During July we moseyed SE down Vancouver Island’s West Coast from sound to sound. There are fine, sheltered anchorages in most places – many with great shoreline exploring opportunities. From north to south: Quatsino Sound, Checleset Bay, Kyuquot Sound (pronounced “ky-OO-kit”), Esperanza Inlet, Nootka Sound. In Esperanza Inlet we began seeing the first signs of “real” civilization – onshore vacation cabins with more square footage than our former house in Seattle, and a few other boats joining us in the anchorages we chose. It was also our first encounter with morning fog, but at least there was enough visibility to travel – albeit with radar engaged – and what fog there was dissipated quickly.
Esperanza Inlet is a calm-water route that takes a boat into Nootka Sound around the back side of big ol’ Nootka Island, the better to avoid those pesky ocean swells that really pile up at the entrances to sounds and bays. In mid-July, the sport fishing was awesome there – or so we heard; we were either en route or got skunked. We chose to nose the Fox down Esperanza Inlet and up into Tahsis Inlet, to the first marina and provisioning opportunity we took since leaving Port Hardy two weeks earlier.*
Historically, Tahsis (pronounced with a short “a” as in “cat”) was the winter home to chief Maquinna and that subsection of the Nootka tribe who resided at Friendly Cove at the entrance to Nootka Sound. (Captain Cook stopped at Friendly Cove and nearby areas to regroup and explore; and Friendly Cove is where a commercial agreement – mediated by Maquinna – was reached that divided the Northwest resource extraction opportunities between Britain and Spain**). In white folks’ time, Tahsis, at the head of a very long fjord/inlet, was home to a sawmill until 1996, when all the trees worth milling had been cut down. The sawmill was essentially Tahsis’s only employer. And when it closed? It took everything with it – including the sawmill building itself – nothing left now but the foundation at the water’s edge and an overgrown employees’ parking lot. Yep; BC resource extraction at its finest. Breaks your heart to look at it.
But Tahsis is still there. Westview Marina in Tahsis is one of the best-run marinas in all of BC – and that’s saying a lot. It is truly a full-service marina in a part of BC that uses the term rather loosely. While there, we drove the marina’s courtesy van to the only market in town (which was almost identical in size and inventory to the markets we saw on Easter Island in the South Pacific) and from there took a look around at the neighborhood. It was sad to see about half of the homes wearing “for sale” signs, but what sets Tahsis apart from so many other company towns after the company has abandoned them, is that the people of Tahsis have not given up. I tell you what, there is no litter on any of the streets; almost every yard – including the ones around the vacant houses – is well tended; and nobody just hangs around on street corners. Everyone, it seems, is keeping busy with something. At least to my turista’s eye, the folks in Tahsis seem to be working together as a real community to try and figure out what to do next. That is a rare sight, and worth going to Tahsis to see for yourself. This is a great little town and it would be a shame to see it die. Right now they seem to be getting by on sport fishing, but some years the fish go AWOL so Tahsis needs something else, and quick. Maybe they can become the Silicon Valley of BC – heck; they have an employee parking lot already built, all they need is a building, and cybergeeks live in buildings 24/7/365 and don’t care what the weather is outside so it wouldn’t matter to them that it rains buckets in Tahsis most of the year. Alternatively, it would be a great place for the film industry to have as headquarters. Come on, people, we gotta make this work – don’t let the folks of Tahsis go to waste. They’re nice.
* We do not stay at marinas often – only about twice a month for a couple of days each time – but after 2 or 3 weeks on the water, the laundry especially starts to pile up and gives the boat a certain skeevy funkiness. I prefer TELLING people I live on a boat, rather than them SMELLING that I live on a boat.
** Why yes, I AM badly paraphrasing the actual fascinating history of this area. Google it for yourself or read the Douglass guide to “West Coast Vancouver Island” for further details and leave me alone. But Big Coolness Factor here: we’ve seen the same places Cook himself explored in the late 1700s with his then-minions William Bligh and George Vancouver, man. Awesome. Except they saw more critters.
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