We took a few days vacation the week before last and we rented a nice cabin just outside of Ucluelet, right in the middle of the Long Beach Unit of Pacific Rim National Park on the mid-west coast of Vancouver Island. There were no winter storms, but we really enjoyed donning our wet-weather gear and walking along the windswept beaches in the rain. There were so many surfers out on Chesterman Beach - we sat and watched them do their thing for a good two hours.

Afterwards we played like kids, running in and out of the surf, me daring Monkey to follow in my foot prints with the aim of timing it just right to keep my feet dry while getting his as wet as possible. Knowing that we were just 20 minutes from our cottage with its own private hot tub meant that we didn’t care how wet and cold we got!

We capitalised on our one day of sun by hiking down the Willowbrae trail to Halfmoon Bay in the morning (a pretty and secluded beach reached by lots of boardwalks and stairs and, in the wet weather, some areas rather boggy underfoot), and along the Wild Pacific Trail by the lighthouse in Ucluelet in the afternoon. That afternoon I spent an hour sitting on a bench overlooking a particularly scenic view while Monkey took photographs - the sun’s rays had formed a solar flare and it was just gorgeous to spend time looking out at it.

 It was a really nice, relaxing few days in a very special part of the world and I felt incredibly happy and refreshed by the time we left. By the way, if you ever want to eat in Tofino, the brunch at the Schooner Restaurant on Campbell @ Second is fantastic - probably the best French toast I’ve ever eaten and a really good budget-friendly dish called The Beach Bum which consisted of lots of spicy rice, beans and veggies for just 5 bucks.

I have to admit, I’d always dismissed Neil Young as a fast-fading, pseudo-rocker with a funny voice who sings pretty miserable songs. I’d never really listened to many of his songs, so when Monkey’s plan of buying tickets to the concert and selling them on for a profit backfired and we had to go to the concert or lose money, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to going. Monkey likes him though, and the folks at work all said they loved Neil Young because he was “pure Canadiana” and now I’m Canadian I should love him too (having said that I did turn down free Celine Dion tickets for the night before - I couldn’t subject myself to that, however Canadian I am).

When we got to the stadium the first warm-up band had just finished so we had to wait for about 20 minutes for Death Cab For Cutie to arrive on stage. I was really looking forward to hearing them play but I found them pretty disappointing overall. Apart from their biggest hits, all the songs were a bit boring. The music was pretty good but we didn’t like the singer much (he reminded me of a weird mix of Placebo singer Brian Molko, whom I like, and the Pet Shop Boys‘ Neil Tennant, whom I hate), and the acoustics weren’t great as the microphone wasn’t loud enough so you could barely hear the lyrics.

After that disappointment we waited for the main show, and wow! Neil Young can really rock! He started off with his heavier, electric guitar stuff, then went acoustic for the main portion of the gig, then back to his guitar-hero stuff for the last few songs. I loved all of it, except for a four-song stint towards the end. His voice is still pretty strange, but in an imperfectly beautiful way. I don’t know, perhaps your hearing changes as you get older much like your taste buds change?

He finished off with Rockin’ In The Free World, which was amazing and sent the proper fans in the building totally nuts, then he encored with the Beatles song A Day In The Life, which was a bit of a strange choice but very well done and allowed him to slowly dismantle his guitar.

All in all it was a great gig and to my surprise I knew more than a couple of the songs. His guitar work was absolutely magnificent throughout so I can now see why he is known as one of the greats, and he has definitely turned me into a fan.

We have spent the last couple of weekends hiking half of the 48 Km Baden-Powell Trail on Vancouver’s North Shore. The trail runs from Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver to Deep Cove in North Vancouver.

The week before last we hiked from the bottom of Grouse Mountain east to Lynn Canyon Park (about 7.5Km), and last weekend we hiked the 12.2 Km from Deep Cove west to Lynn Canyon Park. Both hikes were great; the shorter hike was the more demanding of the two and had less foot traffic on the trail but the longer hike also had plenty of ups and downs and a few rough patches which made it fairly challenging over the longer distance.

Both hikes had a fantastic Canadian feel because of the rainforest scenery and air but I think the longer one was the more interesting overall - half an hour in you reach a cliff top (Quarry Rock Lookout) with an amazing view over Indian Arm inlet, Deep Cove and Belcarra.

The hike takes you by plenty of pretty little creeks and waterfalls, then eventually you walk alongside two big rivers (Seymour and Lynn Creek), crossing the very stable bridge over Seymour Canyon and ending it all with a little wobble over the Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge. It’s definitely the hike I’d like to take my fitter visitors on.

We plan to do the remainder of the Baden Powell Trail but perhaps next year when we own a car, as part of the trail through Cypress mountain is not accessible by public transport which makes it difficult to do day hikes.

Before winter sets in we will probably head back to our favourite parks which lie next to  Lynn Canyon Park - Lynn Headwaters Regional Park and Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve. Is it any wonder that we are planning to leave our condo in the city and move to a house in the Lynn Valley early next year?!

Thursday night was a pretty amazing night. Hockey season began for the Canucks with a game against the Calgary Flames, their biggest rivals. The atmosphere on opening night is great enough anyway, but with it being a game against the Flames as well I knew it would be electric. Added to this, in the pre-game ceremony the team were going to pay an emotional tribute to Luc Bourdon, our defenceman who died at the end of May when a gust of wind blew his motorcycle into the path of an oncoming truck. As that event had hit me so hard, I truly didn’t want to miss this game. We paid more than we wanted to for tickets up in the second to last row, but it was a night I’ll never forget so it was well worth it.

When we arrived at the stadium we were all given a commemorative cap and a round silver pin with the initials LB etched on (the logo that all the Canucks will wear on their helmets throughout the season to honour Luc Bourdon). The pre-game Luc Bourdon tribute was so wonderfully done and extremely emotional. His mother and girlfriend went onto the ice to be presented with Luc’s last game-worn jersey (which had been given to a fan on the night and very honorably returned by the fan to Luc’s family). Then Tom Cochrane came onto the ice to sing Big League as a video tribute was shown. My god it was emotional, and there wasn’t  a dry eye in the house. The lyrics to Big League are so apt to Luc’s life cut so short, it could have been written specifically for him:

When he was a kid, he’d be up at five
Take shots till eight, make the thing drive
Out after school, back on ice
That was his life, he was gonna play in the Big League

Not many ways out of this cold northern town
You work in the mill and get laid in the ground
If you’re gonna jump it will be with the game
Real fast and tough is the only clear lane to the Big League

My boy’s gonna play in the Big League
My boy’s gonna turn some heads
My boy’s gonna play in the Big League
My boy’s gonna knock ‘em dead
The Big League

All the right moves when he turned eighteen
Scholarship and school on a big U.S. team
Out with his girl near Lake McClean
Hit a truck doing seventy in the wrong lane
To the Big League

My boy’s gonna play in the Big League
My boy’s gonna turn some heads
My boy’s gonna play in the Big League
My boy’s gonna knock ‘em dead

Never can tell what might come down
Never can tell how much you get
Just don’t know, no you never can tell

Sometimes at night I can hear the ice crack
It sounds like thunder and it rips through my back
Sometimes in the morning I still hear the sound
Ice meets metal…
“Can’t you drive me down to the Big League?”

My boy’s gonna play in the Big League
My boy’s gonna turn some heads
My boy’s gonna play in the Big League
My boy’s gonna knock ‘em dead

Never can tell what might come down
Never can tell when you might check out
Just don’t know, no you never can tell
So do right to others like you do to yourself
In the Big League

You can watch the ceremony in its entirity here - kudos to the Canucks organisation, they did it so right. I had chills running down my spine all throughout, although also had a smile on my face as I remembered him. By the way, if you’re watching the video and aren’t a Canucks fan you’ll notice what sounds like a lot of boos from the crowd but they are really “Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu“’s for our goaltender Luongo, and “Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuc“s for Luc - Canucks fans have never been particularly creative with their chants! You’ll notice the same Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuc chant in this video - one of my favourite plays from Bourdon when he almost single-handedly stopped Ovechkin, one of the league’s top offensive threats, from scoring a goal.

The game itself was about a perfect a game as any fan can ask for. The Canucks were a bit nervy in the first period, trying to get their heads together after the tribute, but it was plenty physical and we managed to come out of it with a 1-0 lead. In the second period we scored 2 goals in the first 4 minutes and then we were away. There were hits and fights and harsh words spoken but the Flames couldn’t faze us and we went on to win 6-0 with our new captain, Luongo, getting a shutout and Alex Burrows, Luc’s closest friend on the team and by far the most emotional at the ceremony, scoring 2 goals. He dedicated the second goal to Luc by imitating Luc’s custom goal-scoring move - shooting an imaginary arrow to the heavens. Burrows actually had dinner with Luc’s mum and girlfriend the night before and they had asked him to score a goal for Luc - and he managed to score one for both of them. No one has a clue if Luc was watching over Alex and the team that night but it certainly felt like it, and the team did him proud.

I think any game I ever go to again is going to be a bit of a disappointment compared to that one - it was all just too perfect.

Our day sea-kayaking Johnstone Strait was similar to our day spent kayaking on Okeover Inlet, but a lot more enjoyable because the company was better (all about our age rather than a family with young kids), the weather was beautiful and we got to see a load of Dall’s porpoises right up close, which was a fantastic experience.

We set out from Telegraph Cove, where we saw Starbuck from Battlestar Gallatica, and mosied along the coast and back. It was on the way to our lunch beach that we saw the porpoises: we noticed that the little fish that had been jumping out of the water were getting a little manic and jumping out more and more, then we heard the distinctive blow-hole sounds of marine mammals, and suddenly we were surrounded by these porpoises, swimming alongside us! It was a really special moment, and we definitely would like to go back and do this trip again. Maybe we will do a longer trip as we will then have more of a chance of seeing the killer whales that also populate this area.

We spent an idyllic, sunny day on Malcolm Island back in May so I was eager to return when we were in the area again. This time we took our car so that we could drive to the other side of the island and hike the Beautiful Bay Trail. We had learned from a local in May that there are never any bears on the island, so we didn’t bother taking our bear spray along and we detached the bear bells from Monkey’s bag.

We got to the trailhead to find a sign warning us that there was a bear in the area. Not just any bear, but a grizzly bear. We all know that there are no grizzly bears on Vancouver Island, but it appears that recently young grizzlies have been swimming over from the mainland more and more, due to having too much competition for food and territory in their original habitat. These bears cannot stay on the Island as they threaten the habitat of the black bears and other animals that rightfully call the territory their own. Normally a grizzly that has swum over will get shot when it is caught, rather than being shipped back to its original area, as it is likely that it left for good reason in the first place.

It seems a bit unfair to get in the way of evolution like this, but humans are pretty much causing the evolution in the first place with a combination of over-fishing and the ideological shift towards wildlife conservation over hunting. There are more and more bears in the wild but, unfortunately, less and less food for them to eat, so the bears need to move on or starve. And if they move on they get shot because, ultimately, humans are at the top of the food chain and we do not want to get into a situation where we allow the bear to become a threat to that status.

It’s sad really, but life certainly isn’t fair for bears. I’m not a great fan of hunting, but the more I live in this country the more I can see the case for it, at least from the point of view of population control. The problem of too many bears and too little food is huge and if it isn’t controlled it will eventually lead to many more cases of bear attacks against humans for 3 reasons: 1) bears viewing humans who enter their territory as competition for food; 2) more bears coming into residential areas in order to find food (e.g. in trash cans); 3) bears eventually realising that humans aren’t generally out to harm them, becoming less scared of them and starting to see them as prey rather than predator.

Back to Malcolm Island….the date of the bear sighting was far enough removed from the actual date that we decided to go ahead with the hike anyway, and we found another set of bear bells in my bag. The trail was lovely and very well maintained - I was really enjoying the hike.

Unfortunately we didn’t stay on it for too long because the wind started picking up. The odd noises that were eminating from the trees (including some very ominous cracking sounds) were enough to spook us into exiting the forest fairly quickly. We didn’t want to be the victims of a falling tree, or a confused grizzly bear that hadn’t smelled/heard us coming. I think we made the right choice, even though we later found out from a local that the grizzly bear had moved on to the main island a few days ago.

When we got back into the car we decided to take a long drive up towards the tip of the island where the lighthouse is. You can’t drive to the lighthouse because the last part is private property, but you can park up at the gates and walk down to the beach, following the shoreline to the lighthouse. We weren’t feeling particularly sociable so we decided not to say hello to the Lighthouse Keeper, but we walked along the beach a fair way and just sat in the sun watching the ocean for a long time before driving back to the ferry terminal.

We had dinner at Gus’ Pub in Port McNeill (we didn’t bump into John Lovelace this time, we’d obviously had our ration of famous people for the day) before heading back to our accommodation - Hidden Cove Lodge - to watch a nice sunset and have an early night in preparation for the day’s kayaking ahead.

We drove to Telegraph Cove to book a kayaking tour of Johnstone Strait the next day and to our surprise and delight we spotted Willie Mitchell (one of our favourite Canucks players) sitting in the early morning sun, chatting to some fellow about babies and what not. I kind of smiled at him as we walked to the main Telegraph Cove office but I doubt he saw. I was determined not to get all star-struck like Monkey was (look who it is! Look who it is!!!!) so I just ignored him on the way out of the office, and we went to book our kayaking tour with the operator.

When we walked back to the car, he was still sitting there with his wife and dogs so Monkey decided that he wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass us by and he got his camera out and headed towards Willie to ask if he wouldn’t mind having his picture taken with us. He’s a nice guy so he obliged, his wife took a couple of pictures for us and we made some small talk about being on honeymoon and loving the North Island and Monkey told him I was his biggest fan and that he often saw him jogging round the seawall (read: once saw him jogging round the seawall) and how we lived by GM Place and what huge hockey fans we have become since moving to Canada.

I wanted to chat with him but I kind of clammed up, because really I know nothing about him other than hockey, and being the off-season I didn’t think it appropriate to ask any hockey-related questions. I also felt a bit awkward bothering him in the first place since he was on vacation himself - I’m sure he’s used to that type of thing, but still, I wouldn’t like it myself. Anyway, awkwardness aside it was lovely to meet him and shake his hand and tell him that we really enjoy watching him play. With all the changes on the roster and the departure this year of our captain Markus Naslund and alternate captains Brendan Morrison and Trevor Linden, we hope that Willie will become the new captain. He was a warrior last season and we hope to see more of the same this year, hopefully with a better end result!

As you may have noticed, I’m not posting personal pictures on this blog, so here’s a couple of random photos taken just after our meeting:

Need to work on that stomach!

Getting to Telegraph Cove was a nightmare. We were running late leaving Gold River because the floatplane trip took longer than planned, so we decided to take the 84Km logging road to Woss rather than take Highway 28 back east 92 km to Campbell River then north on highway 19 for 129 km to get to the same place - we figured it would cut half-an-hour to an hour from our travel time. We had been assured by a local that the logging road was better than the one to Tahsis, which had been slow going but manageable.

About 40 minutes into the drive I was getting panicky as the road certainly wasn’t better than the Tahsis road - it was horrific, we hadn’t passed a single car for 35 minutes, and there hadn’t been any little roadside signs directing us towards Highway 19 for about the same length of time. Added to that we seemed to be climbing further up a mountain, the posts marking how many kms we’d done didn’t seem to match the actual kms of the Woss road, and my Spidey senses were telling me that we were driving in the wrong direction. It was decision time - carry on and risk getting totally lost on a deserted mountain at night, with no cell phone signal, a gps which didn’t help at all and the knowledge that if we broke down no one would pass us and no one would know we were missing, or turn back and take the long way round to Woss - that would be 40 minutes back on the logging road, plus 3 and a half hours on the highways to Telegraph Cove.

After a bit of arguing we chose the safest option and turned back. Towards the end of the road, we looked extra hard at the last junction we had passed before getting lost up the mountain. The junction had a big sign directing people towards a lake 5 kms down the road, which we had seen. Next to that sign, and half hidden behind a bush was a tiny sign pointing to Highway 19. We were so annoyed but laughed because we were so relieved that we had found the right road. So we took it, and wished to god that we hadn’t as it was an arduous drive and nearly killed our poor little hire car. It took forever, and we got to Woss about an hour and a half later than we would have if we’d had taken the longer highway route in the first place. Then we had another hour’s drive to Telegraph Cove where we were staying. The husband fell into bed as soon as we arrived at our accommodation, poor monkey.

We learned that day never to take logging roads for more than about 10kms without a four-wheel drive, and definitely not to take them unless we have a backcountry road map with us. The maps I saw over the next couple of days didn’t have the road we were travelling on marked at all, but I finally found one that showed me that if we had carried on on that road we would either have ended up at a dead end by a lake at the top of the mountain, or if we had taken a different fork we would have eventually driven back down onto, highway 28 but only about 30kms along from Gold River - so it would have taken us over 2 hours to get 30 kms east.

Part of the reason for staying in Gold River was so that we could do a sight-seeing floatplane trip along Nootka Sound, which we did on our last day. The Air Nootka pilot took us with him on the mail-run flight to Kyuquot and back, dropping off mail, supplies and a couple of loggers on the way. We flew over remote fishing lodges and logging camps and deserted provincial parks. The scenery was astounding. There are not enough superlatives to describe it, but it is of the type that made us want to move to Canada in the first place. I’ll let the photos do the talking.

In Kyuquot, a beautiful First Nations village accessible only by boat or floatplane, we stretched our legs for a couple of minutes and had a look at probably the world’s remotest coffee shop “Java The Hut”.

It took us nearly 3 hours to get there and back as when we were on our own, the pilot went a little out of his way in order to fly us over some of the nicer beaches. It was fantastic value at $160 per person and a definite highlight of our trip. Next time we are in the area I intend to do one of their other sightseeing flights, probably the one that goes over Strathcona Provincial Park. One of these days, when I have the time, stamina and hiking skills, I’ll get the guys to fly me to the Nootka Trail trailhead and hike one of the best trails in the world. I’m dreaming if I think I can manage the hazards of the Nootka Trail, but it’s a nice dream.

When we had visited Gold River back in May we were incredibly disappointed to find that at the end of one of the nicest drives on Vancouver Island was a little town with no soul. Ha! More fool us. To be truthful, there isn’t a lot there to do if you don’t like the outdoors, but it is right on the edge of Strathcona Provincial Park - BC’s oldest and second biggest park - fantastic for hiking, wilderness backpacking, camping, fishing and hunting.

It also is nestled on the banks of two big, clear rivers - Gold and Huber - which I’m told are good for fishing and kayaking as well as for swimming, paddling and cliff-jumping in the summer.

Not far out of town, a few Kms down easy logging roads, you can find several recreational lakes that in any other part of BC would be crowded on a sunny summer Sunday afternoon, yet we had both of the lakes we visited - Antler Lake and Star Lake - entirely to ourselves. Star Lake, a short drive upwards from town, was gorgeously warm as well, being snow-fed rather than glacier-fed, which was why there was a swimming dock there that my husband couldn’t help jumping off stark naked.

There’s a really great hiking trail - The Peppercorn Trail - right in town, alongside the river, and 16 Kms down the road to Tahsis you can explore Upana caves if the desire so grabs you (I’m not into dark, mosquito filled little caverns myself). All in all the area was an absolute delight to explore and we were so pleasantly surprised with it all that it once again moved onto the list of places that we might possibly want to retire to (real estate is dead cheap there too!).

One night we went to the pub next to our motel (the only pub in town) and got chatting to some new locals who had moved to Gold River very recently. We sat on the deck overlooking the glorious view of the surrounding mountains and waxed lyrical about what a wonderful and peaceful place it was to live in, and how we were pleased that it doesn’t cross many people’s minds to even visit, let alone stay long enough to appreciate its true beauty and discover the hidden pulse.

Since the mill closed down hardly anyone who isn’t a fisherman, logger or resident visits the place and while some added tourism would certainly revitalise the town’s economy, it’s a big question as to whether it is needed. I think he charm of the place lies in keeping its assets a secret from those who don’t actually bother to come and look at the place for themselves. For those who do take the time to stay a while the rewards are plentiful.