Looking at the 'other' Vancouver Island

Vancouver Island is a curious place (in many respects). About 750,000 people (including me) live along a fringe on the island's east coast. However that east coast fringe of population only runs up about half the length of the 300 miles of that coast. Elsewhere it is a virtual wilderness, interspersed with tiny communities, logging operations, remote native villages and trees, and more trees.

Running up the centre of the island from a pleasant coastal plain containing cities, towns and farms is the Beaufort range of mountains. They are what separates the eastern fringe from everything else. In that context I, like most others who live here, tend to disregard the rest of the place, even though it is really quite close-at-hand. For example, I have only been to the northern reaches just once, and only to the west side a handful of times. Yesterday I added a finger to that handful.

We had friends visiting from out of the province, so we decided to take them on a day trip. We were going to take them to the village of Bamfield right out on the west coast. We'd never made the trip ourselves, though we'd always meant to. We now had the excuse.

Arising at an unspeakable hour we left the Comox Valley (our home) and drove to the mill town of Port Alberni -- about the only community of substance in the island's interior. There we boarded the MV Frances Barkley (a little coastal freighter) and took the long ride down the Alberni Inlet to head out to Bamfield. It was a nice trip. It was an overcast day, but didn't rain, and the big diesel engine of the boat chugged along at a leisurely 10-knots. Passengers on such boats are gravy in their revenue, they are mainly designed to service the remote communities that have no other access than boats or seaplanes. This is Vancouver Island in the raw, and it is amazing to think that a metropolis of over 2 million people is only a scant hundred miles from where we were.

The stops the Barkley made were intriguing -- little cabins in the wilderness on the sides of mountains, floating communities, including one that consisted of a number of cottages, and at which the two dogs that were travelling with us got off to link up with the rest of the dogs that stayed behind. The reunion (pictured) was an ecstatic one for all canines concerned.

After about 4 1/2 hours we made it to Bamfield. Bamfield (whose erstwhile claim to fame was that it was the western terminus of the first trans-Pacific telegraph cable between Canada and Asia) isn't really up to much. A handful of houses, a boardwalk along the front, a couple of shops and B&Bs, a bar (of course) a coast guard station and a collection of inhabitants that included vacationers and residents. The residents were the usual collection of relatively regular folk, along with aged hippies, expatriates, potheads and drunks, and motley dogs that seemed to belong to nobody in particular. I have no desire to live there, OK? Just in case you might have been wondering. Just a little to remote for a guy who was raised as a city kid, and still lives with all the amenities and prefers them to kerosene lamps or whining generators, not to mention outhouses. Never much cared for outhouses. Funny, that.

The nicest part of the trip truly was the wee ship. Captain and crew were friendly. The food in the galley was inexpensive and surprisingly good, despite a limited menu, and the trip itself was only $50 per person. Not bad for an excursion that takes an entire day.

On the way home we amused ourselves, as we always do, by creating dramas around some of the passengers. They included:

1. The 'interesting' family group. Mid 60s dad, early 30s son (you could tell he was junior because he was the spit of his old man), and rather decent looking maybe 40 years old stepmom. Son looked like he had lived, what with terminal tattoos and the fact we saw him buying a pint of vodka at the store in Bamfield. So, we decided (quite uncalled for) that there was a 'thing' between stepmom and junior and he was planning to ply her with strong drink that evening so that when the old man fell asleep in front of the TV, as he always does, Stepmom and junior could get up to all sorts of no-good.

2. Know-it-all backwoods experienced guy with his also much younger female partner (he spent some time on the trip sticking his tongue down her throat in front of everybody, so you got the idea they were an item), but he also devoted the rest of his time regaling city slickers with his knowledge of the backwoods. If those city slickers happened to be city-slickerettes of a comely nature, he devoted even more time to apprising them of his deep and souldful wisdom, meanwhile leaving his squeeze entirely on her own. Her own seemed to mainly consist of chainsmoking and looking rather sullen.

3. Retro women (one older and one younger) wearing excruciatingly unappealing earth mother garments and hairstyles, and one in-between age Tour de France horrible cycling tog wearing male person who I decided were definitely vegans, or possibly raw-food munchers. They were such because they had those supercilioius expressions on their faces that told them that everybody else on the ship was impure shit but they would have to bear with their presence.

There were other folk, too, but by that point our attention was diverted by the fact that we saw (on three occasions within a few minutes) black bears padding along the beach. That was worth the price of admission. We weren't certain if the bears were coming from their Saturday 'picnic' (Because Saturday is, after all, the 'day the teddy bears have their picnic.' or if, since it was a trio they were the actual 'Three Bears.'

Anyway, now I have had my Vancouver Island experience for this year, I can only recommend it to others, since it is good for our tourism revenues. I promise you you'll see bears.