Too wild for the Royal Navy? I loved it!
Mike MacEacheran voyages to the enigmatic western Pacific coast of British Columbia – and is tempted to ‘stay awhile’
In the 1890s, famed British sea captain George Vancouver sailed northwest along Canada’s enigmatic Pacific coastline, announcing that he had discovered a place so wild – so unkempt and so unprosperous – that the Royal Navy nearly didn’t bother to map it. For here, the commander said, “there was not a single prospect that was pleasing to the eye”.
If he’d only seen half of what I experienced on my visit, he’d have left with a very different view of the place he so incorrectly named Desolation Sound. After breakfast one day, we saw a glossy orca with a nursing calf off the bow. Through creeping mist, a 40-tonne humpback cast its tail fluke to the heavens at the stern, leaving moshing bubbles in its wake. In the dusky pink of twilight, we spied two black bears nuzzling on the kelp-matted shore through binoculars. Desolation Sound? Not on your life. Angel’s Trumpet Strait or God’s Bathtub would be more apt if you ask me. Georgie boy might have found it one of the most miserable naval surveys ever, but to me it seemed there was always a spectacular wildlife encounter impending.
Even if you’ve been to British Columbia in western Canada before, you have to set sail in Desolation Sound, as well as experiencing all the other memorable moments the island-speckled coast offers. And a new go-anywhere, scriptfree trip from Vancouver Island – with expedition cruise pioneers Maple Leaf Adventures, from Port Hardy – means it’s easier than ever to disconnect from Wi-Fi and get lost in the personal wilderness of the splintered Pacific coast. Indeed, the only gloom that crept in through our 350-mile, week-long voyage was on the day I had to disembark.
And what a vessel. Her name was MV Cascadia, a 138ft-long luxury catamaran and one christened after the utopian iMist opportunity: the coastline offers a chance to immerse yourself in the wilderness bioregion defined by the watersheds of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. Her hulls, like clenched fists, make light work of the racing tides of the area’s narrow straits and she has been strengthened to reach wild coastal inlets and unfettered First Nations communities that no other cruise passenger vessel can. Plus, her dozen en-suite cabins – named after many of the islands we explored – have better inflight entertainment than you’ll get on the longhaul flight from the UK. Try unpacking or cleaning your teeth while gawping at humpbacks sieving through the blue mosh for krill or watching harbour seals laid on the rocks like massive Jelly Babies. Such wonders are almost beyond fathoming. And as no roads lead to any of this, water is the only way.
Our first excursion after cruising east to Malcolm Island was to hop in a tender, magicking rainbows in the boat’s spray as we went. “We’ll drop a hydrophone down to see who’s around,” said expedition leader Jeff Reynolds, a marine biologist with a weird internal whale radar, before mimicking the meditative chatter of gossiping humpbacks. If you have a thing for new-age whale song, you’ll know it’s a highpitched murmur, but Jeff’s coo was more like an air-horn siren. Moments later, the silence was broken by a spinewinding squeal. A burping killer whale, or northern resident orca, to be precise. As if for effect, spouted brine from a nearby pod lingered in the air like smoke against an indigo sky.
Over the next few days, it was more blubber meets blubber. Orcas followed dolphins off the Plumper Islands. Absurdly whiskered Steller sea lions followed a carousel of humpbacks while we plied the Broughton Archipelago. In the shallows around Echo Bay, seal spotting followed a beach landing. And every evening at anchor in sheltered bays, Cascadia’s private-label beers followed top-deck hot tubs, three-course meals of candied salmon and Alberta T-bones, and enough wine pairings to sink a battleship. Weight Watchers hasn’t reached Desolation Sound yet, but I must have put on a stone at least. Meanwhile, Mother Nature flexed her muscles outside, with enough coral beaches, whaleback islands, wild rainforest skirt and shark-tooth mountains to get your cardio going.
All of this needs to be photographed, of course. But with Jeff ’s telephoto lens capturing every frame on demand, you’re left to stare slack-jawed at the landscape, click-free. The idea being, of course, to help you connect with the finer details of the ruched mountains and diamond-patterned waters that others might miss. One afternoon, I kayaked beside a seal playing peekaboo in the shallows. On another, I stood in the cool air on the prow as a barnaclethroated humpback suddenly slapped its fluke. The tail was bottle-opener shaped. Now, I’m not saying this was a booze cruise by any stretch, but I found “Bartender” a fitting name.
Cruising Desolation Sound’s bamboozling geography surely hardens you as a sailor. And on that point, Vancouver might have been right. In Cascadia’s wheelhouse, Captain Corey Irwin was constantly on alert, navigating currents that flow at 16 knots – or 22 miles per hour to you and me – all while slaloming whirlpools as treacherous as 10ft deep and 164ft wide. One estuary threw up beanstalk-sized logs that stuck out from the mudflats like tombstones. “Those could sink the Titanic,” said Corey, one evening in the half-light. The fact he never broke his gaze from the obstacle course ahead meant he wasn’t joking.
Between all of this slosh and sway, we caught our breath on land. Our first stop was in the traditional Kwakwaka’wakw territory of Alert Bay on Cormorant Island, home to the world’s largest totem pole. Outsiders have long been wholly ignorant to Canada’s pre-settler traditions, and it should be mandatory when visiting nowadays to learn about their jigsawed intricacies, as well as the wounds left by the Canadian Indian residential school system.
Effectively institutionalised internment camps, the government programme was created to assimilate aboriginal children into European colonial ideology, with pupils kept from their families for years and prohibited from speaking their 10,000-year-old mother tongues. Then, as now, the result was cultural upheaval, an untold number of school-related deaths and a country in mourning. Photographs of the departed make up a part of the permanent exhibition at the U’mista Cultural Centre and it leaves everyone in shivers. Understandably, locals are reluctant to discuss it – the entrenched memories are not yet distant enough, if they ever will be – and, astonishingly, Alert Bay’s red-bricked schoolhouse was only torn down in 2015.
Later in the week, the mood was in stark contrast to the sense of absolution and reclamation at Klahoose Wilderness Resort, a grizzly viewing camp that opened last summer as British Columbia’s first indigenous retreat. Sandwiched between Cortes Island and fjord-like Toba Inlet, the backcountry outpost rewards with a rich combo of salmon-frenzied bear sightings and transformative powwow dance and drum spectacles. It was a spirit channeled by Randy Louie, a Klahoose First Nation member, who warmly greeted us
on the jetty when we arrived for a hike through the fringes of the Great Bear Rainforest. “It’s good to see you,” he sang, to the thwack of a ceremonial drum. “Stay awhile.”
Staying awhile. Now that’s something I could have got used to in Desolation Sound. But we had to cruise to port in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island and reluctantly motored across Homfray Channel, one of the deepest in North America, then continued south along a stretch of coastline scratched at by bear claws. It was us, the streaking clouds, textured sky – and, perhaps, the ghost of Captain George swearing at our backs in the wind.
Spouted brine from a nearby pod lingered in the air like smoke against an indigo sky
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