North of 50

Compelled by good and sufficient reason to forgo a whole season at the summer shangri-la in Cape Breton, we decided to seek silver lining. Jan and I loaded the Vibe with tent and gear and drove north. I have lived four decades on Vancouver Island but only rarely have ventured north of the 50^th latitude at Campbell River. Almost everywhere we went was thus necessarily unfamiliar.

We camped first at tiny Kitty Coleman provincial park. Though it is only early August fall migration was underway. Shorebirds – dunlin, least and western sandpipers, black-bellied and semi-palmated plovers, turnstones and their ilk crossed our path.

Jan has fond childhood memories of Miracle Beach PP; I have none. We went there to remedy the void. We waded the foreshore , taking close looks at sand dollars and bivalves. A gang of eighty peeps – the aforementioned western and least sandpipers – went about their foraging business on the shore. Out of the blue a merlin – a splendid little falcon killing machine – materialized, snatching one of the foragers. The entire gang flushed as one, voiced  sandpiper alarm and invective then quickly settled again, memories of their late, ingested companion already fading.

At Elk Falls PP we tramped the Beaver Pond trail, found a smattering of late wildflowers, watched wood ducks going about their business among the pond lilies, and sat to behold nightfall in the woods.

After a morning driving in the rain Port McNeill welcomed us with sudden sunshine. BC Ferries took us to Sointula on Malcolm Island where 120 years ago Finnish idealists did their best to establish and preserve a utopian community. At the Koti Niemi cemetery Finnish graves proliferate, both ancient and recent.

At Malcolm’s Bere Point regional park we set up our third campsite, walked to the eponymous point, found none of the orcas that are wont to use the point as a rubbing site, but felt compensated by the rollers, mainland vistas, and assorted waterbirds flying past.

Then it was off to another island, Cormorant, and Alert Bay, home to the ‘Namgis First Nation. Alert Bay offered us much, not least the U’mista Cultural Centre, where one exhibit offered wrenching first-hand accounts of the torments children endured – or tried to – at the local residential school beginning in 1930.

U’mistas’s  highlight exhibit brings together glorious artifacts – masks, headpieces, costumes et al – from a remarkable and famous 1921 potlatch. With great lack of wisdom and surfeit of insensitivity federal authorities seized the potlatch treasures and prosecuted the principals. Over the years the U’mista people have recovered some but by no means all of the prizes stolen 94 years ago. ‘Beautiful, remarkable and affecting’ was my comment-book entry describing the impact of this exhibit.

If you are drawn to totem poles Alert Bay is a dream destination. At the old ‘Namgis burial ground we admired and photographed a dozen or so, most of them striking and unusual. The ‘Namgis Big House replaces the original, destroyed in a malicious arson attack by a non-native in the late 1990s. More totems stand outside the Big House including one billed as the world’s tallest until a storm knocked off the top six feet or so.

As if that weren’t enough, Alert Bay delivered another reward: we walked the boardwalk and trail through an impressive and flowery bog at the island’s ecological park, where stands a group of ‘spirit trees’, long dead red-cedars. Though no longer leafy and green the trees are not just imposing and evocative to humans of a particular bent but also provide utility to woodpeckers, waxwings and warblers.

On Thursday we made our way in the rain to Port Hardy at the far north of the Island. Given the inclemency we sacrificed another night in the tent in favour of a hotel room with hot showers and comfortable bed.

We saw no sign that high-tech industry has made its way to the land north of the 50^th. Not at all. Fishin’, loggin’ and minin’ are still, clearly and conspicuously, the order of the day in these parts. We dined late with local folk at the Quarterdeck restaurant and pub where the seafood pasta was just fine and the impromptu floorshow that much better: a beefy, brawny, bearded, big-voiced fisherman held court with a friend, describing with great colour the gill-netting highlights of the week. Not a sentence did he utter that failed to include an f-bomb or ten. Our friend was certainly a cusser but a congenial, affable, good-natured one. Perhaps no church-folk were about: nobody seemed to mind in the least.

At Port Hardy there is little room to proceed north, except by boat. So we turned around and made our way back from whence we’d come. Comox proved a lure. At the Comox Quay which is nowhere near the water, we dined worthily on salad and soup and admired the town’s unique war memorial. Outside the gates of CFB Comox the air museum furnished a final, excellent reward. I like to imagine I know a bit about Canada’s war history but the museum availed plenty that was unfamiliar – a suitable capper to our trip into unfamiliar territory.