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Articles of Section 'Coastlines'.

Drink of the Week | Coastlines

Elgood & Son's Captain Vancouver's 250th Anniversary Ale

By Jurgen Gothe
Almost let this one slide by without hoisting it: from England's North Brink Brewery, built in 1795 the year Captain Vancouver completed his survey of the Pacific Northwest coastline comes Elgood & Son's Captain Vancouver's 250th Anniversary Ale ($4.50 for the 500 millilitre bottle at selected LDB stores). It's mellow and palate-filling a good Chinese-food brew with cherry-fruit aromas and a slight sweet edge. Excellent and versatile, thirst-quenching and hearty, it's a beer to be reckoned with.
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Coastlines

No room at the inn for Sechelt landmark

By Andrew Scott
Sitting with friends on the Wakefield Inn's big deck, keeping an eye on passing marine activity, is important work in this part of the world. There's tradition to maintain, after all. The rustic Sunshine Coast neighbourhood pub has been a well-loved landmark in West Sechelt for more than 60 years. Later this fall, though, the Wakefield will make way for-what else?-a townhouse complex.
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Coastlines

Inland Lake delivers wild things up close

By Andrew Scott
For a change of pace, we headed off with our kayaks in July for some freshwater paddling. Our destination was the area around Powell River, two ferry rides northwest of Vancouver, where more than a dozen lakes-all with well-developed recreational facilities-are easily accessible from coastal Highway 101. In this region, in fact, paddlers can readily combine the best of fresh and saltwater worlds.
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Coastlines

Quarry well worth pursuing

By Andrew Scott
If you paddle along the western shore of Newcastle Island, which faces the city of Nanaimo across narrow Newcastle Island Passage, you can see fine examples of those sinuous, wave-sculpted sandstone formations, or galleries, that mark many a coastline in these parts. But there's a difference to Newcastle's sandstone: it's better than anyone else's, apparently.
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Coastlines

Islands mark escape route to ocean, sky

By Andrew Scott
An expedition to Copeland Islands Provincial Marine Park, 150 kilometres northwest of Vancouver, can make a salty season starter for local kayakers. This tiny but spectacular archipelago is an easy 40-minute paddle from the quaint hamlet of Lund, just north of Powell River at the end of Highway 101. Its three major and 14 minor islands can be explored at leisure in a day or so and the whole trip tidily compressed into a three-day escape from the city.
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Coastlines

Avian behaviour illuminated

By Andrew Scott
There are all types of birdwatchers out there, from casual weekenders to ultracompetitive "twitchers", who descend on rare-bird sightings like wasps on a picnic. Personally, I'm a dabbler. I enjoy observing and identifying birds, but I doubt that I'll ever have a life list. The more time I spend looking at birds, though, the more questions I have. Where do they go at night, for instance? Don't their nests get fouled with droppings? How long do they live?
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Coastlines

Old technology sheds new light on world

By Andrew Scott
The rise to dominance of the digital camera, now an essential tool for travellers and most other picture takers, comes as little surprise. But who could have imagined that there would also be a parallel surge of interest in one of photography's oldest formats, the venerable pinhole camera? Indeed, Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, in case you'd forgotten, will take place on Sunday (April 24). The first WPPD, held in 2001, had 291 participants from 24 countries.
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Coastlines

Transitional indulgence

By Andrew Scott
The interior of Inlets Restaurant in Egmont echoes the form of a First Nations longhouse: a vast open space of wood, built post-and-beam style with a peaked roofline. On one side is a bar; on the other, a lounge area with a spirited fire. The floor, retrieved from a Delta school scheduled for demolition, is made of Douglas-fir boards that are 80 years old, polished to a rich orange sheen by decades of children's shoes. First Nations masks and carvings adorn the walls.
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Coastlines

B.C.'s Reefs Among Science's Great Finds

By Andrew Scott
About 15 years ago, scientists from the Geological Survey of Canada were astonished to discover vast reefs, formed by colonies of hexactinellid glass sponges, growing deep in the Queen Charlotte Basin off the north B.C. coast. Individual glass sponges are nothing unusual, but these great creations, found as deep as 250 metres and up to seven kilometres long and 20 metres high, were an extraordinary sight.
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Coastlines

Winter Hamlet Echoes Its Pioneer Beginnings

By Andrew Scott
Below Egmont, on the northwest shore of Sechelt Inlet--reachable only by boat, floatplane, or a long and difficult hike--an echo remains of an older era: the tiny hamlet of Doriston. Its dozen or so homes were built for year-round use, but most are occupied today only in the fair-weather months. In summer I sometimes paddle my kayak past this compact community and admire the orchards, the well-maintained gardens, the workmanlike sheds and boat ramps.
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Coastlines

Prince Rupert Isn't Any Old Port in Storms

By Andrew Scott
Prince Rupert's normal colours are pale and washed-out: misty greens and endless shades of grey. This, after all, is a city that sports a store named the Slickers Raingear Warehouse. So the blast of bright red that screams at strollers on First Avenue seems uncharacteristic. It belongs to a 1958 La France fire truck, polished to a dangerous intensity, that sits in summer beside the Prince Rupert Fire Museum. It's a good spot, in any season, to begin a cultural walking tour.
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Coastlines

Human Impact Threatens Sakinaw Sockeye

By Andrew Scott
Only 80 kilometres northwest of Vancouver, scenic Sakinaw Lake is prime Sechelt Peninsula cottage country, abuzz with powerboats in summer.
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Coastlines

Town's Tides of History

By Andrew Scott
We walk the beach searching for blue glass trade beads that wash up on occasion in front of Lax Kw'alaams. All we find are shards of glass and crockery. Still, these are enough to whisk my imagination back a century and a half, to a time when this community was known as Fort Simpson. In those days, the shore would have been lined with cedar lodges and canoes, loomed over by the pickets of a Hudson's Bay Co. stockade.
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Coastlines

At Sechelt, We Took the Inlet Less Travelled By

By Andrew Scott
Two arms branch off Sechelt Inlet and snake their way into the Coast Mountains just north of Vancouver. Narrows Inlet, the shorter and more intimate of the pair, attracts plenty of outdoor-loving visitors with its pocket parks and awesome vistas. Salmon Inlet has been hammered by industrial activity over the years and sees only the most determined tourists. People like us.
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Coastlines

Missionary Boats Grace a Nostalgic Festival

By Andrew Scott
The third weekend in August saw a slew of birthdays celebrated at Garden Bay on the Sunshine Coast. The pioneer mission hospital of St. Mary's, still standing but reincarnated these days as the Sundowner Inn, is 75 this year. It was built by the Columbia Coast Mission, which started life 100 years ago when Rev. John Antle and his nine-year-old son, Victor, left Vancouver in their open, five-metre boat on an 800-kilometre journey to Alert Bay and back.
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Coastlines

Cortes's Wild North Captivates

By Andrew Scott
Cortes Island makes a fine summer destination, especially for paddlers. Most visitors hang around the southern half of Cortes, which is the prettiest, driest, most populated part. The new-age resort of Hollyhock is located there, as are the protected waters of Gorge Harbour and Cortes Bay, the lively community of Mansons Landing, and the parklands and trails beside Hague and Gunflint lakes. This is where you'll find beach-lined Smelt Bay Park, home to May's not-to-be-missed Oyster Festival.
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Coastlines

Kayaking Books View Province From Water

By Andrew Scott
The popularity of ocean kayaking has been a boon for B.C.'s publishers, as well as for its ecotourism outfitters, resort operators, and outdoor-gear manufacturers and retailers. Kayak how-to books and travel guides are a growth industry. The number of well-written paddling and adventure memoirs, often accompanied by exceptional imagery, is also growing. So when you consider that B.C.
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Coastlines

Lodge Offers Kayakers a Voyage of Discovery

By Andrew Scott
From the third-floor lounge of Discovery Islands Lodge, we look east across Hoskyn Channel to Read and Maurelle islands. To the north is Surge Narrows provincial marine park, a playground for paddlers unfazed by active tidal waters. A range of snow-capped mainland peaks, lorded over by Hat Mountain and Dudley Cone, backdrops the scene. In the entire panorama we can see two boats and exactly four distant buildings. The rest is forest, sea, and sky.
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Coastlines

Dream-Chasing Sechelt Guide Knows Coast

By Andrew Scott
In my corner of the country, Coastwise John knows the backwoods and waters as well as anyone. He's the person to call if you want to explore the Caren Range on the Sechelt Peninsula, home to 2,000-year-old yellow cedars, Canada's oldest known trees. And if the far recesses of Jervis Inlet beckon, he's the one to get you there.
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Coastlines

Winchelsea Islands Are Home to Navy and Seals

By Andrew Scott
From Schooner Cove, Lyle Montgomery runs us over to the Winchelsea group in his water taxi. As he rounds the buoy just south of the islands, we see the animals, scores of them, littering the rocks like a broken boom of short, fat logs. Next we hear them, a chorus of barks and growls that merge to form a dull roar. They lift their massive heads to watch us but don't budge one centimetre otherwise.
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Coastlines

Arachnid Army Trespasses in My Parlour

By Andrew Scott
I work in a world of spiders. Every few hours I'm distracted by a tiny movement in the periphery of my vision. It's a baby spider leaving home, dropping on its silken thread from the light fixture above me, bound on a slight current of air for a career in unknown territory.
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Coastlines

New Books Map Coast in Pictures and Words

By Andrew Scott
British Columbia publishers continue to explore new territory with their books; two in particular have impressed me with their style and format. One is from Harbour, a well-established house, and the other is from the Sunshine Coast Museum & Archives Society, a small community organization that has never published a book before. Both are delightful, innovative additions to the growing library of B.C. coastal lore.
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Coastlines

Rare Oaks Get Room to Grow

By Andrew Scott
Walking through Victoria's Beacon Hill Park one winter, admiring the 400-year-old groves of Garry oak, I stooped to pick up a couple of acorns and slipped them into my pocket. Over the next few weeks, these nuts, fruit of B.C.'s only oak species, would find their way to my dresser, then to the kitchen, and finally to a planter outside our Sunshine Coast home. There I promptly forgot about them.
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