123 Mile zero, again

Canada
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91 To Winnipeg
92 Winnipeg
93 Wasagaming
94 On to Yorkton
95 Manitoba Beach
96 Wanuskewin
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98 Edmonton
99 To Hinton
100 To Jasper
101 The Rockies
102 Snowy roads
103 To Drumheller
104 Dinosaurs
105 To Banff
106 Banff
107 Banff
108 Lake Louise
109 Farewell Rockies
110 To Vancouver
111 Go Canucks
112 Morty & Harry
113 Where next?
114 Visas and Picasso
115 Downtown
116 Catch up
117 Vancouver Island
118 To Tofino
119 Pacific Rim
120 Surfers and big trees
121 Last Legislature
122 Farewell to Morty
123 Mile zero, again

Canada: British Columbia

Sunday 4 December 2005

To make our Canada crossing official

Kwakiutl totem poles

Indian art at the airport

Our last full day in Canada. It is strange now that we have got to this point as it somehow feels like the last four months have flashed by really quickly. We have seen and done so much in our time here and yet will leave still feeling there is more to come back to see and do.

We headed back out to the bay to find the Mile Zero Marker. It is a simple monument looking out to sea that marks this end of the Trans Canada Highway. We saw the other end weeks ago in St John’s on Newfoundland. There is a new Terry Fox monument here and a monument to another runner, whose name I cannot remember, who actually completed the coast to coast run. The US is visible across the bay.

Walking back down to the Legislature and the harbour we ambled through some of the streets in the residential area known as James Bay. It seems very quiet and tranquil and the houses look large and spacious. In some of the streets here houses have very narrow fronts to the road but stretch back a long way. Taxes used to be levied based on the length of road front taken up, hence the long thin design.

Our last stop in Victoria was the Royal British Columbia Museum. In the lobby they have John Lennon’s Rolls Royce, painted to look a bit like a canal barge and modified so that the back seat folds down into a double bed. On the second floor they have a natural history style museum with exhibits on the local landscape, animal life and climate change. Parts take you through different types of forests and to a beach shore and I am convinced I could smell as well as see and hear the forest.

The third floor holds a really good exhibit about the first nation’s peoples. Other museums we have been to focussed mainly on hunting and fishing and how critical these activities were to survival. This one was more about their wider way of life. An early part of the exhibit had a Kekuli, or pit house, used in the winter. Essentially it is a big hole dug in the ground with a roof placed over it. A hole in the roof allows access and acts as a chimney for the fire. They were warm places to live and only needed small fires to keep enough heat inside.

They had displays explaining the techniques for making pots and bowls out of wood bark, weaving, and making wooden boxes. For the boxes long single planks of wood were used. Grooves were cut where the corners would be and the wood was then soaked until it was soft enough to bend. Three of the corners were made simply by bending the wood and only the fourth had to be pinned together.

Both inside and outside they had a large display of totem poles, which were used to adorn the front of large wooden houses for certain tribes. These were a status symbol as only families with wealth could afford to have them made and erected. They were beautifully carved and I wish that there had been information available to explain the significance of the carvings.

Leaving the first nations behind the exhibits then took a step back in time to the Victorian age and there was a mocked up village to walk through. Trains whistled past the railway station and business seemed to be booming at the local hotel with its public bar downstairs. Across the way was a clothes shop with fabulous period costumes and a shop selling china to meet your every need. The last section of the museum focussed on local industries, mining and fish canneries, and walked you through a model of HMS Discovery. All in all an interesting way to spend an afternoon.

We headed back to the hotel to pick up our bags and both groaned at the unfamiliar feel of a backpack on our backs. It has been a long time since we walked with them and they still feel heavier than we would ideally like. Fortunately the bus station was only across the road so it was a gentle way to ease ourselves back in. The bus took us back up to the ferry terminal at Swartz Bay, with us both waving goodbye to Morty as we passed the dealership along the way.

The ferry crossing was uneventful. It was much busier than when we had come across in the middle of last week. There were definite signs of students having been home for the weekend and people heading back to the mainland for work. When we landed back in Tsawassen our bags were transferred across to another bus for us and we were eventually dropped off at the airport. It is a really good little service that they run from Vancouver to Victoria and it makes it very easy to get from one city to the other.

At the airport we checked accommodation for the night and ended up at the Sandman Hotel, about a ten minute trip on a free shuttle bus away. We checked in and headed for the pool for a quick swim before it closed at 10:30. There was no one else there (not surprising really considering how late it was) and the water was fabulously refreshing. Better still though was the hot tub which was deep as well as hot and relaxing. We rounded off our day with dinner at Moxies and then headed for bed, thoroughly worn out.

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