MyWestworld

Salt Spring: A Gulf Island Getaway

Posted on 19. Feb, 2010 by BCAA in BC

FOOD & WINE

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

Tags: B.C. getaways - Salt Spring Island, cheesemaker David Wood, Daniel Wood, Island Escapes on Salt Spring Island, L'Orenda, Robert Bateman, Salt Spring Island Cheese Co.