VISITING ISLANDS

VISITING ISLANDS

There are hundreds of islands in close proximity to Vancouver Island. During our time here we visited Salt Spring Island and the Sidney Spit National Park, which is on Sidney Island. These both belong to the group known as the Gulf Islands.

There are over 200 Gulf Islands, most of which are tiny. They lie in the Strait of Georgia, which is the body of water between Vancouver Island the BC mainland. The 6 larger ones are serviced by BC ferries. Salt Spring Island is one of these and I associate it with the 60’s and the days of flower power when it was a popular home for hippies. Today it is a magnet for artists and artisans, a large number of whom live and work there. It has beautiful fertile farming country and we brought back a jar of delicious organic blackberry jam. It is also known for its spas and alternative health practitioners and as a wonderful place to kayak or hike. There are stunning views of the sea and rocky cliffs as you drive around the island.
I believe it also has its share of eccentrics and we met a couple of them soon after we landed.
We had decided to head first for the highest point on the island and in our efforts to do this, a friendly couple in their little Smart car offered to guide us to a good lookout point. We needed their permission to take the steep winding road up as it did not comply with the provincial safety regulations, and so the people who owned property up there were responsible for it’s maintenance. It did feel like a precarious drive, I must say. The road had next to no shoulder and dropped away steeply to the ocean.
These two also invited us to visit their place and we accepted with curiosity. From what we could gather they owned a large acreage at the top of the mountain and had subdivided the property into lots that were for sale, known as a strata. Their own piece of land was up at the highest point and had a gravel pit on it. The only building on the place was a large double-double garage, which he used as his workshop. What did he do in his workshop? He built train tracks for his small sit-on size train engines, which he had had specially built and he had 4 sets of tracks running into the one end of the workshop. His plan was to make a 2km track around his property, and then he would be able to load up his train with rock from the quarry (or other things) and move it around I suppose. His wife told us that the bigger plan was to build a castle at the very top using the rock from the quarry, which they would live in during the summer. They had hired a stonemason from Scotland to build the castle, and the windows had been ordered from China. Completion would take several years. They were building their own kingdom at the top of the mountain. In the meanwhile they had another house in Vesuvius, a small town on the island.
We thought about June and Rod as we explored the island. Rod’s uncle has lived there for many years, and we wondered where.

We took a short trip on a privately operated ferry to the Sidney Spit from Sidney.
The long, low lying, narrow, gravelly spit runs north and we were able to walk the length of it in the morning, when the tide was low, noticing several large red, beached jellyfish along the way. Later in the day the spit gradually began to disappear as the tide came in, eventually leaving only a golden grassy patch exposed right at the end, like a small fuzzy mound. Roughly at the point where the spit connects to the thicker body of the island, a wiggly arm of land curves out and around north forming a lagoon. In this protected lagoon several hectare of eelgrass grow, which apparently makes it a critical habit for fish, invertebrates and seabirds.
This is a popular destination for bird watchers and we met a couple of keeners, carrying a telescope. I would have loved to spend time with them, they seemed very knowledgeable, but they weren’t looking for any hangers on.
The long sandy beaches here are “the legacy of the long-vanished glaciers.” We noticed several families with young children and I thought what a marvelous place to come for a day of sun and sandcastles and swimming, or to camp. The endless supply of bleached logs, that wash onto the beach are perfect for building shelters or forts.
The island is home to quite a large population of the introduced fallow deer, which have overtaken the native blacktail deer. We came across several groups as were walking along the various trails. There is a long spiritual history here on the island that still continues. The Coast Salish people have hunting rights and spend every winter here hunting deer and ducks and gathering berries and medicines.
Eric and I had fun sitting quietly on the beach watching the antics of an otter. It caught a fish then came running out of the water with it and dashed across the beach and into the bushes. Perhaps it had a family to feed. After a while it returned to the water to do some more fishing.
The time came when we had to leave the otter to its chores and catch the last ferry back to Sidney. It was an open boat and we were chilled through by the time we reached the other end, so stopped off for something warm to drink before returning to our camp.