Canada

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CANADA

The Regal Banff Springs Hotel

Sept. 1998 trip to the Canadian Rocky Mountains

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Our Canadian trip started at the Seattle, Washington

Airport, where we rented a car and headed straight for Mukilteo to board a ferry for Whidbey Island. On a nice day, there’s no better excursion from Seattle than a ferry trip across Puget Sound to Whidbey Island, a great way to watch seagulls and sailboats with the scenic backdrop of Mt Rainier, the Olympic and Cascade Mountains and the Seattle skyline. The island is a blend of bucolic rolling hills, forests, meadows and sandy beaches, a great place for country drives. We spent the night at Langley’s Saratoga Inn and continued the following day driving the length of the island, across Deception Pass Bridge to Fidalgo Island’s Anacortes, where we boarded another ferry to take us through the San Juan Islands, the jewels of the northwest, to Vancouver Island and the city of Victoria, British Columbia’s capital. We found lodgings at the Admiral Hotel and soon explored the city on foot. A compact seaside town laced with “veddy British” tea shops and gardens, it is very pretty, with flowers hanging from turn-of-the-century lampposts and strollers feasting on the beauty of Victoria’s natural harbor. The Parliament buildings complex dominates the inner harbor with its statue of Queen Victoria. We visited the landmark Empress Hotel and the Museum of British Columbia. We checked out Market Square, considered one of the most picturesque shopping districts in the city, now restored to its original, pre-1900s character. We also entered Chinatown, one of the oldest in Canada and walked Fan Tan Alley, claiming to be the narrowest street in Canada and having been the gambling and opium center of Chinatown, where mah-jongg, fan tan, and dominoes were played. We had a splendid evening of dining at Victoria’s fine Italian bistro Pagliacci’s and enjoyed breakfasts at the hotel featuring very tasty English muffins, naturally.

Donna and the Queen

Victoria’s inner harbor with our hotel in outlined square

Donna and the 182 foot Welcome Totem

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Vancouver Island, British Columbia 14 miles north of downtown Victoria lie the

Donna admiring the splendors of the Butchart Gardens

Aboard the Lady Rose on trip down the Alberni Inlet

Butchart Gardens. We went off the beaten track to visit these teeming and internationally renowned gardens, among the finest in Canada. Started in 1904 by the wife of a Victorian mine owner in an attempt to reclaim one her husband’s former quarries. Today their breathtaking 50 acre site supports 700 varieties of flowers and over 1 million individual plants. We made another stop along the way at Butterfly World, where Donna thrilled to the massive collection of exotic, free flying tropical butterflies housed in an enclosed tropical garden. Continuing north on Vancouver Island, we stopped for lunch in Duncan, nicknamed City of Totems for the many totem poles that dot the small community. The western side of Vancouver Island is wild, often inhospitable, with just a handful of small settlements. Virtually all of the island’s human habita tion is on the eastern coast, where the weather is gentler and the land is low lying. Mining, logging, and tourism are its important industries. Wanting to explore the lower west coast towns we headed for Port Alberni, a mainly pulpand-sawmill town and a stopover on the way to Ucluelet and Tofino. Here the salmon rich waters attract scores of fishermen. After finding overnight lodgings, we made arrangements to take what was billed as a breathtaking trip dow the Alberni Inlet aboard the Lady Rose, a Scottish ship built in 1937. It left the Argyle Street dock for the four-hour cruise to “beautiful down-town” Bamfield, a remote village of about 200. Bamfield’s seaside boardwalk afforded an uninterrupted view of ships heading up the inlet to Port Alberni. Bamfield is also a good base for boating trips to the Broken Group Islands and hikes along the West Coast Trail. We were much taken by the inlet’s activities of logging and the salmon’s spectacular leaps in their hatcheries. Time cam to head for Nanaimo, across the Strait of Georgia from the city of Vancouver and board the massive ferry aiming for Horseshoe Bay and this big, bright and shiny city of British Columbia.