by Alert Bay seaside
Islands mean water, water means boats, fishing, swimming…
And waiting for the ferry back to Port McNeill and our last evening in the area.
The next day, the long drive to Victoria
November 6, 2013 in Canada and BC, Travel by Marja-Leena
Your photographs of the place are simply stunning but the trip is ending too soon.
Thanks for these wonderful posts, Marja-Leena.
Susan, thank you for all your visits and supportive comments! It was a short but very full trip. I’ll be posting more photos with fewer words. And a bit about our time in Victoria.
It has been a wonderful journey, trawling through your recent posts. Were they British buses? Anyway, when finally I arrived here, I felt that for me islands mean water, means drifting through thoughts, then simply letting go. A wonderful, moody, journey. Thank you.
Tom, thank you too, for enjoying this journey. I too wondered about those buses, whether they were British…it’s what we all think of when we see these doubledeckers, isn’t it?
Just a wondrous place. Thank you so much for your photos and your commentary.
Olga, thank you so much for interest and many comments.
Marja-Leena,
from time to time I’ve been looking at the B.C.-maps. We have had National Geographic coming to us, subscribed by my late father-in-law, so we have the collection of paper maps in a box. I like them much better than trying to find in the net something I need.
NG also had a policy to include short info about the place, population and all such things.
The magazine doesn’t have those maps any more. I guess we have to be satisfied with the net.
But this history about Alert Island is something what I never heard of before. And the indians are here no more, or The First Nation like you called them? I have always heard that Canadians treated your indigenous peoples better than your southern neighbors.
I guess there are degrees. Harm has been done everywhere to the children. People who stole their land wanted to make sure that the children would have no memory of their tribal history.
Ripsa, we subscribed to the wonderful National Geographic for a long time, and I too loved their maps. I don’t recall any full ones of BC in that time, I could be wrong. One could search their website. The coast between mainland BC and Vancouver Island is full of islands, inlets, even fjords up north. The histories of the many islands are also not that well known, I suppose. Thanks to the internet we’re learning much more. By the way, some of the links in these posts about Alert Bay, Sointula, Quadra and so on show maps of those areas.
We’re learning ever more about our First Nations peoples and their sad history. They have become stronger in standing up for their rights in treaty discussions and land claims. BC is the only province to not have signed treaties until only recently with two bands, I think. They are standing up for the environment against resource industries such as oil and gas, mining and logging which would cut through their territories and destroy pristine wilderness and oceans.
Alert Bay is the village on Cormorant Island. It has a healthy population of First Nations who are managing their cultural sites, and this is happening all over BC. Their populations is growing a lot too. It’s true that Canada did not physically wipe out as many of the natives as did the USA but did take away the best land and put them onto reservations often on poor land. The residential schools were the worst thing that was done, it seems to me.
Marja-Leena, these pictures remind me so vividly of my time in BC – rather like Proust tasting the madeleine – something about the light you’ve caught, the colours of the landscape specific to the place, an atmosphere. Hard to pin down why it couldn’t be anywhere else but it’s true. I can almost feel the BC air!
Natalie, how interesting that you see this as so very “BC coast”, and I think you may be right. I love it! The other day Fred recalled that we had moved to Vancouver 40 years ago this month! The mountains, sea, and forests have all become so very much a part of us and I cannot imagine living anywhere else. Sometimes the islands tempt but our home is here.
Wonderful trip! Thank you for sharing, dear Marja-Leena! I am thinking of my time living near Hakata Bay in western Japan. You’ve spurred me on to put the BC coast on my list of places I must visit.
Yes, do come and visit! I’d love to meet you and show you some of this wonderful area!