Vancouver and Pender Islands

You know me, any excuse for a ferry ride...

Westward, off the coast of Vancouver city is massive Vancouver Island, the home of Victoria, the capital of British Columbia. I got to spend a few days meeting up with my friend Pam and touring around the more inhabited parts of Vancouver Island. The majority of Vancouver Island, to the north, is not very inhabited or hospitable to people. It served as the home setting for at least one season of "Alone" - the reality TV show where people are dropped off, alone naturally, to see how many days they can survive by themselves in the wilderness. Generally, they top out in the 60–80-day range. I'd last about 3 hours out there, I think. I mean, poor wifi and no sandwich shops to speak of, why bother?

The capital city of Victoria is carefully manicured and quaint. Tightly packed into a small area are parliamentary buildings, mansions-turned-museums, castle-like hotel structures and row buildings... all seeming to fit into a perfect little European scene. While the rest of Vancouver Island sprawls away from the city with exponentially decreasing population density.

Outside of Victoria is Butchart botanical gardens. The Butchart family established a factory there to supply concrete to build Seattle and San Francisco in the early 1900s. The matriarch of the Butchart family busied herself planting and cultivating gardens on their property, including inside an abandoned limestone quarry. The gardens are quite spectacular; I spent several hours there just enjoying the huge variety of flowers and how beautifully they were distributed and displayed. At this point the Garden has 240 full-time staff, a big step up from just Mrs. Butchart and whatever workmen from the cement factory could be spared.

My final day on Vancouver Island I drove the Pacific Marine Circle Route and got to see some of the more rural areas of the Island where people make their living off the sea or lumber. Beautiful and rugged, Vancouver Island is a special place balanced carefully between European civility and hostile wilderness.

Following Vancouver Island, RosieVan and I took another ferry ride over to Pender Island. In the US we would call Pender Island one of the Orca Islands in the Juan de Fuca straight. The Canadian Park service granted me a couple of nights in one of the campgrounds on North Pender Island. What a delightful little island, about 13 square miles - full of nice people and everything needed for pleasant living. While there I visited the beaches, vineyards, craft shops, the bookstore and the Farmer's Market. Pender Island reminded me of Grand Isle in Lake Champlain (but of course on a much bigger scale).

Leaving Pender Island behind was hard. I could imagine myself with a summer place there soaking in all the good life and laughing at the land people (the small problem of citizenship wouldn't be an issue, right?).

But alas, I was headed North and East first to Kamloops in the Okanagan valley and then into the vast Canadian wilderness, destination Canada's Jasper National Park to rendezvous with friends and family.