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!

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.