater of the Courtenay River mixing with the sea in Comox Harbour. Harnessing the energy of the wind in a sailboat enables the adventurous to venture further, out into the bay, for an even greater perspective on the scale of the estuary and the interconnectivity between terrestrial and marine ecosystems in the valley. The message is: only by getting out to smell, feel and experience nature can we appreciate it, and this is key to a healthy future for the Courtenay River Estuary.

>>For more about the Estuary Working Group and its Courtenay River Estuary efforts, click here.

Lead photo courtesy Andrew Findlay.

The super-short pieces (none longer than 15 minutes) run in continuous, rapid rotation around a central lounge area. The audience wanders around the warehouse and chooses which performances they wish to see. It is virtually impossible to see all 12 bits in a single evening, but guests have a lot of fun trying.

HIVE: One of the strangest, most invigorating, chaotic experiments in the history of Vancouver’s live theatre scene. Photocourtesy The Electric Company Theatre

Two years ago, at HIVE 2, I saw four actors in a shadowy room perform a post-apocalyptic skit that cleverly morphed from frightening to hilarious. (Cozy Catastrophe by Rumble Productions & Theatre Melee.) I then stumbled into The Box Show by Felix Culpa, a play set, literally, inside a giant cardboard box. From there, I strolled across the warehouse to watch a surreal drama unfold down a narrow corridor (The Flannigan Affair by The Electric Company). The evening continued that way with small clumps of audience members bouncing from one bizarre vision to the next.

HIVE nights always end with live music, with this year’s lineup of eight Canadian indie bands including The British Columbians, Rich Hope and The Sadies.

HIVE 3 runs March 11-14, 17-20 at 577 Great Northern Way. Tickets are $25 for adults,
 $20 for students/seniors.

Lead photo courtesy The Electric Company Theatre.

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

Plane buffs advised to book summer Martin Mars Bomber tours now

by Rob Howatson

The award for most creative contribution to VANOC’s Paint the Town Red campaign goes to the marketing wizards for the City of Richmond. For two days in the midst of this Frebruary’s Winter Olympics, Richmond’s Lulu Islanders invited one of the world’s largest flying boats to moor its red-and-white hulk off the shore of Steveston’s Garry Point Park. The media was then invited to tour the Martin Mars bomber, while the public got to see this behemoth demonstrate its awesome wildfire fighting abilities as it dropped 27,000 litres of Fraser River froth into the delta – just a scant 50 metres away from the cheering crowds jostling for camera angles on the rocky beach.

Thirty years from now, I may not be able to tell you who won the Norway-Slovakia game at the 2010 Games, or what colour Jill Barber’s furry winter hat was when she sang at the Richmond O-Zone, but I will never forget the throaty growl of the Mars bomber’s four 2500-horsepower, Wright Cyclone engines as the plane drew a curtain of water that momentarily blotted out the sky.

Built for the U.S. Navy in 1945, the Martin Mars was originally conceived as long-range bomber bit was quickly reassigned for general transport when the prototype wowed Navy brass with its incredible heavy-lift capabilities.

Five Martin Mars aircraft were built for the U.S. Navy in 1945. The planes were originally conceived as long-range bombers, but were quickly reassigned for general transport when the prototype wowed Navy brass with its incredible heavy-lift capabilities. In 1959, Richmond volunteer firefighter, senior pilot and Burkeville resident Dan McIvor then envisioned converting these cargo cruisers to water tankers to fight wildfires. A consortium of B.C. forest companies subsequently purchased four of the Mars planes and the fleet went on to battle some 4,000 B.C. forest blazes.

Today, only two Mars bombers remain operational: both are stationed at Coulson Aircrane’s base on Sproat Lake, near Port Alberni. The Coulson Flying Tankers visitors centre is open to the public in the summer and plane tours are available for $10, assuming that the birds aren’t away on assignment. (Though with the word out thanks to this year’s Winter Games, early reservations may well be the way to go.) Check for  hours of operation.

>>Share your favourite sighting of these B.C. aviation icons

Lead photo courtesy City of Richmond

The Politeness Awards: And we thought the Canadians had that one down pat

“A smile denotes warmth, openness and friendliness. Smile gently and with sincerity. But be careful not to overdo it. False smiles can look artificial and never-ending smiles can invite suspicion.”

Instructions from Reverend Sun Myung Moon to his Moonie recruiters? No, this is a passage from Vancouver’s Olympic Protocol Guide, as distributed to 600 city staff members who have been reassigned to Olympic duties during the 2010 Winter Games.

The 120-page handbook offers tips on a wide range of protocol issues, including seating arrangements, proper conversation topics and personal grooming. It is supposed to ensure that our civic workers behave properly while dealing with the bevy of visiting politicians, royalty and business tycoons.

The grooming details are quite specific. For example. “Hair should be kept tidy yet stylish. A neat appearance isn’t enough. You must be exemplary all the time. Others will infer qualities of your [city] from your appearance and behaviour.”

“Never dress in clothes that are too tight,” it reads. “They make a slim person look gaunt and a large person look heavier.” Short socks are another fashion faux pas. As the guide astutely notes: “If they are too short, they may show bare leg when you sit down.”

Bare leg! My god, how offensive.

Under a section titled “Humility” the guide instructs: “You never say, ‘That’s not my job.’ There is nothing too demeaning, too demanding or just plain beneath you. If you are not comfortable opening car doors, holding umbrellas or pitching baggage, then you need to find another job.”

Evidently, complete submission is demanded.

The handbook also instructs civic employees to “remember that Protocol Smile.’ It ought to get larger the worse things get from your perspective. Let them think you are in complete control.”

Those assigned to dignitaries are warned: “You may get close to certain dignitaries and spend a great deal of time with them. But remember: you are not their friend and you are always on duty.”

Good advice if you ask me. Don’t be taken in by those chummy handshakes and phony regal smiles.

The manual goes on to say: “Look your best – smile, be confident, cheery, upbeat, positive. Even if you are nervous and unsure if what you are doing is correct, do not let the dignitary see that side of you.”

The guide also advises that people stay hydrated, take bathroom breaks whenever there is time, avoid jangling the change in their pockets, and avoid talking about politics, religion or marital problems.

Avoid jangling change in your pocket?

This may sound like a joke, but it isn’t. Taxpayer dollars were spent producing this advice, though exactly how much it cost to prodcue the manual has yet to be revealed. Presumably this unsightly detail would be filed under (section 5.8) “Embarrassing Situations,” where the guide advises: “Try to move the individual out of hearing range of others, and quietly tell them, ‘Your trousers’ zipper is open.’”

If you feel an urgent need to brush up your etiquette, you can view the contents of the Olympic Protocol Guide on Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/citycaucus/sets/72157623282871864/show/

Remember: the whole world is watching.

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

by Jeff Bateman

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

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

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

Photo courtesy Silk Road Aromatherapy and Tea Company

From tea parties as “social sculpture” to beer gardens as theatre – new twists on the classic definition of “art”

by Jim Sutherland

One of the pleasant surprises stemming from Vancouver’s Olympics has been the aesthetic sophistication. Things didn’t look promising back in Torino in 2006, given the contrast between the Italians’ amazing closing ceremonies and our kitschy yet overwrought log-cabin presence, but that was pretty much the last misstep. The Olympics 2010 architecture is solid, the logo, slogan and overall corporate identity work well and, hey, the mascots are delightful. True, the opening ceremony had its Spinal Tap moments, but the artistic direction and design were sound. And there’s also a lot to like about another crucial Olympic element, one that is often overlooked: the cultural component.

For example, consider the World Tea Party that’s running through March 21 at Centre A, a gallery of contemporary Asian art directly across the street from Pigeon Park in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side. For these six weeks in March, the art will come down from the walls and the gallery will turn into a teahouse “animated” by Vancouver artist Brian Mulvihill, who created his first such event back in 1993. Mulvihill has since served tea at dozens of locations around the world, including to as many as 17,000 people – that was in 2000 at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles with the Dalai Lama. So it’s a locally conceived idea that’s become a global institution: what could be more appropriate for Vancouver’s Olympics?

Right, but, as the old question goes, is it art?

Well, as Centre A curator Hank Bull explains, Mulvihill’s tea parties are an example of an increasingly common and important art variant known as “social sculpture” or “relational practice.” Obviously, art is not just painting and sculpture, which is how the term was largely defined until well into the 20th century. First, disciplines such as photography and film began to trickle in, and since the 1970s the trickle has become a flood. Today, a better definition of art might be: art is whatever artists decide to make or do.

Of course, artists don’t get to retain their arbiter jobs if their work doesn’t stand up, and the opinions of viewers as well as peers and critics ultimately decide whether it does — something to keep in mind should you find yourself at one of the art events in this week’s Top 5: Best Examples of “But Is It Art?” Olympic Art.

1. World Tea Party

According to its organizers, the World Tea Party is based on the idea “that humanity shares in the drinking of tea a spirit of generosity and understanding that both celebrates and transcends our cultural diversity.” In other words, this tea party is a “social sculpture” with an interactive aspect that makes it a suitable vehicle for a debate about the relationship between the Olympics and the Downtown Eastside, where the gallery is located. That’s the art argument. The tea argument is that there will be dozens of varieties of the mighty leaf  (some of them “special” teas of the sort enjoyed in Chinese restaurants before the advent of relaxed licensing laws), served in dozens of different vessels, in keeping with dozens of different customs from around the world. Video: How to Make the Perfect Tea  >>Victoria’s Silk Road tea shop

2. Kamp

In this presentation by the Dutch troupe Hotel Modern, puppeteers manipulate thousands of tiny concentration camp inmates and their keepers as others in the troupe roam around filming it all with miniature cameras. The action is then beamed onto a giant screen as part of the PuSh International Performance Festival. But is it theatre? It would be if there were dialogue, a plot and characters, but there are none of those – so maybe it’s closer to Is-It-Art?

3. Vectoral Elevation

Mexican-born physical-chemistry grad and electronic artist Rafael Loxano-Hemmer criss-crosses the globe creating large-scale interactive installations in public spaces. In Vancouver he’s installed 20 robotic searchlights along the shores of English Bay, where Internet participants from around the world are granted an opportunity to design their own kinetic light sculpture by manipulating the beams; performances are then captured on cameras as a lasting memento. So is it art or is it just really cool? Most in the art world would side with the former.

4. The Western Front Front

The Western Front Gallery happens to be situated in an early-20th-century building. And for the Cultural Olympiad, artist Reece Terris has installed a grander false front on this already existing false front — something of a commentary on the role real estate and real estate fluffing has played throughout Vancouver’s history. It’s not much of a stretch to call this art, particularly as the artist’s most recent show involved installing a six-storey apartment in the rotunda of the Vancouver Art Gallery. But if the Western Front building suddenly sports a “For Sale” sign, we’ll know it was really something else: home staging.

5. The Candahar

Inside a Granville Island theatre sits a meticulously detailed re-creation of an Irish pub; viewers can walk in and, oh, order a beer. A skeptic might object that there’s a pub just like that in pretty much every suburb, but those ones weren’t created from scratch by a bona fide artist named Theo Sims and don’t involve the participation of big-deal Vancouver artists Stan Douglas and Rodney Graham and writers Michael Turner and Timothy Taylor. So is it art, or is it just a pub? It’s definitely a fine place to argue the question.

Photo courtesy Jim Sutherland

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why not?” Sabrina chimed in.

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

“Oh. ok.”

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

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

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

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

Long pause here. Jesus, where do I begin?

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

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

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

“But not a Smart Car?” confirmed Duncan.

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

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

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

“A Prius? Why do we want that one?”

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

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

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

“Oh,” replied Sabrina. “Oh, yeah.”

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

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

“You know what, Dad?”

“Hmmm?”

“I have a vagina.”

“Yes . . . ?”

“But Duncan has a Prius!”

Continued on GLAVE.COM

See also: Gone Newfie.

Stikine: The Great River (excerpts + an update)

by photographer Gary Fiegehen

An Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–Hugh Brody, Stikine

A Call to Action

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

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

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

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

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

courtesy Gary Fiegehen

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

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

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

Fast forward to 2010

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

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

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

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

All photographs: Gary Fiegehen

Breaking bread with B.C.’s culinary queen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get Mobilized

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Daniel Wood

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

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

But First, a Little Island History

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photos courtesy Daniel Wood

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

by Masa Takei

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get Mobilized

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

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

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

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

See also: Edible B.C. Contest.

Photos courtesy Edible B.C.

Brian Harris is a B.C.-based photographer focused on building a better world – through FarmFolk/CityFolk

by Kerry Banks

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

“You look around and see all this wealth, and you think, ‘Man, most of the world doesn’t live like this.”

The 57-year-old Vancouverite began taking photos at 16, but didn’t take up the camera professionally until he was in his mid-thirties, after working as a baker, then as a counsellor for the mentally challenged. But from the beginning of his photography career the focus was the people of the Himalayas – whom Harris, a Buddhist since age 25, calls “a source of spiritual inspiration.” He found that he felt more alive in the region, particularly in India, with its noisy, chaotic energy. “In Canada, it’s like Sunday morning every day. There are hardly any cars on the streets. There’s no activity. You look around and see all this wealth and very few people, relatively speaking, and you think, ‘Man, most of the world doesn’t live like this.’”

Recently, however, Harris has focused his lens on subjects closer to home, photographing small, sustainable community and cooperative farms in the Lower Mainland as well as urban agricultural projects for Vancouver’s FarmFolk/CityFolk Society. Founded in 1993, the non-profit works to cultivate a local, sustainable food system by developing and operating projects that provide access to and protection of agricultural lands. It also supports local, small-scale growers and producers and educates, communicates and celebrates with local food communities.

 It has been said that ‘beauty is the splendour of the true.’ And for Vancouver-based photographer Brian Harris, a successful photograph approaches this goal. ‘Beauty’ meaning not just attractiveness ‘but the awareness of the profound nature of reality.’

Still, Harris’s work for FarmFolk/CityFolk remains consistent with his overriding mantra: “Beauty in Service.” Simply taking pretty pictures isn’t enough; the photos have to serve a larger goal. “I wouldn’t work simply as a commercial photographer,” he says. And though the subject matter of his work may be different from that at the roof of the world, there are similarities. “I’m drawn to the same things I was in the Himalayas: beauty, a way of life that is substantively real, and using my photography to motivate people toward beneficial actions in their lives.”

Other FarmFolk/CityFolk projects aimed at increasing consumption of local foods include “Meet Your Maker,” which brings together farmers, buyers and distributors so they can create networks. In summer, the organization also conducts farm tours – day trips to local farms.

Twelve of Harris’s photos of small, local sustainable farms, for example, were used to illustrate the FarmFolk/CityFolk 2009 calendar, alongside recipes provided by restaurants and food organizations promoting a grow-and-eat-local perspective. It’s an approach that FarmFolk/CityFolk is also exploring through the Community Farms Program, a collaboration with B.C.’s Land Conservancy. The goal is to expand local food production: by helping new farmers access affordable land, by researching the best practices of existing collectively owned farms and by creating a network of potential farms, landowners and community organizations.

Harris says a new model of farming is needed because so few young people are entering the field. “Most farmers today are over 60, and when they die, the farms are usually passed on to their children. But it’s so difficult to make a living farming that the land is often then sold. It remains in the Land Reserve, but it isn’t used for farming.”

Other FarmFolk/CityFolk projects aimed at increasing consumption of local foods include “Meet Your Maker,” which brings together farmers, buyers and distributors so they can create networks. In summer, the organization also conducts farm tours – day trips to local farms (see below). Meanwhile, Harris has finalized a 2010 Vancouver Museum exhibit focused on food and sustainability that features his photography, installations and a film and speaker series, all part of his continuing quest to help make the world a better place. As he says, “Seeing with the eyes of the heart is a way into the deep and meaningful understanding of existence.”

Get Mobilized Now entering their fifth year, FarmFolk/CityFolk’s Incredible Edible tours are an opportunity for culinary education on everything from heirloom poultry to environmental sustainability. The Metro Vancouver/Fraser Valley tours include transportation, a locally sourced menu of regional specialties, a knowledgeable tour guide and at least three in-depth farm tours with the folks that put food on the tables of many British Columbians — plus the chance to purchase farm-fresh fare. $80. For more info: contact Tallulah at 604-730-0450; admin@ffcf.bc.ca

>>Click here for Brian Harris’s six-minute show FarmFolk/CityFolk Heroes

>>See also: MyWestworld.com’s Spring 2010 Edible British Columbia Giveaway

Photos courtesy Brian Harris

The eighth wonder of the world, via rail

by Colleen Friesen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Updates:

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

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

Photos: Colleen Friesen

A train has replaced Afghanistan camels on journeys across the Outback

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

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

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

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

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

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

Background

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

The Winners

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

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

1. Canadian (Canada)

2. Royal Canadian Pacific (Canada)

3. Rocky Mountaineer (Canada)
South America

4. Andean Explorer (Peru)

5. Hiram Bingham (Peru)

Africa

6. Blue Train (South Africa)

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

Asia/Indian Subcontinent

8. Palace on Wheels (India)

9. Eastern & Oriental Express (SE Asia)

10. Shangri-La Express (China/Tibet)

11. Toy Train (India)

12. Deccan Odyssey (India)

Europe

13. Danube Express (Central Europe, Turkey)

14. British Pullman (Great Britain)

15. El Transcanta-brico (Spain)

16. Golden Eagle Trans-Siberian Express (Russia)

17. Venice Simplon-Orient-Express (Europe)

18. Glacier Express (Switzerland)

19. Bernina Express (Switzerland)

20. Royal Scotsman (Scotland)

21. Flam Railway (Norway)

22. Bergen Railway (Norway)

Australia

23. Ghan (Australia)

24. Indian Pacific (Australia)

25. Sunlander (Australia)

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

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

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

Lead photo courtesy Orient-Express.

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

Wave makers: the return of the small-scale wooden boat

by Rob Howatson

The Fraser River is the historical lifeline of B.C., and wooden boats the primary mode of transport used to navigate it until the turn of the last century. How fitting then that New Westminster’s newly expanded river interpretive centre has found the perfect way to merge and explore the mythology of these two icons.

The Fraser River Discovery Centre’s Build-a-Boat program (February 6 to May 15) offers the chance to help construct a 12-foot, flat-bottomed, wooden dinghy called a Fraser River skiff, with volunteer coaches from the Vancouver Wooden Boat Society (FRDC) assisting aspiring mariners in shaping and joining the marine plywood and Douglas fir parts. The FRDC will use the vessel for community events and may even mount it atop a parade float.   604-521-8401

Getting involved: The Fraser River Discovery Centre’s new exhibit, “The Ripple Effect,” documents river-activist-turned-MP Fin Donnelly’s two epic Fraser swims, the changing health of the Fraser waterway and tips on how to help save the river from pollution and overdevelopment.

Photo courtesy Dana Montgomery

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

by Charles Montgomery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Indian Pacific. Courtesy Great Southern Rail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

courtesy the Rocky Mountaineer

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

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

The Ghan train / courtesy Great Southern Rail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Sonu Purhar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Empire Builder at Havre Station, Mont. Courtesy Amtrak

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lead photo: courtesy Helena Zukowski

Rumbling sledge 2010: Going for paralympic gold

by Rob Howatson

Introduction

In Sweden, in the 1960s, a group of paraplegic hockey fans decided they weren’t ready to hang up their skates, so they sat on them — and the sport of sledge hockey was born.

Players in this fast, hard-hitting, low-to-the-ice game sit on metal frame sleds, which are in turn mounted atop two hockey skate blades. The athletes hold mini hockey sticks in each hand, using the metal-tipped, butt-end of the shafts to propel themselves across the ice.

Surprisingly, Canada has been late in achieving dominance in this sport. Paralympic gold did not come our way until Torino in 2006, when North Vancouver-born sledger Greg Westlake and his team blanked Norway 3-0. Now the 23-year-old right-winger and his squad will attempt to defend their title at the 2010 Games. Westlake, currently living in Mississauga, Ontario, took time out from training to explain why B.C.’ers should check out the sledge-hammering at UBC Thunderbird Arena this March.

The Interview

WW: Why were your legs amputated when you were 18 months old?

GW: It was a birth defect. My feet didn’t form properly.

WW:How did you get into sledge hockey?

GW: As a kid, I played stand-up hockey on prosthetic legs. I couldn’t skate as fast as the other kids, so I was relegated to goalie. Then, at 16, I switched to sledge hockey, which allowed me to do what I’d always wanted: to join the rush. I’m an energetic guy, an aggressive guy. Playing forward suits my personality. And not only can I do that in sledge hockey, but I can do it on a level playing field with other athletes who are lower-limb disabled. That’s a rush.

WW: What was your most frustrating moment when learning to skate with your hands?

GW: Being worse than everyone else. Since I was coming from a stand-up hockey background, I thought I’d just jump right in and be a great player. In reality, I had to learn to skate all over again.

WW: How do the rules of sledge differ from stand-up hockey?

GW: They’re similar, but in sledge the refs don’t allow “Teeing,” so you can’t use your sled to ram an opponent’s at right angles. No T-boning.

WW: Which still leaves room for devastating, clean hits?

GW: For sure. Unlike stand-up hockey, in which players hit the boards high, where the “glass” flexes, we slam into the boards low, where there’s no “glass” and no flex. It’s like hitting a cement wall.

WW: What can first-time sledge viewers expect in terms of puck-handling and shots? ?

WW:The stickwork is every bit as impressive as in the upright game. Players can dribble the puck so that it crosses beneath their sled — a great way to confuse goalies. As for shots, some of our guys blast pucks that travel 60 to 70 mph.

WW: How did people react to sledge hockey at the 2006 Torino games?

GW: The crowds were surprisingly good. Early on, organizers had to bus school kids in to fill out the stands, but as things progressed, the sport grew in popularity. I like to think our team’s gritty determination had something to do with that. And our gold-medal game ended up being broadcast live in Torino’s town square, where the thousands who couldn’t get tickets to the sold-out final jammed the plaza to watch the event. I hope it’s like that in Vancouver for these Paralympic games. The larger the attendance, the more pumped we get, the harder we play and the more exciting the sport.

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

Some people will go to any lengths to find a great meal, even if they have to walk, bike or snowshoe their way to it

by Rhonda May

– and for those people there is Swallow Tail Tours, a Vancouver-based tour company that specializes in regional gastronomic adventure.

Company owner, Robin Kort, an enthusiastic cook, certified oenophile and lover of the great outdoors, knows where the highest quality edibles are to be found throughout the province, and being athletically inclined, she leads many of the tours herself – whether these be pedal-pumping tours of the Okanagan Wine Valley, hikes to secret swimming holes on the Gulf Islands or treks across frozen Coastal Range lakes.

The getting there may require a certain amount of huff and puff (tours can be up to five days long), but at some point during each day comes the goal, and the reward – an amazing multi-course meal made from fresh, regional B.C. ingredients matched to the best B.C. wines. Like the participants on her tours, Kort cares that the food she eats is nourishing for the body and sustainable for the planet. Hence, all meat, dairy and eggs served on the tours are sourced from B.C. organic producers raising free-range, hormone-free animals fed on a natural diet. The bread is likely to have been made from flour ground at a local mill with heritage flour, the cheese lovingly crafted by artisan cheese makers, the produce grown by local organic farms, the wine bottled by eco-conscious British Columbia vineyards.

Whatever food you discover, you’ll want second helpings, and you’ll feel okay about that because – hey, you just burned off all those calories.

The tours are not, however, only for Olympians in training. The focus is more about getting food lovers closer to the source of their diet in a healthy, active way. 

The tours are not, however, only for Olympians in training. The focus is more about getting food lovers closer to the source of their diet in a healthy, active way. Kort keeps her tours small and intimate (seven to 10 people max) and they can be tailored to the fitness level of the group. Cyclists on the tours, for example, are trailed by vans, giving participants the option to cycle or ride along as much as they choose. Then of course, at the end of the day, there are those other fresh-air attractions, such as hot-tub soaking, fireside lounging under the stars and repose in a quaint farmhouse, unique B & B or rustic mountain cabin.

If time is limited, Swallowtail Tours also offers popular one-day excursions from Vancouver, such as its crabbing trip – an outing at sea on a fish boat to set crab pots, followed by a Dungeness crab fest in Kort’s own kitchen featuring the day’s catch.

As Robin Kort explains, “My tours are the perfect break for the couple where one partner wants to engage in some sort of activity and the other cares more about great dining. This way they can vacation together and have both.”

You can follow Robin on Twitter
Facebook
or via her own cooking blog

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

Prime Picks: four foraged feasts

by Ryan Stuart

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

1. Wild Seaweed Tour
Outer Coast Seaweeds, Sooke

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

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

2. The Great Fall Mushroom Hunt
Aerie Resort, Malahat

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

3. Thriving Wild
Windwalker Adventures, Comox & Lake Cowichan

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

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

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

courtesy Strathcona Park Lodge & Outdoor Education Centre

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

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

by Chad Hershler

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Buy local wines from:

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

Rent bikes and get maps from:

• Freedom — The Bike Shop
250-493-0686

Get dropped off by:

• Ambrosia Tours Ltd.
250-492-1095

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

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

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

Lead image courtesy Cindy Nelson/Penticton Farmers Market

TRAIN TRAVEL

Four journeys, four continents, four top 25 trains

1. CANADA

• The Rockies Under Glass
  by Rob Howatson

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

2. SOUTH AFRICA

• South Africa’s Blue Train
• by Helena Zukowski

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

3. MOSCOW TO MONGOLIA TO BEIJING

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

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

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

4. AUSTRALIA

• The Ghan
• by Daniel Wood

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

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

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

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

Cortes Island’s annual slurp fest is the perfect venue for oyster newbies to display their raw courage

by Andrew Findlay

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

The enigmatic mollusk, which comes gift-wrapped in a fable of almost mythological sex appeal, is almost a religion on Cortes, albeit of the pagan variety. When the faithful are summoned to celebrate its charms at the annual OysterFest, they descend on the pebbled beach of Squirrel Cove in droves. 

When the faithful are summoned to celebrate its charms at the annual OysterFest, they descend on the pebbled beach of Squirrel Cove in droves. This May long weekend, even the threat of a spring squall has not deterred the congregation from gathering. They’re here to slurp raw oysters, sample a few from the barbecue, launch homemade bottle rockets over the beach with the kids, listen to music and salute a noble bivalve that is the livelihood of roughly 75 Cortes islanders. “I’m just a real happy camper right now,” says one of their number, Brent Petkau, as he surveys the boisterous crowd blissfully slurping the ocean’s bounty. Members of the volunteer fire department have joined young parents with dreadlocked hair and hemp clothing. Savoury aromas, slightly smoky, waft heavenward on the sea breeze. The fruit de mer’s appeal knows no bounds: Doctors, farmers, fishermen, loggers, lawyers and realtors alike line up at the oyster bar sheltered beneath a giant white awning, where volunteers man the controls of a half-dozen barbecues.

I wander over to where Kathy McLaggan is taking bids in a friendly mollusk competition to guess the weight of one particularly prodigious specimen. “This is a chance for all of us farmers to get together and feel good about what we do,” explains McLaggan, who has been harvesting oysters in the waters around Cortes for the past 18 years. “It’s also a chance for us to give something back to the community, by raising some money for the volunteer fire department.”

I take my chances and estimate the prize bivalve’s weight at 2 1/4 kilograms, while in the background a solo guitarist plucking on the nearby stage warbles a slightly off-key cover of Neil Young’s “Old Man.” I stuff my entry into the jar, and McLaggan winks, wishing me luck. Moments later, I’m jostling through the crowd in search of Marcel Creurer (pictured), a barrel-chested mountain of a man with a deep baritone voice and strikingly bushy white beard. I find him chatting with a couple of oyster neophytes at an interpretive display on shellfish aquaculture near the old wood-sided Squirrel Cove Store. Creurer hails from Saskatchewan, a province known more for its prairie oysters than the oceanic kind, but has farmed off Cortes since the mid 1990s. He is also master of ceremonies for this year’s gastronomic hoedown. It’s a tradition revived in 2003 after an earlier incarnation fizzled in the ’90s. But despite the characteristically laid-back island nature of the proceedings, Creurer tells me, there is a political subtext.

Only 13 kilometres wide and 25 long, with barely 900 full-time residents, Cortes is dappled with  white-sand beaches, secluded coves and forest-shrouded lagoons, and has the relaxed ambience of a place whose inhabitants derive their living from the land and sea. 

Recently, the oyster-farming community waged a low-intensity public relations war with “newcomers” – those who had only just discovered what others have long cherished about this sliver of an island in the Discovery Islands archipelago. Only 13 kilometres wide and 25 long, with barely 900 full-time residents, Cortes is dappled with  white-sand beaches, secluded coves and forest-shrouded lagoons, and has the relaxed ambience of a place whose inhabitants derive their living from the land and sea. But the sound of generators and the bustle of boats coming and going as oyster farmers tended their leases was ruining some residents’ sense of island idyll. And for a time, the battle had all the hallmarks of the classic island dichotomy: money versus tradition, newcomers versus old-timers; millionaires mixed in with artists, loggers, fishermen, aging Vietnam draft dodgers and, yes, oyster farmers. “They didn’t want us spoiling their view and making noise,” Creurer says with a shrug. “But today there is a lot less tension. A lot of people worked hard to mend fences.”

On the surface, oyster farming is a lonely, introspective and physically demanding way to make a buck, but one with an undeniably romantic appeal. It is an occupation governed not by nine-to-five drudgery but by the rhythmic ebb and flow of the tides. If low tide falls at 3 a.m. in the depths of a West Coast winter, then that’s when the oyster farmer dons his rubbers, rain slicker and headlamp to work the beach lease. It’s also the kind of work that engenders strong fellowship among practitioners, which makes happenings like today’s festival possible. Then again, we are talking about oysters ¬– that seafood of legendary aphrodisiacal fame that sends poets into rapture and propels chefs to new echelons of kitchen creativity.

For it’s part, the oyster is a shamelessly sedentary yet promiscuous little creature. All we humans need do is provide a clean ocean environment and this bivalve thrives. A young oyster will attach itself to one spot for its entire life and, once rooted, proceed to gorge on plankton. The hermaphroditic-looking bivalve then sends sperm and eggs adrift upon the ocean currents by the millions. Eventually an oyster egg becomes fertilized and a larva settles out of the water column and crawls along the ocean floor in search of a suitable place to drop anchor – preferably on a rock, but perhaps on another oyster shell or even burrowed into the mud or sand.

At this point, the initiate will either recoil in terror or prepare to embark on what feels like some kind of forbidden gastronomic adventure. As Mark Kurlansky, author of The Big Oyster, notes, oysters are one of the only foods routinely eaten not only raw but while still alive

There it will sit, eating, procreating and eating some more until, perhaps, we eat it, though the oyster doesn’t go easily. The adductor muscle that holds the two halves of its shell together exerts a whopping 9,900 kilograms of pressure. But when we do manage to pry open its home, and stand eye-to-eye with the raw oyster propped inside on its platter of calcium carbonate, we have time to ponder the bivalve’s imminent passage into our digestive tract. At this point, the initiate will either recoil in terror or prepare to embark on what feels like some kind of forbidden gastronomic adventure. As Mark Kurlansky, author of The Big Oyster, notes, oysters are one of the only foods routinely eaten not only raw but while still alive.

“If the oyster is opened carefully, the diner is eating an animal with a working brain, a stomach, intestines, liver, and a still beating heart. As for the ‘liquor,’ that watery essence of oyster flavour that all good food writers caution to save, it is mostly oyster blood,” Kurlansky states bluntly.

With such thoughts in mind, I amble over to a stall to sample my inaugural – fresh and raw – Cortes Island oyster. To this Kamloops kid, albeit one who relocated to the coast 10 years ago, oysters, particularly raw ones, seem as foreign as coconuts to the Inuit. So I approach the oyster altar tentatively and, without overcontemplating the slime factor, slurp back a loonie-sized specimen. It’s mild, accompanied by nothing but a tart squeeze of lime that almost brings tears to the eye. I sample another, then one more, and soon a trickle of brine dribbles down my chin. I am consuming the sea, a messy act of communion with the hundreds gathered around me.

Petkau, who no doubt has already ingested his fair share of oysters today, appears at my elbow. Born in Manitoba, he has the hale, ruddy complexion of someone who spends much time in fresh air. He planted trees for years in the woods of B.C., lived in Nelson while working as a forest technician and then, a decade ago, bought an oyster lease before moving with his family to Cortes Island. Petkau oysters now find their way into high-end restaurants from Vancouver to Toronto. While as a guest oyster shucker, Petkau has cavorted in the kitchens of iconoclast chef Michael Stadtländer and, as a lay philosopher, waxed poetic on the cultural significance of this divine shellfish on CBC Radio. But it’s events like today’s festival that put a big smile on the bearded mugs of Petkau and Creurer.

“There’s nothing like an oyster – they’re the ultimate fast food. We don’t have to feed them, we don’t use chemicals of any sort, it’s all natural,” says Petkau, as giant raindrops begin to patter on the big tent. “Though honestly, this food is all about sex appeal.”

party on the half-shell

• The Cortes Island OysterFest, held every May long weekend, features a day of oyster feasting followed by a dance at the island’s Gorge Community Hall.

An estimated 500 gourmands attended 2007’s Cortes OysterFest, with volunteers serving up 330 dozen oysters, 60 kilograms of clams and 77 litres of seafood chowder.

Folks working the oyster bar tantalized the tastebuds with such delicacies as the angel on horseback (oysters marinated in white wine, wrapped in bacon and broiled), the Mexican-style

barbecued oyster and the ever-popular oyster burger. cortesislandbc.com

What the Shell? A few oyster facts
• Oysters are a nutritionally balanced food, containing protein, carbohydrates and fats.
• The oyster most common to our B.C. plates: the Pacific (Crassostrea gigas). The Japanese native was introduced on the B.C. coast in 1912 and has been a remarkably successful pioneer ever since.
• In 2006 alone, 7,500 tonnes of oysters were harvested in B.C., with a wholesale value of close to $18 million.

In search of Obama’s fave White House cheese – made in B.C., no less

by Sonu Purhar

the getaway

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

The Farm House Natural Cheeses / courtesy Roam Mobility

In recent years, Harrison and Agassiz in particular have also ramped up the local culinary scene with a slew of community events. August’s Circle Farm Tour, for example, now entering its seventh year, is slated to host 2,000-plus slow-food lovers eager to nibble and nosh their way through the local bounty offered up by more than 60 farmers, roasters and growers. Last July’s farm-fresh picnic bonanza, Brunch on the Farm, a collaboration between specialty food homesteads Limbert Mountain Farm and Farm House Natural Cheeses, is another now-annual event thanks to overwhelming community response. Gourmands are taking note, too. Food columnist and celebrity Chef “Dez” (Gordon Desormeaux) hosts pick-your-own-ingredients cooking lessons in the Limbert Mountain Farm tea room, and word of Farm House Natural Cheeses has even spread all the way to the White House, where a platter of the dairy’s blue cheese and gouda was served at a presidential dinner last July by special request.

the hideaway

Along a winding dirt road just five km from Harrison’s seaside boulevard is South Garden B&B. Thanks in part to an unparalleled location – conveniently close to Harrison Beach but far enough away to retain the serenity of country life – the 1.5-hectare property’s three suites and one cottage are so popular that summer reservations must be booked a month in advance. (Our fave: the log-cabin-like Meadow Suite, complete with overstuffed bed, wood-burning fireplace and red-brick wall.) Made-to-order, locally sourced breakfasts are delivered in a wicker picnic basket along with dainty china and checkered cloths (the blueberry muffins are divine). But it’s the hammocks, rock waterfall, outdoor hot tub, private cooking lessons and spa services that transform this weekend retreat into a full-blown holiday, complete with hikes to the cliffside lookout for worth-the-climb valley views. From $120/night. 1-866-796-3048
the inside track

The way it was: The Agassiz-Harrison Museum’s charcoal-black wedding dress and bike-sized coffee grinders (604-796-3545). Java must-hav’a: The monsoon-cured Indian Malabar at the Back Porch coffee roaster and pottery shop (604-796-9871). Mr. Info Stream: Harrison Eco Tours’ Tony Nootebos – a mine of information on local wildlife, politics and history. The hairy truth: A certified Sasquatch researcher weighs in on “our big-footed brethren” – Harrison Visitors Centre (604-796-5580). Reel good eats”: Raven’s, for fresh seafood, hip decor and prime beachside views (604-796-8717).

>>For a spring-bloom roadtrip  in the region: Fraser Valley Roadtrip: Daffy Dally

Lead photo: courtesy Roam Mobility

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

Aviation buffs alert: the Grump is home

by Rob Howatson

Snohomish County Airport’s Paine Field continues to evolve as a kind of Disneyland for aviation buffs. Located in Everett, Washington, the airport has long housed the Boeing plant tour at the Future of Flight Aviation Centre — a Science World-like attraction filled with interactive exhibits of the latest commercial jet technology. Also onsite: the Seattle Museum of Flight Restoration Centre, where vintage warbirds are prepped for display  in Seattle, and which recently got new neighbours when Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen moved his collection of rare military aircraft down from Arlington.  And now Historic Flight at Kilo-6 is throwing open the hangar doors on its own winged jewels, including a flyable 1944 P-51 Mustang, 1954 Canadair T-33 Silverstar and 1943 B-25 Mitchell nicknamed Grumpy.

Fly-alongs for the public available within the year.

>>Meanwhile, check out this B-25 Bellingham-to-Everett cockpit footage of Grumpy’s return home

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

• AVin-Couver Island Roadtrip
• by Jeff Bateman

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

2. Vancouver Island

• 100% Cowichan
• by Jeff Batema

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

3. Cortez Island

• Daytripper: Shuck it Up by Andrew Findlay

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

4. The Okanagan’s Naramata

• Daytripper: Wine Country MTB
• by Chad Hershler

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

5. B.C.

• Prime Picks: Wild Edibles
• by Ryan Stuart

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

6. De Courcy Island

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

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

7. The Fraser Valley

• Profile: Brian Harris
• by Kerry Banks

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

8. A Fraser Valley Culinary Weekender                                                                                                                                                  by Sonu Purhar

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

9. Vancouver Island Travels With Taste

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

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

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

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

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

>>For more island noshing: Swallow Tail Tours

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

While Vancouver and Whistler are jumping with frenzied Olympic activity, what are the citizens of Victoria doing?

by Rhonda May

Apparently, taking it easy with a nice cup of tea. As a matter of fact, British Columbia’s capital city on Vancouver Island has decided to market itself as a nearby refuge from the mayhem of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games with a campaign called “Calm on over to Vancouver Island.”

The plan initiated by Tourism Victoria invites visitors to take advantage of seasonally low priced accommodation and dining options while taking in the crowd-free attractions afforded by the city’s heritage architecture, colourful gardens and emerging arts and culture scene. And with Victoria only one hour away from Vancouver by seaplane, half a day by ferry, the program is meant to appeal to both besieged Vancouverites as well as tourists who would like to see more of Canada’s west coast while they are in the region. Hence, the  agency has assisted travellers with their getaway plans by providing a day-by-day transportation guide that can be downloaded here.

Here is a quick look at some top events taking place in Victoria in February.

Have a cuppa …

The 4th Annual Victoria Tea Festival will take place February 13-14, 2010, at the Victoria Conference Centre’s Crystal Garden. International tea experts and sellers will be on hand to help attendees pour and sample the complete spectrum-wheel of teas: green, black, white, oolong, herbal and floral. Teas, accessories and food pairing will be available for purchase and festival goers may also attend workshops and lectures that outline the health benefits of tea, as well as the etiquette of the serving ritual. Tickets are Cdn$20 (Cdn$25 at the door) and can be obtained by calling 250-370-4880.

Dine around …

Dine Around, Stay in Town is the year’s best opportunity for exploring Victoria’s vibrant dining scene, from small independent restaurants and unique brewpubs to iconic institutions such as the stately Fairmont Empress Hotel. The program, modeled on similar successful programs in New York, Seattle, San Francisco and Vancouver, offers menus at 50 participating restaurants with prices fixed at $20, $30 or $40 per person. All menus come with B.C. VQA wine-pairing suggestions. The city’s major hotels will join in on this deal too, with rooms offered at Cdn$69, Cdn$79, Cdn$89 and Cdn$129 under the “Pillows and Plates” plan. Dine Around, Stay in Town begins February 18 and runs until March 7, 2010.

Watch the Iron (Tea Kettle) Chef Challenge…

Courtesy Fairmont Empress Hotel

If you happen to be in town the night of February 24, you might like to take in the “Mission Emp-possible” competition between Takashi Ito, executive chef of the Fairmont Empress Hotel, and Matthew Batey, executive winery chef for the Okanagan’s Mission Hill Family Estate Winery. The two chefs will engage in friendly competition by creating five dishes each, paired with Mission Hill wines. Immediately afterwards, each dish will be publicly critiqued by a panel of celebrity judges. Kevin Brauch of the Food Network’s Iron Chef America and the Thirsty Traveller, will serve as the emcee and Mission Hill’s chief winemaker John Simes will join him in a spirited discussion of the wine and food pairings at the dinner. (Brauch will also be unveiling new Icewine cocktails at the Empress’ Bengal Lounge the night of February 23, 2010.)  Tickets for the “Battle of the Chefs” are $150 per person exclusive of taxes and gratuities; note, only 130 spaces are available. Reserve by calling 250-389-2727. The event takes place 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. in the Empress Dining Room at the Fairmont Empress Hotel. Victoria Harbourfront.

See the big picture …

Another good dining option is Vista 18 in the Chateau Victoria Hotel and Suites. The landmark rooftop dining room has just undergone an extensive facelift and will reopen to the public early in February. We haven’t seen the inside yet but sources say the décor has been simplified and modernized to put the focal point on the restaurant’s stunning views as well as what’s on the plate. Alos as part of the new look, artist Charles Gabriel has custom-designed signature glass and mirror pieces for the dining room and the adjacent Martini and Wine bar will feature an Aqua Creation silk ceiling fixture that is four feet in diameter. Executive Chef Garrett Schack’s menu using Vancouver Island ingredients, the selection of local beers on tap, as well as an extensive list of B.C. wines by the glass certainly signify a “Uniquely B.C.” experience. Vista 18 will be open all day and will offer live entertainment on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings.  740 Burdett Avenue., Victoria. 1-800-663-5891.

See also:

Another Chance to View the Olympic Medals

Courtesy cityfood.com

Thanks to a number of globally styled yet locally produced alcohol products making their debut on the B.C. culinary scene, 2009 could very well end up as the year of the “100-mile tipple.”

Not the least of these newcomers is Chambar Ale, a pale ale named after the popular Belgian restaurant (located in Vancouver’s Crosstown), that both inspired and commissioned it.

Says Chambar co-owner Karri Schuermans, “Our restaurant has made a reputation for its list of premium Belgian and Northern European beer. But what with import and transportation costs, the fuel usage involved and everyone’s preference these days for sustainable, local eating, we thought: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could offer a 100 per cent local beer product without compromising quality or changing the style of cuisine that we are known for?’”  

Read more of this post at cityfood.com

OLYMPICS UPDATE

What every volunteer Olympic ambassador needs to know

by Rob Howatson

As a lifelong Vancouverite, I love this city and accept that it is my civic duty to wear an Ask Me! button during the 2010 Games, but it is with some trepidation that I don the pin. It’s not that the buttons themselves look goofy. The City of Vancouver’s Ask Me! Happy to Help button has a pleasing, blue gradient background with an Olympic logo on it. Whistler has the Ask Me I’m a Local button which features an eco-trendy splash of green, fitting for the grassroots campaign started by Sea-to-Sky resident Janis McKenzie and ski tourist Dan Perdue.

And then there is the red button that I will be wearing. It is a harmless smiley face with the eyes replaced by the words: Ask Me. My wife brought two home from work. Her office got them from Translink which is distributing them through its Employer Pass Program, a green initiative that offers discounted transit passes to companies with 25 or more staffers pledging to use public transit.

My concern is that as I move about the city, with this red beacon on my chest, some disoriented tourist may ask me a question that I can’t field, and I will have failed as an ad hoc ambassador. So in preparation for my role as self-appointed, street concierge, here are some tough questions I’ve studied up on in advance.

Q: Where can I get a great bannockwich?
A: At the Four Host First Nations’ 2010 Aboriginal Pavilion, located at Georgia and Hamilton Streets.

Courtesy Purdy's Chocolates

Q: (from a visitor with a stutter) How do I get to the corner of Duke-Duke-Duke-Duke and Earles?
A: Get off at 29th Avenue Skytrain station, walk east to Earles Street and go five blocks south. Pause briefly at Duke and Earles to hum the 1962 Gene Chandler doo-wop hit, then keep going to Kingsway, where you will find Vancouver’s beloved Purdy’s chocolate factory. Purdy’s is the city’s oldest chocolatier, and the small retail store attached to the factory is a great place to get fresh-from-the-copper-kettle delectables such as truffles infused with luscious Mission Hill Vidal Icewine ($12.95) or Olympic souvenir boxes packed with hedgehogs and maple melties ($12.95).

Q: I wish to shake my booty? Any suggestions?

Courtesy Ellie O'Day/Boca del Lupo

A: Dance Marathon is an immersive and competitive theatre performance where you compete against other audience members in an actual dance marathon. Warning: If you are a good booty shaker, you and your partner may be out on the floor for up to four hours. Wear sensible shoes. February 9, 10, 11 and 13, 7 p.m. at the Roundhouse Community Centre (at Davie & Pacific). Tix $30

Q: Where can I see my name in lights?
A: Not sure about your name, but you can certainly see your aim in lights. Go to vectorialvancouver.net. Participate in Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s interactive light sculpture project, which runs until February 28. Twenty robotic searchlights have been positioned around English Bay. You can program a short dance for them online. Once you are happy with your proposed choreography,  submit it together with your name, location and dedication. Every night from dusk to dawn, new designs are activated from the website’s queue. The project automatically creates a personal webpage for each participant, documenting his or her contribution with views from four project webcams.

Q: How y’all gonna pay for this little sports tourney?
A: (Silently remove English Ask Me button and replace with Farsi one. Then smile, shrug and pray that this inquisitive tourist doesn’t speak Persian. (The City of Vancouver Ask Me buttons are available in 24 different languages.)

I’m not a religious person, but I go to church – sporting a helmet, shin pads and goggles

by Andrew Findlay

Whenever I get bogged down with a piece of writing and tire of the computer screen, I hop on a mountain bike and pedal out my backyard to the Puntledge River and the head of a trail called Twisted Sister. This is my church. Instead of a preacher, pulpit and pews, there is the rush of the river, the throaty squawk of a raven echoing through hemlocks and red cedars festooned in wolf lichen and old man’s beard, and a ribbon of dirt winding through the forest. I know each log, rock and bridge intimately because I attend mass frequently.

A few years ago I adopted this trail, which had fallen into disuse since being scratched out of the forest by someone else. I cleared deadfall, carved out switchbacks where needed, raised bridges over small tributary creeks and built new sections of trail. I enjoyed being in the woods alone, doing something physical with my hands. In the years since, Twisted Sister has also been adopted by the “River Rats,” a group of Comox Valley retirees who happen to be biking fanatics who love building trail. They do a beautiful job of it, and Twisted Sister is an obvious beneficiary of their skills.

That’s one of the things I love about riding a mountain bike, beyond the buzz and adrenalin – the anarchic nature of the community that grows up around the sport. 

That’s one of the things I love about riding a mountain bike, beyond the buzz and adrenalin – the anarchic nature of the community that grows up around the sport. When mountain bikers want a new trail, they gather friends, some tools and head out to build one. They generally don’t ask permission, because doing so invites discussions about liability and legality. (I’m not advocating disrespect for the land or private property rights, here, just simply acknowledging that, for better or worse, volunteers building renegade trails is traditionally how communities develop a mountain biking scene.) Which is why Vancouver Island’s Comox Valley is now such a riding destination – along with Cumberland’s extensive network of trails splayed across the Cumberland Community Forest, a 60-hectare chunk of land purchased through donations and dogged fundraising efforts back in 2005, and the Island’s Forbidden Plateau and Comox Lake’s labyrinth of technical single track.

Several years ago, the B.C. government finally woke up to the fact that the province is riddled with a treasure-trove of world class mountain bike trails; albeit most of them illegitimate, making it difficult to market them as a tourism product. Surprisingly, countries such as the United Kingdom are paving the way when it comes to promoting off-road riding. The forestry commission of Great Britain, for example, has already established the “7 stanes” in southern Scotland, a series of mountain bike parks serviced by trailhead shops and cafes. But the good news for riders here is that B.C. has taken note of these efforts and is following suit with its Provincial Trails Strategy, an effort by B.C.’s tourism, culture and arts ministry to develop protocols around new trail development and legitimize existing ones. And to this end, pilot projects are now underway in a number of B.C. communities, including Williams Lake, Squamish and Nelson.

Of course, as with most things involving government, the Provincial Trails Strategy is bureaucratic and a kind of anathema to the anarchic spirit of the sport. But it’s also a progressive attempt to better harness the tourism potential of mountain biking.

Of course, as with most things involving government, the Provincial Trails Strategy is bureaucratic and a kind of anathema to the anarchic spirit of the sport. But it’s also a progressive attempt to better harness the tourism potential of mountain biking, and similar initiatives will likely follow suit. In concert with the Trails Strategy, for example, the Vancouver-based Western Canada Mountain Bike Tourism Associations is launching a provincial marketing strategy designed to help B.C. become “the next big thing in mountain bike tourism.” Meanwhile, renegade trailsmiths will continue their work, in their quiet unassuming way, building trails such as “Twisted Sister” and the foundation of the sport in B.C.

Alright folks – anything to add?

by Jim Sutherland

A protocol guide just issued by the City of Vancouver has people from all over mocking my town. Well, let’s just see how brightly our 2010 Winter Olympics shine compared to those of other cities, where residents didn’t know to match their trousers and socks.

In any case, the one thing the city’s 141-page guide fails to do is offer guidance to visitors. Surely they’ll be as anxious to fit in as we are to appear litter trained. With that in mind, I’ve compiled a list of the Top-5 Vancouver Don’ts.

1. Don’t call it “Van” – or “Vancity”

‘Vancity” is a local credit union. “Van” is the groovy west coast city your parents were trying to hitch to until that guy in the pickup asked them if they were looking for a job and they ended up spending the summer in Medicine Hat. Nowadays we call it Vancouver.

2. Don’t assume anyone will know what you mean when you order a “double double”

Tim Hortons arrived in Vancouver only a few years ago. Which means Starbucks and its dark-roast brethern dominate the local caffeine trade and dozens of Asian variations rule the market for cheap lunches, so the eastern-based chain remains a curiosity frequented mainly by Canadians from away. Locals are not immune to the allure of coffee that’s sweet and creamy, but they take it in the form of cappucino and a couple dozen other fancy-pants variations with names precisely callibrated to annoy traditionalists and curmudgeons.

3. Don’t venture off-piste

This warning is especially crucial for Europeans, who tend to think of out-of-bounds as an exhilarating shortcut to their favourite bistro in the charming village one valley over. But there’s only untamed wilderness north of Vancouver’s three north shore ski mountains, and fenced off slopes often end in steep box canyons, where rescue teams will eventually find you, but not necessarily before you succumb to the elements.

4. Don’t forget to order a meal with that beer

Actually, you will be able to have a drink on its own during the Games, though for a while things looked grim for anyone so rash. The problem lay with the province’s ancient liquor licensing laws, which mostly restricted bars to downtown hotels, leaving restaurants to serve the same purpose — and the drinks — pretty much everywhere else. Then in 1999 a provincially mandated requirement to order food with alcohol was finally rescinded. But last October, Vancouver city council almost enacted a new bylaw that would have required at least 50 per cent of restaurant revenue to come from food. Only an industry outcry prevented an Olympics that would have made Salt Lake City’s seem like a lost weekend.

5. Don’t be bothered by a little rain — but fear, fear, fear the snow

Inversely to the rest of Canada, Vancouver doesn’t stop — or even slow down — for rain, but it skids to a long, greasy halt when flakes fall from the sky. The causes are sixfold (at least): ultra-wet snow; temperatures around the freezing mark; hilly streets; a dearth of snow ploughs; a lack of snow tires; drivers in a state of panic and perplexment. If there’s a consolation here, it’s that by February the worst of the winter monsoons are usually over. In theory.

Not that anyone really needs a good reason to jet off to Paris. But Harry Kambolis and Shannon Ronalds had two

Kambolis, the owner of three top-rated Vancouver restaurants (C restaurant, Raincity Grill, and nu restaurant + lounge), and Ronalds, Kambolis’s business associate in the Contemporary Ocean Products line of sustainable food items, have just flown back from the international SeaFood Summit, held this February in the “City of Lights. (Yes, we restrained ourselves from giving this article the title: “Something’s Fishy in Paris”). 

See the rest of this article at cityfood.com

by Kerry Banks

Each February, a band of hardy (some would say foolhardy) mushers compete in the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race, following historic gold rush and mail delivery sled dog routes from the turn of the 20th Century. Contested during the depths of the Arctic winter over 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometres) of wild and hazardous terrain between Whitehorse in the Yukon and Fairbanks, Alaska, the race is a true torture test. Teams are limited to 14 dogs and one musher. Once they leave the starting chute, both the mushers and their dogs are on their own for the entire race, relying on a combination of toughness and skill, the commitment and endurance of the animals and, sometimes, luck.

This past year, B.C. writer Masa Takei braved the frigid Arctic conditions to cover the race for Westworld magazine. After his retreat to the relatively tropical climes of Lotus Land,  he then sat down with me to answer a few questions about the experience.

MyWW: What makes the Yukon Quest a more challenging dog sled race than any other, including  the Iditarod?

MT: The Yukon Quest is said to be more challenging because the mushers travel for longer distances between checkpoints, often over rough terrain and in colder temperatures. Also, they receive no outside help from handlers except during the race’s mandatory 36-hour layover at Dawson City, nor can they substitute any dogs. The way I’ve heard it described, the Iditarod is about pure speed whereas the Quest is about self-reliance. Just think about Lance Mackey, who won both races in 2007, an unprecedented feat. At least it was until he did it again the next year.

MyWW: How did you end up covering the event – and racing yourself?

MT: I’d read Adam Killick’s book Racing the White Silence and became interested in the race. Even before then though, all the Jack London and Farley Mowat stories I’d read growing up put the bug in me to find an excuse to go up north. Then I got an assignment with the newspaper 24Hours to cover the race, and ended up covering the Inuit Games, as well. But spending some time out on the trails with Frank Turner’s kennel was a real highlight. Watching from the sidelines had its moments, but it’s hard to beat getting out onto the trail, even if it gives only a faint taste of what the racers experience.

MyWW: How much time do the competitors spend preparing for the race? How do they train?

MT: Each racer has his or her own approach to training, but I’m sure that getting in the mileage is critical for both mushers and dogs. When there’s no snow, mushers use a cart or an ATV in place of a sled for dry-land training. Some mushers also cross-train with cycling, running and cross-country skiing.

MyWW: Were you impressed by the dogs in the race? If so, why? And, do they all wear booties?

MT: To understand what supreme athletes these dogs are requires thinking about what they do, day in and day out, during the race. To the layperson’s eye, however, there’s often nothing particularly impressive about them. They actually look smaller than I’d expected. It’s probably equivalent to seeing some professional endurance athletes, such as marathoners, in person. They often don’t look physically impressive. And nothing about sled dogs standing still suggests any of their phenomenal abilities. As for booties, those are mandatory equipment and Quest racers are required to have at least eight booties for each dog at every checkpoint, though when to use them is a matter of judgment. I’ve also been told that there’s a protective sheath for the more sensitive body parts on male dogs, the tip of which doesn’t have any fur,  though these are needed only when it’s extremely cold. I didn’t see any during the race I was covering. Guess it didn’t get cold enough!

MyWW: Are mushers emotionally attached to their dogs?

MT: Although I certainly saw a lot of affection being passed between mushers and dogs, I think that it really depends on the individual racer. It’s hard to imagine that a strong bond wouldn’t develop between mushers and dogs after sharing so much trail time together, though each dog also has its own personality, some I’m sure more loving and loveable than others. On the other hand, the dogs aren’t like regular pets; there’s a professional dynamic to the relationship as well, not unlike the one that existed with the working dogs who made inhabiting the North possible a century ago. It’s expensive to keep dogs, for example, and if a race dog isn’t performing well, mushers face the decision of whether they can keep the animal or not. One mushing couple, Zoya DeNure and John Schandelmeier, at Crazy Dog Kennel, run a good number of rescue dogs – unwanted race dogs that are at risk of being culled. In fact, I believe that Schandelmeier now races exclusively with rescue dogs, even if that reduces his chances of placing with the top competitors. And I know that Frank Turner, who I interviewed, makes sure that all his dogs enjoy a blissful retirement, long after they are past the point of being able to pull a sled.

MyWW: Do the competitors race at night?

MT: The clock never stops, which means the mushers run any time of the day or night. In fact, mushers talk about falling asleep on their sleds for miles at a stretch.

MyWW: Which section of the Yukon Quest is toughest on the racers?

MT: Eagle Summit, a 1,100-metre peak infamous for its wind-scoured conditions, gets a lot of attention since that’s where racers and dogs have one of the greatest chances of getting hurt. During a mushers’ meeting in Dawson City, veteran racer William Kleedehn came out and called for rerouting that section of the race. He thought that the course was tough enough without introducing that wild card, where injuries could lead to a forfeited race or worse, and that more racers would enter without that notorious stretch.

MyWW: Had you ever been in such freezing temperatures before? Were you able to adjust?

MT: That was my first time camping out in -40 temperatures,  and my first visit to the Yukon. But with the right gear, it was surprisingly comfortable. I’ve felt colder getting soaked tree-planting in B.C.

MyWW: You tried your hand at running a team for a short distance. Was it difficult?

MT: We had the benefit of running empty sleds with about half the dogs that a Quest racer needs to manage. Turner had also tailored the temperament of each musher’s team so that no one got more dog than they could handle. The most difficult part of the mushing for me was holding up my end of the deal and not letting down the team. And there was a lot more “body English” necessary than I’d expected in order to negotiate some of those turns. The dogs can sense when they’re dealing with a “gumby,” too, though the ones I was running were pretty forgiving. When I got the hang of it, I could relax enough to enjoy the exhilarating sensation, something like swooping a mountain bike over fast flowing single-track, coupled with that particular thrill of having animals pull you. The experience sure kicks the pants off riding a snowmobile.

>>View the latest footage from this year’s Yukon Quest Test Run here.

>>Read Masa Takei’s personal account of trailing the Yukon Quest racers

Lead photo courtesy Pete Ryan.

by Masa Takei

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

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

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

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

The Yukon Sled Dog Race: From the starting point

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keep  track of the current Race standings here

Track the Race LIVE

Learn more about the Mushers and sled dogs

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

See also: Sled Dog Races a Mushing Success

Photos courtesy Richard Hartmier

by 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.

B.C.’s BEST AutoObesity program receives its first “car donation” – while the donor hopes to lose his “afternoon-coffee-hour gut”

by Steve Beck

Since BEST – B.C.’s Better Environment, Sustainability and Transportation centre – launched its AutoObesity program in December 2009, it has had hundreds of inquiries, such as “How does the program work?” and “Who can participate?” And Drew Lemen’s recent AutoObesity experience not only answers most of these questions, it’s a great case study of a family that has taken the plunge and gone from being a two-car to a one-car household. We interviewed Lemen (pictured below), a retired public servant, at his home in south Richmond, B.C. – after he realized that with two cars for just two people, his household had one more vehicle than necessary. The result: Lemen has donated one of them to BEST.

MyWW: How do you donate a car?

DL: I just called up BEST and they met me at my condo and explained how AutoObesity works. As I was already committed to making a change, I didn’t need convincing as much as some help making the change, which is what the AutoObesity program is about.

MyWW: Did you get anything in return?

DL: A charitable tax receipt, based on my car’s fair market value (less the value of any benefits); plus a “BEST Mode Shift Membership” for transportation planning. I also get other assistance for making the switch, such as a Car Co-op and/or Zipcar membership, bicycle rain gear or safety gear if I need it, safe-cycling courses, a discount on an ecycle and transit passes. I haven’t decided yet exactly what help I need, but I have 30 days from the time of my donation to figure it out, given that the AutoObesity program is tailored specifically to the family or household making the car donation.

MyWW: It’s not easy giving up the extra wheels, eh?

"The average car costs between $8000 and $10,000 per year to own and operate, taking into account insurance, licensing, financing, maintenance, fuel and depreciation of value. So anything that saves me that much money is worth looking into." –Drew Lemen

DL: Actually, the decision was fairly simple. Having my own car is convenient, but it also has its downside. I’d really like to lose this afternoon-coffee-hour gut, for example, and cycling and walking regularly will help me do that.

MyWW:Any other payoffs?

DL: Even eliminating just one car helps reduce traffic and noise outside our apartment. I’d like the neighbourhood to be more livable, and this is a step toward that, something I can do myself. It’s hard to see so much of the public space around here dedicated solely to cars – without the same consideration for  walkers, cyclists, skateboarders and rollerbladers. Giving up my car will help make the streets a little friendlier. It also helps make the air cleaner. I want to do my bit to fight climate change and reduce my GHG footprint.

MyWW: And the cost savings aren’t too shabby, either, right?

That was one of my prime motivations. In fact, it was the cost-breakdown analysis of car ownership on the AutoObesity website (based on data from the CAA 2009 Driving Costs pamphlet) that eventually convinced me to give up my car altogether and start biking and taking transit. The average car costs between $8,000 and $10,000 per year to own and operate, taking into account insurance, licensing, financing, maintenance, fuel and depreciation. Anything that saves me that much money is worth looking into, and I’m definitely looking forward to saving that money every year. Plus, it’s a lot easier to donate my vehicle and do some good, rather than deal with the hassle and uncertainty of trying to sell it on my own.

MyWW: So how’s the “gut-reduction” program going?

Ha! Well, I’m still commuting twice a week to Kitsilano and once a week to Burnaby to tutor English to ESL high-school students, which is about  100 km per week. But now I’m using transit or cycling and walking. So it’s different, definitely. Still, I’m enjoying getting more fresh air and exercise, without having to drive to the beach or the gym. I also like how my travel options have actually increased. When people become car dependent, they tend to see their vehicle as the only viable option for doing chores, going to appointments, commuting, going out to dinner, for everything. Now I’ve got more flexibility. So yeah, “it’s hard to let go.” But after taking a couple of weeks to “say goodbye” to the old wheels, I’ve let ‘em go.

Photos courtesy Martin Gunst, BEST AutoObesity program coordinator

It’s always wise to contemplate the big picture – i.e., the history books – when bemoaning the latest Olympic “crisis”

by Kerry Banks

Can you have a Winter Olympics without snow? A lot of people in the Lower Mainland are starting to wonder. After all, this has been one of the mildest winters in recent memory and the snow that fell on the local mountains in November appears to have been completely washed away by persistent rains. Recent news reports have suggested that Olympic organizers were considering moving the freestyle skiing and snowboarding events from Cypress Mountain to another location. However, Olympic officials deny that is not the case, and insist that everything is under control. “We have no intention of moving from the site,” declared Tim Gayda, VANOC’s vice-president of sport.

Gayda also surprised reporters by advising, ‘There really is no snow shortage. Cypress has an exorbitant amount of natural snow at higher elevations. It’s free, it’s available and it’s getting used.’

Gayda also surprised reporters by advising, “There really is no snow shortage. Cypress has an exorbitant amount of natural snow at higher elevations. It’s free, it’s available and it’s getting used.” By “getting used,” he means that snow is being transported in from higher elevations and from Manning Park to ensure there’s enough snow cover so that the six skiing and snowboarding events scheduled for the mountain will proceed as planned. If necessary, straw bales and wood forms will be used as foundations for the snowboarding halfpipe and other jumps and obstacles in some of the skier and boardercross courses.

Meanwhile, 35 snow guns continue to blast artificial snow over the mountainsides, producing a frozen, winter-white effect for spectators and what high-performance athletes will recognize as a good base for sliding. Man-made snow is evidently “more resilient” than real snow because it lasts longer. Since November, Cypress has converted almost 100 million litres of water into fake snow.

It may not be an ideal situation, but then climatic conditions are often problematic during the Winter Olympics. At the 1928 Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland, the opening ccremonies were held in a howling blizzard, but shortly afterwards the weather turned so mild that organizers considered cancelling the games outright. In fact, the final of the 10,000-metre speedskating race was terminated, because the outdoor rink turned to slush, though the 50-kilometre cross-country ski race went ahead even though the temperature was a balmy 25 degrees Celsius.

Warm winds, rain and a lack of snow caused a similar crisis at the 1964 Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria. Things were so bad that the government called in the Austrian army to save the day. Soliders carved out 20,000 ice bricks from a mountaintop and transported them to the bobsled and luge runs. They also carried 40,000 cubic metres of snow to the alpine venues and then packed the white stuff onto the slopes by hand and foot.

In 1988, Calgary’s Olympic organizers ignored their own consultants’ advice not to build facilities in exposed areas, and paid for it when snow-eating Chinook winds blew in.

In 1988, Calgary’s Olympic organizers ignored their own consultants’ advice not to build facilities in exposed areas, and paid for it when snow-eating Chinook winds blew in. The windy weather cost the 1988 Winter Games more than $1 million in ticket refunds. Because there was so little snow, tons of white silica sand was trucked in from B.C. to make the surface of McMahon Stadium look snow-covered for the opening ceremonies. The Chinooks destroyed the inflatable Rocky Mountains used during those same ceremonies, raised temperatures and made scheduling a monumental headache. The 90-metre ski jump alone was cancelled seven times. The initials of Canada Olympic Park (COP), the wind-lashed site of the ski jump, bobsled and luge, came to stand for “Cancelled or Postponed.” All of the alpine events took place on artificial snow, and the gusting winds sent a ski jumper flying into a camera tower.

In 1998, at Nagano, Japan, a combination of fog, driving rain and snowstorms wreaked havoc with its alpine skiing programme, with the showpiece men’s downhill event on the opening Sunday having to be postponed three times. The storms also caused scheduling nightmares, epic traffic jams and, no doubt, innumerable sleepless nights for Olympic organizers.

But all of those Olympics continued to the finish, which is exactly what will happen here, even if it requires a lot of improvising, extra work and only a bronze medal for VANOC from the David Suzuki Foundation for its sustainability efforts (raking in snow by helicopter not being the most sophisticated environmental option). After all, this week, ever-optimistic Olympic officials vowed that all of the Games’ snow venues will be “pristine,” “white” and “magical” – despite meteorologists insisting there is little hope for much new snow.