Discovery Passage is the strait between the Vancouver Island and the group of islands towards the British Columbia mainland, connecting the Strait of Georgia and the Johnstone Strait. As it's a fairly narrow waterway, the coastal beaches are frequently strewn with driftwood, from large logs…Read More

Discovery Passage is the strait between the Vancouver Island and the group of islands towards the British Columbia mainland, connecting the Strait of Georgia and the Johnstone Strait. As it's a fairly narrow waterway, the coastal beaches are frequently strewn with driftwood, from large logs to small branches and roots. Most of it is a result of logging that goes on heavily on Vancouver Island and Quadra alike, but the result is a very atmospheric, if often hard to negotiate.

We walk along the beach from Cape Mudge village to Cape Mudge lighthouse – itself an attractive building on the southern edge of the Quadra Island and further on along a pebble beach full of amassed driftwood. The sea surrounding Quadra, including the Discovery Passage is known for its reach wild-life and orcas and other marine mammals can be spotted even from the short Campbell River – Quadra ferry. We don't see any orcas but we do spot a few sea otters playing in the sea just off the stony beach!

It's a bracing walk and the landscape is interesting rather than conventionally beautiful, especially in the pearly-grey, diffused light of a cloudy day, but the driftwood and stones on the beach looks like fantastic sculptures, great logs like matches spilt by a giant, convoluted roots like surrealist abstractions. Close

Quadra is a small island off the eastern coast of Vancouver Island, across the Discovery Channel from Campbell River. Its population is about 2,000, a tad strange but enchanting mixture so typical for many of those small places between Vancouver Island and the mainland: half-hippie-half…Read More

Quadra is a small island off the eastern coast of Vancouver Island, across the Discovery Channel from Campbell River. Its population is about 2,000, a tad strange but enchanting mixture so typical for many of those small places between Vancouver Island and the mainland: half-hippie-half -lumberjack, half-feral-half-art-professional.

Our first full day on Quadra is also the Older Child's birthday, but we are mean to her and decide to hike up the Chinese Mountain, a local hill of 320 or so meters. The kids race up - even the Younger Child is not demanding carrying, spurred I think by the presence of other two boys. It's not a long hike, but a steep one, with a touch of a mild scramble at one point. Still, a four year old and an adult carrying a child in a backpack can make it with no particular problems.

Eventually, we emerge on the top, and it proves very much worth it. It's sunny; clear skies with just a couple of white clouds; and the views are fantastic. To the east, we can see the mainland - though the tops of the mountains are hidden in the clouds - and more Discovery Islands to the south and east: Cortes, Read, Maurelle and others. The sea is blue and green and silver, the islands the lushest of dark greens.

We sit on the exposed rocks on the top and stare. Below us, a bald eagle soaring on the thermals.

Or rather, the adults stare. The children run about, climb trees, jump over rocks, throw banana skins down precipitous cliffs and do everything to induce a heart attack in an unaccustomed adult. But they survive, somehow, and so do we.

We climb down the other side of the hill, a different and more overgrown route, partly running along – and even in - a stream bed. The forest at the bottom is mossy, very green and strangely quiet, at least when the kids are not there.

Afterwards it's time for ice-cream and, after accidentally finding a tick on our host, a somewhat manic search for others - luckily only two adults are bitten. Early removal apparently reduces the probability of infection to pretty much zero, so we don't fret too much (the two oldest children do, though, both being prone to hysterics, and clearly bonding on these grounds).

On return, a cake made by our host for the Older Child follows the Happy Birthday we sang on top of the Chinese Mountain.

Close