Nanaimo band Sure Furs are pretty certain they are the first band ever to reference the 1969 Beatles album, “Abbey Road,” the famous cover of which features a photograph of John, Paul, George, and Ringo walking across the titular street. On the cover of their 2009 CD, “Dashboard,” the band is similarly photographed walking across a street. Bass player/singer Greg Richlieu is barefoot, and in the background there is a Volkswagen Beetle, belonging to Dennis Sands, a friend of Richlieu’s mother. “Man, we really nailed that,” Richlieu said, inspecting the band’s CD artwork. “I’ve never seen any other band do this since the Beatles. I’m pretty certain we’re the first.” The Sure Furs are planning to promote the album with some local shows and photos of the band spelling Help! in semaphore.

A couple of days ago we got an email from Cheryl, one of our possible financers, asking if we could meet her in person in Nanaimo in a couple of days – of course we had to pull it together and go!

Pulling it together meant renting a car and driving it to Nanaimo, since the island bus will only get you one way in a day.  There isn’t an actual car rental depot in Ukee, but there is a small lot in Tofino, and Bob, the Budget fellow who works in Tofino and lives in Ukee drove the rental into Ukee for us on his way home Thursday night. 

Thursday night, Kat & I went to our first local knitting circle, something we’ve been wanting to do in Toronto but had neither the time nor the energy to do.  The circle meets at Cynamoka, the local coffee house, and there were three other women there besides Kat & I.  Donna and her sister operate the coffee house, and stay open late on Thursdays for the sake Donna’s spinning and knitting. 

I haven’t done any serious knitting in months, I can’t seem to get into the mindset.  I’d started a mitten project I was sure I’d finish on the train, but it turned out I was perfectly happy to stare outside the window for three days.  I think the knitting projects I’ve been attempting are just too complicated, given all the other challenges in life right now, and I found it more enjoyable to help Donna pick bits of hay out of some wool roving she was carding and preparing to spin.

We sat in the coffee house for three hours, Kat with her sock project, me with a pile of bright blue roving and bits of straw on my lap, Donna with two massive slicker brushes carding the roving into long puffy caterpillars ready for spinning.  Donna has lived in Ucluelet for over 30 years, she’s one of the Originals.  She has an incredible wealth of knowledge of the area’s history, more specifically, of the region’s families.  I learned that there is a Japanese family on the ridge by the lighthouse that had been evicted from their land by the government during WWII, and that this family managed to get their land back after the war was over. 

I learned a bit more about Norma, a woman who passed away a few months ago, who ran “The Wreckage”, a glorious store of odds and ends, second hand treasures, beach combing finds and amazing antiques.  (Here’s a link to a blogger who has some nice pictures of the Wreckage  http://blog.svhelloworld.com/2009/07/ucluelet.html)  The 200 year old cash register, the stuffed sea lion, the Japanese glass floats, the pieces of ship wrecks that washed up on shore, The Wreckage is a place of treasures.  There is so much to write about that place and the woman who founded it, it’s going to need an entry of it’s own, so more on that later.

Norma, I learned, was a knitter and a spinner, and she taught all three of the other women in the circle how to knit and spin.  It’s a wonderful thing to feel connected to this fascinating woman whom I’d never met, by learning from her students.  I suppose that’s romanticizing it a bit.  In Toronto, if you want to learn to spin you need to figure it out by watching you-tube videos, or pay $75 to take a course.  In Ukee, these skills are passed along freely as a way to pass the long, rainy winter evenings… so it feels romantic to me now.

We told Donna about our coffee roasting plans and our meeting in Nanaimo on Friday.  “Ah, so you’re going Out to Town then.  That’s what we say here, whether you’re going to Port Alberni or to Vancouver, you say I’m going out to town.” 

And so we were.  Friday morning we woke up to an alarm for the first time since our arrival.  That wouldn’t have been as painful as it was if we’d gotten a decent night’s sleep the night before, but the anticipation made us fitful, and both of us were up multiple times in the night.

We put our coffee in travel mugs and our breakfast smoothie in a nalgene bottle and hit the road by 7 am so that we could be sure to make Nanaimo by 11:30.

There’s this rumour that it takes an hour and a half to drive the mountain pass between Port Alberni and Ucluelet – let me tell you that is an outright lie.  It takes at least two hours in perfect conditions, and usually two and a half hours if there’s any sort of freight traffic or rain.  Considering that Port Alberni is about the halfway point between Ucluelet and Nanaimo, you have to budget at least four hours to drive across the island.  If the land were flat and the highway straight, it would take about an hour to drive from Nanaimo to Ukee; but winding through the mountains across narrow bridges and beside sheer cliffs, you just have to take your time.

Everywhere on the highway there were signs posted “Use winter tires or carry chains!”  Donna told us that until recently, Port Alberni used to have death count posts at various places along the mountain highway – blue numbers for accidents, red numbers for injuries, white numbers for deaths – these posts were meant to scare the locals into SLOWING THE HELL DOWN when driving the highway, but were removed a few years ago after the method of information was deemed to be in bad taste, and bad for tourism. 

Despite the lack of death count posts, the danger of the drive was quite clear to us as we passed a place marked by piles of bouquets, the site of a fatal accident between an SUV and a transport truck at a curve in the road.  The accident happened the day before we arrived in Ucluelet, and we heard about it not from the media but from our landlord.  We learned that the woman killed had a husband and two children.  The next morning we heard Jeff Johnston, the DJ for Long Beach Radio, solemnly and with genuine sadness communicate the news of her death to the community.

For a little perspective, I’m sure that the 401, Ontario’s major freeway, claims many more lives in a year than our modest Island highway.  I’m sure my life was in greater peril as I negotiated eight lanes of traffic at 120 km/hr, heart pounding and adrenaline buzzing in my fingertips.  But none of the statistics delivered by the detached and perfunctory reporter on the CBC could ever convey the personal sense of loss and grief that hit home as we passed this roadside monument. 

This was the fifth time I’d driven the mountain pass since June, and it seems the scenery changes a little every day.  The fall foliage had been shaken from the trees, but the highway remained quite green with fir and pine trees taking their place in winter’s spotlight.   The trickling little roadside streams had flooded out into rushing rivers that roared so loudly we had to turn our music up to hear it over the water. 

The snow that had appeared as jaunty white hats on the hills outside our apartment manifested as real, honest-to-goodness snow on the mountain highway.

As we neared the crest of one of the higher points on our drive, I spotted a black furry form with a short brown muzzle and fuzzy round saucer ears pointed right at us.  A full grown black bear focused intensely on us, then whirled and stomped straight back into the bush.  Our first black bear sighting!  We were thrilled!  (We’ll let you know if we’re still thrilled in the spring when these critters descend upon Ukee to dig through the garbage.)  We celebrated Ukee style by sharing a solid high-five.

We arrived in Port Alberni for more coffee and a light meal, and then hit the road again by 9:30.  The stretch of highway between Port Alberni and Nanaimo contains the mystical Cathedral grove, home of massive 800 year old Douglas fir trees, and always a beautiful drive.  I was surprised to see how well the pumpkins along the road have held up:

The clouds lightened up and let in some welcome sunshine over Nanaimo, and we had about 30 minutes to soak it up before Cheryl arrived to meet us.

The meeting went very well.  Cheryl was pleased with our financial projections, instructed us on a few changes and then advised us to proceed as though we were going to get the funding.  She could not, of course, confirm that we were going to get funding – we will have to wait at least two weeks for a committee to evaluate our package – but she told us to go ahead and open a business bank account and shop for a commercial space.  We shouldn’t sign any leases until we’re sure we have the funding, but there was no reason in her opinion to delay the development of the business at this point. 

She emphasized the need for monthly financial reporting to the organization, and I assured her I could do no less for my own piece of mind.  If any of my former co-workers are reading this they’ll understand how absurd the concept of allowing bookkeeping to lag behind for months would be for me, she who has lived the accounting cycle for the past seven years.  I still feel unnatural during the first week of every month, I hear a whisper in the back of my mind, “Must reconcile bank accounts… must balance books… must…work…overtime!”

We celebrated the great meeting with a visit to PetsMart where we bought a big cat tree for the kitties, two nylabones for the pups and shiny engraved name tags for everyone.  We stopped at a hardware store for some multi-coloured Christmas lights and then, resigned to the prospect of driving home in the dark, hit the dusty trail once again.

Okay, “dusty trail” isn’t very accurate.  Flooded trail is a bit more descriptive.  The marsh surrounding Cathedral Grove outside of Port Alberni had been overcome with rain run-off during the day and a portion of Highway 4 had become a modest stream.  There’s a reason why everyone in the region drives jeeps and pickup trucks – they have four wheel drive, they’re heavy enough to get traction in the mountain pass and high enough to cruise through three feet of water flooding out the only road home.  Wow, was I ever glad we sprung for the rental jeep instead of the economy compact.  The water came to the top of the wheel wells on the car and didn’t slow us down one bit.  I tell ya I felt downright masculine; I think my arm hair got furrier.  I felt like a kid splashing through a puddle – a really big puddle with a REALLY big toy!

Maybe I’ve been watching too much Star Trek lately; the return drive through the mountains in the dark felt like getting sucked into a black hole and trying to find a way out.  It was dark.  Not just kinda dark, anti-matter dark.  The kind of dark that makes you wonder if you’ve died and somehow missed the event of your demise. 

The sky was overcast so there was no stars, no moonlight.  There was no artificial light of any kind, just our meager headlights which barely managed to illuminate six feet of road ahead of us.  Six feet is fine when you’re driving between farmers fields, but when you know that there are cliffs and hairpin turns on your route, driving through pitch black becomes an unnerving funhouse ride. 

You drive up a steep bank and then the road drops away – in the daylight you could see that it’s a dip in the road, but in the dark it looks like the road suddenly ends, like the world has dropped away and you’re about to pull a Thelma & Louise.  Sometimes the dip is filled with cloud which obscures the little visibility you do have.  It’s like driving through the bottom of an ice cream sundae, trying to get out of the bowl without driving over the edge.

We made it home again (jiggidy-jig!) at 7 pm, twelve hours since we’d left the house.  In our absence, our home had apparently born the brunt of the animals’ anxieties.

Mocha, my 11 year old cattle dog shepherd cross, who is so beyond acting out in loneliness or frustration, had helped herself to a bag of brown sugar from the cupboard.  She didn’t seem to eat much of it, she just shredded the bag and spread the sugar over the scatter rugs in the kitchen and living room. 

Where there wasn’t a dusting of sugar, there was cat puke.  Three piles of cat puke stood between us and the bathroom.  I should’ve left my shoes on once I’d ascertained the damage, but my mind was a little foggy from the eight hours of driving.  Inevitably, I stepped in cat puke and brown sugar. 

There’s nothing you want to do less after a long day than clean up messes you didn’t make, but that’s part of living with animals.  I calmly mopped the floors while giving myself the pep talk that the floors needed cleaning anyway, and it was one less chore for me this weekend.  It was hard to find the bright side when we found that the bed had been puked on at least ten times.  All of the blankets, the sheets, the pillows and the floor, even the bedside table, had cat puke.  Leo had apparently decided to rid his system of the mother of all hairballs.  Either that, or he’d been possessed by an evil spirit in our absence.  He’s getting plenty of hairball remedy this weekend.

The Christmas lights are now up and the cat tree is a big success.  Here’s Sunshine modeling her shiny new name tag:

 Overall, I’d say our trip out to town was quite successful.

Just one more sleep until the big day – the EllaBella Designs’ 1st Annual Christmas Market. This will be my first market and I have been sewing every night to make enough to fill a table. Normally I make items to order, so I don’t usually have much stock on hand. Well, now I do! I will have aprons for children and women, tutus, one of a kind handbags, reversible coffee cup cozies, cosmetic pouches, Grab ‘n’ Go placemats and crayon rolls. I will also be taking orders for custom pieces for Christmas.

If you are in the Nanimo area and are interested in locally made, handmade, high quality pieces, please stop by. Here’s a link to the map. Hope to see you there!

Aprons

Getting ready for Market

The surface of the road that we travel on, on the Island highway which I prefer to call the Island Avenue, since it has to many lights on it to really call it a highway, is not being maintained in a proper manner in a stretch between the end of the Malahat to just south of Nanaimo.

I’m not sure what the cause of it either laziness or budget constraints or both but earlier this year areas on the road were marked by white paint to show where the road was supposed to be cut out and a patch put in it’s place and during the summer which would have been the best time to accomplish this, it never happened and it was’nt until two weeks ago that, instead of cutting out the rotten piece of asphalt and replacing it, it was decided to patch each shock busting hole with a few shovelfuls of hardtop.

What a pathetic attempt to fix a problem that could have been done properly done over the summer by Mainroad South Island Contracting Limited Partnership and now for the rest of the winter we will have to dodge these holes making driving that much more dangerous that it all ready is when we have a heavy rain event or snow to contend with.

“The best decision I’ve made in years.” That’s how Andrew Dukes describes the choice he made to leave the restaurant industry seven years ago and join the Port Hardy Processing Plant (PHPP).

“I wouldn’t go back to cooking for anything,” he said.

The Vancouver Folk Music Festival always has remarkable musical discoveries and experiences!  Last July at the Festival we were fortunate to see an amazing Tibetan Singer & Musician, and what an experience it was!  Both Lucy and I were transported by his voice and music to the crisp cold air of the Tibetan mountains, feeling the wind blowing and the eagle speaking.

As we were volunteers at the Festival and worked on traffic neighborhood security we lucked out when Jamyang and his manager Karen McDiarmid from Banff entered through our gate.  We were so thrilled to be able to thank him for the gift of his music and his spirit.  To our delight we discovered that after his escape from Tibet his journey brought him to live in Duncan B.C. on Vancouver Island.   Duncan is only 45 minutes away from our home in Nanaimo and we have formed a friendship with Jamyang.  Selfishly we want to hear him sing again, so we have arranged with Sandra at the Island Yoga Vista studio to have Janyang perform there on December 5th, 2009.

If you want to be entertained, inspired and transported by music, I am sure you will not be disappointed.  Jamyang will tell his story of his escape from Tibet leaving his family and his home and his musical journey which has brought him to Vancouver Island today.  His incredible story is only surpassed by his shining Spirit and his gifted music.

Mediation takes many forms and different days offer very different opportunities to open and explore….. Music is a remarkable meditation journey!

The information on Jamyang Yeshi’s performance on December 5th (Saturday) is on the poster below, hope to see you there.

Island Yoga Vista & Steppingstones Workshops Presents a Performance by:

JAMYANG  YESHI   ~  Tibetan Singer & Musician

Jamyang Yeshi, from a nomadic Tibetan family, escaped across the Himalayas in 1998 to Dharmsala. He performed at the first Tibetan Music Festival in India,  for his Holiness the Dalai Lama and Prince Charles, and in Moscow for Richard Gere and Robert Thurman at a major Tibetan Buddhist Cultural Festival. In 2005 he performed at opening night for the “Cultures at Risk” Summit at the Banff Centre.   This year he was invited to perform at both the Vancouver and the Islands Folk Festivals. Jamyang also opened for at the ‘listenNOW’ concert which was part of the  Dalai Lama’s visit to Calgary.

Jamyang’s latest CD, “Shining Spirit: A Tibetan Family’s Reunion through Music” has been followed by a documentary film, “Shining Spirit: The Musical Journey of Jamyang Yeshi,”.

December 5^th, 7-9pm

Island Yoga Vista Studio

1330 Discovery Ave., Nanaimo

Tickets:  $20.00

Tickets Available in Advance ~ Limited Seating

Island Yoga Vista         (250) 755-6779

Steppingstones         (250) 591-8020

www.taracafeproject.ca

www.yogavistananaimo.com

www.steppingstonesworkshops.com

Jamyang Yeshi   ~  Tibetan Singer & Musician

Jamyang Yeshi - Tibetan Singer & Musician

I’m off to a SEO workshop tonight and I’m strangely excited. What is SEO you ask? Well, it is Search Engine Optimization. It’s basically how to be Google friendly. Google doesn’t currently like me that much so I have work to do to change that. And I’m jazzed to learn all about it. I’m not normally that geeky but it is so essential to any photographer’s business. (No comments Nadine… contrary to what you think, I’m not that geeky. Honest). I’m considering scrapping my website and having a blog driven portfolio site. So many questions to ask. …

I’m not even sad about missing Flamenco tonight.

In other news… I managed to delete yesterdays picture! AHHH!!! It wasn’t good, but there goes my unbroken string of over 100 straight days of picture taking. Not really, because I did take the picture. But nobody knows but me

Maybe it is a good thing. It was awfully dark and made me kind of look like a demon. Which is always hawt.

Oct 10 – Day 102

Fall Photo Shoot with my ladies… will have a whole post soon about it. I’m the one with the hair issues.

Oct 11 – Day 103

Nathan watching something good on the computer. I was all ninja style getting this photo… crawling commando style on my belly into the room. Not that he would have really noticed…

Oct 12 – Day 104

Hahahahahahaaaaaa….. I LOVE THIS PICTURE. It cracks me up to no end.

Okay. Time to do some chores before I have to leave. Happy Wednesday!

S.

Visit my website www.sharinakagawa.com or on Facebook.

Olympic Torch Relay Field Reporter Chris Wheeler goes to Cowichan Bay, British Columbia, to cover day 2 of the Olympic Torch Relay.
Learn more at http://www.hellobc.com/2010torchrelay
Follow Chris at http://www.twitter.com/torchreporter

Excellent, informative video by Frank Moher, Artistic Director of Western Edge Theatre, Nanaimo, in his submission to the Select Standing Committee on Government Finances and Services, October, 2009.

Tattoo Kits [ $260 ] contact inkcrazysupply@gmail.com  :

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I trimmed down and emotionalized my previous Letter to the Editor about the lack of extended care facilities for the elderly on Vancouver Island. I added some new information: one of the hospital social workers learned at the hospital-wide bed meeting that 80 of our beds were occupied by these medically-stable folks awaiting placement*. 80! That’s a huge issue, and the reasons are obvious. So I thought I’d share it in a letter.

Fortunately, it’ll get some air as the Times Colonist did publish it. You can read that version here.

Just a quick note on Letters to the Editor. Even if you write to the smallest, piddliest, lowest-circulation paper, anything that mentions a Minister or Premier tends to wind up on their desk. Easiest way to get to the top! (according to Dr. Schumacher, former CMA president). Even if that’s not true, at least someone will read it! I hope.

* yes, I used second hand information. I think the source is good, but I’m a journalist. My goal was to get the issue some attention, and I think this might be a fair start.

Flagging tape and survey stakes within 5 metres of World-Class rock art.

I am shocked at the proximity of development to some of the finest petroglyphs in the world, those on Gabriola Island. In the picture to the left, I am standing between two clusters of flagging tape 5 metres from the petroglyph in the foreground, where there is also a wooden survey stake and shot rock on the ground. Development has already encroached within 30 metres of this amazing site since 2002 and shows no signs of stopping. This is an outrage and is completely unacceptable. I am not interested in whatever compromises or tradeoffs that led to this. We have known since the Stein River case – 20 years ago – that we cannot treat rock art as co-terminus with the design. Ethical archaeology requires that a buffer be provided around rock art and many other sites in order to ensure the character of the art is preserved. If the BC Heritage Conservation Art cannot protect this site, then as far as I am concerned, no site in British Columbia is safe.

To add insult to injury, the developers are using these petroglyphs, which if nothing else are the intellectual property of the Snuneymuxw First Nation, in their advertising. These developers, who go by the name “The Legends at Spirit Rock” are cynically suggesting there is spiritual benefit to living close to these ancient sites.  Indeed, Oprah says so! They have a photogallery, which carefully does not show the blasted forest within 30 metres of the site.

As the advertising for the Gabriola Island development “Legends at Spirit Rock” says, “A community invigorated by the natural physical beauty of the land, forest, ocean and mountains, inspired by the significant spiritual, healing energy of the First Nations history, and enthused by the opportunity to live in a development that created a substantial environmental legacy. A community that embraces these values with homes of quality and expression of individual character and soul while promoting environmental preservation, respect for the land and its’ history, the neighbours, the community and the West Coast, Gulf Islands lifestyle …..The “Perfect Place to Live.”

Yes, the perfect place to live is within a few metres of these sites – here is the same petroglyph as above used as advertising fodder.

Petroglyphs are not lifestyle amenities nor advertising copy.

Note the metre stick — this is an archaeologist’s picture.  Do they even own the copyright to this picture, let alone the art depicted?  Do they say that they have flagged within 5 metres of this boulder?  Do they note they have encroached on this world-class site?  Do they tell people that there are hundreds of human burials known from within 500 metres of this place and that the occupants of the Legend at Spirit Rock will be living in a cemetery?  Do they tell people that this development will channel not healing energy, but will induce grave spiritual danger for their clients?

This is so crass I can’t even begin to express it.  Desecrating one of the most significant rock art sites in the Province does not allow you to claim there is “significant spiritual, healing energy of the First Nations history”.  Have you no shame, Legends at Spirit Rock developers?  Needless to say, I am raising this issue with the Archaeology Branch of the Government of BC.  Something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.  This is a case where the only response is a righteous anger and a deep and abiding shame.

The train left Toronto at 10 pm the first night, and rapidly picked up speed in the middle of the night as the freight traffic lightened in Northern Ontario.  I woke up at 5:30 to a vigorously vibrating bunk.  Groggily with much lack of grace, I managed to get down the ladder to the floor of the sleeper car and staggered to the baggage car at the front of the train, where I visited with the animals until the train stopped and I could let the dogs out for a break.

Having dogs on the train made us into a kind of celebrity.  Everyone on board knew who we were:  we were “The Girls with the Dogs.”  Everyone was always asking us “How are the dogs?” and when we walked the dogs beside the train during brief stops, the train windows would fill with smiling, peering faces.  We found out later that we were also “The Girls who Unpacked their Bags in Toronto” and “The Young Girls.”  We were the youngest people in sleeper class by 20 years at least.  It seems there are two types of people on Via Rail’s flagship trans-Canada train:  those on a strict budget with a destination to reach and those on vacation where the journey was the goal.  The people in economy class were mostly under 30, and the people in the sleeper class were over 50.  Actually most of the sleeper class passengers were in their 70s and enjoying the rollicking, rolling golden age home that was the trans-Canada train. 

It makes sense actually.  The food on the train was excellent.  There were several cars with tables and comfortable chairs where you could sit and socialize, play board games and watch the country slide on by.  If you got tired you could go back to your bunk anytime for a nap.  No dishes or meal preparation, plenty of scenery and food, no physical demands, just pleasant service and beautiful views. 

The dining car was set up like a fancy restaurant with four people per table – no more or less – so we found ourselves paired up with other travelers at every meal.  Each meal started with our companions asking “Are you the Girls with the Dogs?”

We met an American couple from Texas – the husband was a retired veteran who’d served during the cold war.  He told us about his years in submarines searching for Russian missiles.  “Did you find any?”  I asked.  “Almost every day,” he replied.  “I loved it, it was like a video game.  I would have done it for free!”

We met the second-youngest couple in sleeper class, a husband and wife in their fifties who were also relocating from Ontario to British Columbia.  “We’ve just had enough of the cold weather,” they said.  Another husband and wife couple who slept in the berth across from ours were on their fourth tour through Canada on the train.  They were from Germany and flew into Toronto so hey could ride the rail out to Vancouver and back before they flew home to Germany again.  We met another husband and wife couple who were enjoying a kind of victory trip (or possibly a last hurrah); the husband had been fighting lung cancer and was well enough to leave the hospital.  He could manage to walk between the train cars, trailing oxygen tubing and his wife towing the oxygen tank, greeting their fellow travellers like old friends.

It seemed the majority of sleeper class travelers had done the trip before.  They knew all the meals, they knew each other and the names of the staff.  They knew the miss-prints in the pamphlets and were quick to tell us newbies that the tallest peak in the Rockies was really at mile marker 49 and not 51.

The days on the train were marked by the changing scenery outside.  The first day was a monotony of the jack pine and grey sky of Northern Ontario.  The conical trees were crammed close together, short, flipper-like branches waving crazily in the wind while the trunks of all the trees swayed in slow, glum unison.  They reminded me of throngs of depressed teenagers in standard-issue grunge and Goth clothing swaying together at a Nirvana concert. 

On the second day the landscape opened up and spread out into the beautiful prairies.  I’d never seen the prairies before, and all I’d heard about them was they were very boring to travel – monotonous.  Nothing to look at.  I guess those people don’t appreciate farm land.  I thought it was beautiful; the miles and miles of open space, dotted with horses and cattle, crisscrossed by fences and roads, the spent fields plowed under a quilt of dark earth for the winter.  It was much easier to look at than the claustrophobic press of jack pine from the day before.

 The sky, oh the sky – it was lovely.

Below:  Mirror Lake, SK.

The third day was the mountain trail.  The mountains were amazing, stunning, just impossibly gorgeous.  We saw an elk on a ridge, who appeared to be posing for our pictures.  We saw mountain sheep grazing beside the tracks.  We had an hour stop-over in Jasper where I was able to take the dogs on a short wander through town, and there we found a field just coated with deer scat – for the dogs it was like finding gold!  Mocha’s eyes grew large as she sniffed deeply, and then dropped to roll.

Below:  Kat, Bonus & Mocha in Jasper, AB

UkeeKat & UkeeDog, high on mountain air.

“The Canadian” Via Rail’s flagship train in Jasper, AB.

Riding through the clouds:

Mount Robson, the highest peak in the Rockies, has snagged the skirt of a cloud:

Sunset over the mountains:

The morning of the fourth day we arrived in Vancouver.  The animals were none the worse for wear, although the humans were feeling pretty tired, and we still needed to get on to the Island and across to the west side, which would take another 8 – 12 hours of travel.   Here are the cats, Sunshine and Leo, sitting in their litter boxes at the front of their cages asking to be let out.  I was amazed at how well the cats did – they didn’t hide or cry on the train, they didn’t even shed.  They were totally cool and collected. 

Kat stayed with the animals in the train station and I took a cab to the Budget rent-a-truck and picked up our reserved 16’ cube van, ridiculously huge for our purposes, but the only one-way rental we could secure.  With this truck we’d only have to return it in Port Alberni, a two hour drive from Ucluelet, instead of driving it all the way back to Vancouver. 

By noon I was back at the train station, but the train staff had gone to work on another arrival, so I had to load the truck by myself.  Redistributing the weight of the bins in Toronto paid off here – I could negotiate 70lb bins, but I could not have handled 100lb bins without Kat’s help.  Sometimes I think everything happens for a reason.

We arrived in Horseshoe Bay to catch the ferry and we shuttled away from the mainland towards Vancouver Island, sailing into the setting sun.  We were at our pet friendly hotel in Nanaimo before sunset, and by then we were played out.  We had traveled through three time zones and daylight savings had kicked in at the same time, so by 8 pm our bodies felt like it was midnight.  We were in no shape to deal with our hotel.

I have a theory about pet friendly hotels:  They’re pet friendly because pets could not possibly do anything to the suites to make them any worse. 

Our hotel room was prison cell chique:  cinderblock walls painted grey, except for the bathroom which was painted a prison-riot-neutralizing pink, a kitchenette with filthy countertops, unwashed dishes and holes in the wall under the cabinets, and a banister railing separating the kitchen from the sleeping area with vertical bars that cast vertical bar shadows over the whole room.  The room was unheated and there was no hot water and no blankets for the beds.  The whole floor smelled like contact cement, and the patio door locked with a nail.  For this we paid $100 for the night. 

We convinced the management to turn the single electric radiator on in our room, and after much discussion, we were allowed a key to one of the other rooms in the hotel that did have hot water so we could take a shower.  We were ordered to give the key right back when we were done so that the management could be sure we weren’t getting two rooms without paying for it.  We opened up the bin with our blankets and huddled together with the dogs to keep warm.  What.  A.  Dump.

The next morning was a blessing – to be finally free of the hotel room!  I took the dogs for a walk by the Nanaimo Harbour just in time to greet the sunrise.  A harbour seal paddled by, the sun peaked over the mountains in the distance, and the boats bobbed peacefully in their slips.

An early dog walker approached with her dogs, and after explaining to her that my dogs were pent up after 4 days on a train, she said “Well!  Welcome home!” 

Our first day of our new life on Vancouver Island.  It was off to a great start.