In early April 1915, the Princess Maquinna dropped anchor at Hesquiat harbour on the west coast of Vancouver Island. A supply ship for the remote communities of the area, the boat also carried passengers enjoying an early scenic sail along one of the wildest and most beautiful stretches of coast in Canada.

When the engines clattered to a halt, an eerie silence overtook the decks. The shores of the bay were enclosed by the colossal trees of the Pacific rainforest, casting long reflections over the green water. Beyond the trees rose the mountains, visible among a tumult of clouds. So majestic, sighed a woman at the rail. The grandeur of mother nature, declared a man in a fedora.

A moonlit gathering on Nimmo Bay Tom Parker


Then something unusual happened. A canoe was lowered over the side of the steamer. Crew men loaded it with trunks and sacks. With some difficulty, a trussed cow was winched down and lashed between the gunwales of the canoe, upside down. Finally a young couple with three small children climbed in, and paddled steadily across the bay to the impenetrable shore while the upside-down cow flapped its legs, as if waving to the bemused passengers.

The small, stout woman in the bow of the canoe was to become one of Vancouver Island’s most remarkable pioneers. Almost 70 years later, she would still be living in this remote place, then in her nineties. She would bear eight children here, and carve a magnificent garden out of the wilderness. Known as Cougar Annie, she was famed for having shot dozens of the big cats and, quite possibly, a couple of her more troublesome husbands.

Read next The best new hotels in North America and Mexico: The Hot List 2020 The Hot List The best new hotels in North America and Mexico: The Hot List 2020

They should build a monument to Cougar Annie. They should put her on postage stamps and name settlements after her. They should erect statues.

With a magnetism that spans the continent, Vancouver Island attracts dreamers, romantics, misfits, odd-balls, draft dodgers, loners, contrarians, free spirits, the wayward and the wandering. Here on the West Coast, these escapists finally find a place big enough, strange enough, and far enough away, to call home.


A craftsman at Henry Nolla's old workshop near the Wickaninnish Inn Tom Parker

In Canada, wilderness is always close. Turn up a back road or hike over the next hill and you may find yourself on the shores of a lake that has never heard a motor or in trackless woods where there have been few human footprints since native tribes ghosted through these trees on moccassined soles. On Vancouver Island – almost a quarter the size of England – wilderness is the central fact, the great, dark, wonderful heart of the place.

At the southern tip of the island, in the genteel streets of Victoria, you could be forgiven for thinking you were in Cheltenham. But things get rugged remarkably quickly. An hour’s drive from town and you are in virgin forests riddled with rivers and waterfalls. Three hours’ drive up the coast and you have reached the end of the road in little Tofino. Beyond, for hundreds of miles, there are no roads at all, and people come and go by boat or float plane.

Read next What it’s like to fly while the world is in lockdown Inspiration What it’s like to fly while the world is in lockdown

Smoking a salmon by the traditional method over a fire at Clayoquot Tom Parker


The single route that reaches Tofino is the unofficial last leg of the Trans-Canada Highway. A West Coast community of half a dozen streets with an unlikely mix of fishermen and surfers, First Nations people and retired hippies, this is a place so laidback its inhabitants would make Australians seem stressed. The tsunami warning on Main Street could be the town motto: ‘Grab a beer,’ it says, ‘and run like hell.’

In the early morning down on Chesterman beach, a handful of wet-suited surfers were careering among the breakers – Tofino has some of the best waves on the Pacific. The silhouettes of the cedar and spruce trees of Frank Island were swimming in silver light. They might have marked the edge of the known world.

Prince Edward County: Canada's coolest island hideout Away From The City Prince Edward County: Canada's coolest island hideout

For many years, Chesterman was home to Henry Nolla, a wood carver with a workshop at the end of the beach. Here was another typical island character: eccentric, warm-hearted and often naked. He liked to work in the nude and, well into his 70s, still had the body of a young surfer.

Read next 7 underrated holiday destinations where you can avoid the crowds Inspiration 7 underrated holiday destinations where you can avoid the crowds

When the nearby Wickaninnish Inn was being built, some of the investors expressed concerns about Nude Henry, who was visible from the restaurant windows. But the owner, an old friend, stood by him. To complain about a fit nude sculptor on Vancouver Island would be to miss the whole point of the place. And he was right. In 18 years there were only three objections, none of them from women.

A guest tent at Clayoquot Tom Parker

A boat arrived to take me beyond the reach of roads. The day was blustery, and the winds brought a sense of excitement and possibilities. As we rode north past Arnet, Beck and Stone islands, the seascapes became labyrinthine, a confusion of forested peninsulas and deep inlets, of passages and bays as convoluted as fjords. Rain swept around a headland, and then a moment later the sun burst across the ocean in swathes of dazzling light.

I was with the wonderful Nikki Sanchez, one of the expert guides from Clayoquot Wilderness Resort. She was taking me to meet some of the flora and fauna of this coast. On Meares Island, we followed wooded paths to find monumental cedars that had been saplings when the Roman Empire began to come unstuck. Along the shores of Carter Passage, we spotted black bears, distant cousins of Winnie the Pooh, shuffling and apologeticas they settled down among boulders to lunches of kelp and clams. Near Vargas Island we saw an otter floating on its back like a man sunning himself on a lilo, hands behind his head.

Water front tents at Clayoquot Tom Parker

Read next The best hotels in the USA, Canada and the Caribbean: the Gold List 2020 Places To Stay The best hotels in the USA, Canada and the Caribbean: the Gold List 2020

At the mouth of Fife Sound, we came upon a colony of sea lions, bundled together like puppies on a rocky outcrop under the charge of three enormous bulls. Sea-lion life should have been idyllic – basking in the sun, dozing, shagging everyone in turn, dropping into the water for an occasional swim and a feast of fresh fish. But happiness is a question of temperament not circumstances, and sea lions are the Alf Garnetts of the ocean. From the boat, we could hear the endless grumbling, the chorus of annoyances, the petty arguments. I blame the big males, patriarchal bores, bullying, abusive, overweight, ill-tempered, a bit lax about personal hygiene and chronically unfaithful.

Boots and suitcases at Clayoquot Tom Parker

At Ahousat, we docked at Hugh’s general store, a pitstop for sailors, fishermen, backwoodsmen and First Nation communities. It stocked all of life’s essentials: two-inch nails, plumbing solder, corn flakes, baby powder, paddles, hose pipe, ketchup, fan belts, maple syrup, half-inch grease nipples, rat traps, stamps and frozen peas. ‘If I don’t have it,’ shrugged Hugh the owner, his chair tipped back against the door post, ‘you don’t need it.’

Then we went in search of whales. Twenty thousand grey whales migrate past Vancouver Island every year on their way from Baja California to the Bering Sea. At 20,000km, it is said to be one of the world’s greatest mammalian migrations. When the first grey whale surfaced – hardly more than five metres away – she was so close I could see her eye, tiny in that huge body, looking at us. The spray from the blow-hole exhalation drifted across the boat followed by a rich stench of rotting fish and stomach belch. She was half again as long as a bus, yet she appeared to move in elegant slow motion. Arching through the water, her hide was not so much skin as artefact, thick, crusted, scarred, barnacled, a pitted illustration of an epic life in the Pacific.

Then she dived. For a moment, the great tail, four metres across, hung in the air streaming water, before it too slid into the depths.

Read next The best airbnbs for spotting the Northern Lights Places To Stay The best airbnbs for spotting the Northern Lights

Surfers on Chesterman beach Tom Parker

Some people come to the wilderness chasing freedom. Some come looking for a challenge to give meaning to their lives. Craig Murray came for adventure. Only the one he found wasn’t the one he was looking for.

A float plane arrived for me, skidding down onto Bedwell Sound. It is from the air that you begin to make sense of this place, that you understand the scale. By turning your head it is possible to take in the vast sweep of the landscape, tipping away into infinities at both horizons. We banked over the summits of Strathcona, skirted thunderheads gathered around the Golden Hinde, then crossed Johnstone Strait to the scattering of islands known as the Broughton archipelago. From the air, the whole coast appeared to have been dropped from the heavens to shatter into a hun-dred pieces.

Murray came west in the 1970s, nurturing a dream of building a boat on Vancouver Island and then sailing around the world. But the beauty of the area took hold of him, and he forgot about the boat and the islands of the South Seas. In 1980, he towed a float house across the Inside Passage to set up a fishing lodge on remote Nimmo Bay. Forty years on, it has evolved into one of the finest places to stay on this coast.

Sailing around Vancouver Island Lakes And Mountains Sailing around Vancouver Island

Read next Where is not too hot in August? Our top 10 destinations Inspiration Where is not too hot in August? Our top 10 destinations

Staggering from a lavish breakfast of blueberry pancakes, I set off from Nimmo one morning by helicopter to visit a few of the neighbours. My pilot – Dougal McLean – was yet another west-coast romantic, a lean, weathered adventurer whose most recent outing was to ride a motorbike from Vladivostok to Scotland. But as we tilted over Mackenzie Sound, and sea and islands stretched beneath us, his voice crackled over the headphones, maybe just a little emotional. ‘Most beautiful place on God’s earth,’ he said.

Up at the hamlet of Echo Bay, population 10, we set down in an overgrown meadow to visit Billy Proctor. Now in his 80s, he has spent a lifetime on this coast, first as a fishermen and logger, and latterly as a powerful voice for conservation. But it was the results of his boyhood passion that I had come to see. Billy’s Museum contains eight decades worth of beachcombing and collecting, treasures thrown up by the sea, from his first arrowhead, found aged five, to the latest oriental bottle washed ashore the previous week.

I was examining the strings of beads brought here by Captain Cook to trade with the native tribes when Nikki appeared, a different Nikki from my friend at Clayoquot. An attractive woman in her 40s, she had the milky-grey eyes of a wolf: penetrating, observant, preternaturally calm.

A smoked salmon board at Nimmo Bay Tom Parker

Wilderness was her passion. As a child she dreamt of being marooned on a desert island, and having to fend for herself. As a young woman, she came to this part of the world to spend 18 months surviving with nothing but a rowboat, a knife and a feral cat for company. Sitting in the sun on Billy’s porch overlooking Echo Bay, we chatted about roasting mice and hanging bear meat, about choosing wood to make arrows and the best kind of seaweed to flavour stews, as if it was all the most natural thing in the world. Which, of course, it was.

Read next Vancouver Chinatown: a foodie guide Eating & Drinking Vancouver Chinatown: a foodie guide

Back in the chopper we sailed along the shore, swinging in over the inlet of Kingcome to land at the First Nation settlement of Ukwanalis where I found Joe, a hereditary chief among the Kwakwaka’wakw people and another wood carver, mercifully clothed. A small figure, as neatly composed as one of his carvings, he was knee-deep in cedar shavings. He showed me his work: symbolic animals and tiny human masks, delicate and exquisite.

‘I ran away,’ Joe said, speaking of the government residential schools that were still in operation for native children in his day. ‘And lived with my grandfather.’ He ran his hand over the smoothed wood. ‘I was lucky they never found me, so I was able to learn the old ways.’

Sea lions basking on the rocks Tom Parker

Up at hesquiat bay these days, the wilderness is trying to reclaim what was taken from it. There are a few rotting totem poles among the trees, an overgrown cemetery and evidence of an abandoned village. Thick forests still command most of the rocky shoreline.

This is where Cougar Annie moved in 1915 to escape the opium dens of Vancouver; her first husband, Willie – charming but dissolute – had a fatal weakness for them. But when he died in 1936, the island had become an escape of a different kind for Annie. She stayed for another 50 years. Three more husbands came and went. In her time, she was post-mistress, shopkeeper and fur trader. But it was as nursery gardener that she became renowned, breeding roses and tulips, dahlias and gladioli, peonies and montbretia.

Read next Where is 'Tin Star' filmed? Style & Culture Where is 'Tin Star' filmed?

Annie’s garden is still here, tended by volunteers who struggle to keep nature at bay. Coming up from the beach you pass beneath the rose arch and skirt the unpruned fruit trees to arrive at the house, now leaning so precariously it is too dangerous to enter. The azaleas and rhododendrons flourish, but long grasses and ferns threaten to overcome the dahlias and roses.

The garden is Annie’s ghost. You feel her obstinate determination and fierce independence. This remote place allowed her to live on her own terms, to avoid convention, pretence and obligation. This was the freedom the wilderness gave her.

Horse riding at Clayoquot Tom Parker

Where to stay on Vancouver Island

Wickaninnish Inn

Straddling a craggy outcrop at the end of Chesterman beach, five minutes’ walk from the centre of Tofino, this place brings sophistication to the easy-going surfer town. A Relais & Chateaux property, it is all about understated comfort. The late, lamented Naked Henry Nolla is responsible for much of the airy wood interior – he carved all the cedar beams by hand – and his shed still sits below the hotel at the end of the beach, now occupied by two craftsmen. The Pacific is a constant presence, crashing on the rocks just beneath the windows. On a good day you can see grey whales blowing. On a bad day the ocean is magnificent, lashing the hotel with spray. The staff are all keen surfers, and can direct you to the best breaks.

Address: Wickaninnish Inn, 500 Osprey Ln, Tofino, British Columbia, Canada

Telephone: +1 250 725 3100

Website: wickinn.com

Price: Double rooms from about £250

Read next Where was 'The Handmaid's Tale' filmed? Style & Culture Where was 'The Handmaid's Tale' filmed?

Clayoquot Wilderness Resort

An open-sided seating area at Clayoquot Wilderness Resort Tom Parker

Something of a legend on this coast, Clayoquot should be a sybarite’s dream. There is a spa, a sauna and hot tubs for starlit nights. There are sedate walks along the shores of the sound. There are open fireplaces and deep chairs for that novel you’ve been meaning to read. But forget all that. There is too much going on here to waste time lounging around. Horse-riding, hiking, rock climbing, fishing, archery, target shooting, nature treks and mountain biking are a few of the options. The safari- style tents, set on platforms in the woods along the Bedwell River, are big, elegant and beautifully done out with Western-colonial furniture, colourful tribal rugs and wood-burning stoves. Finally, there is Cloud Camp. A helicopter whisks you up to this private retreat, set on a peak 1,300 metres above sea level. A private chef creates supper with unforgettable views over the surrounding mountains and down to the Pacific. And then a night of astonishing silence.

Address: Clayoquot Wilderness Resort, 1 Clayoquot, Tofino, British Columbia, Canada

Telephone: +1 250 266 0397

Website: wildretreat.com

Price: Three nights all-inclusive from about £2,880 per person

A smouldering fire-pit at Nimmo Bay Wilderness Resort Tom Parker

Nimmo Bay Wilderness Resort

This family getaway has the kind of comfortable, informal vibe that encourages friendships. It helps that it is small and perfectly formed. There are only a handful of cabins, with a maximum of 18 guests, hors d’oeuvres and drinks are served every evening on the deck by the fire-pit, and meals are taken communally in the dining room. The setting is hauntingly beautiful; half the buildings are float houses moored on the shore of a pristine bay, ringed by deep forest. A waterfall cascades into the middle of the property, supplying power and offering a bracing opportunity for a dip in a freshwater pool straight from the sauna. There’s whale-watching, hiking, kayaking, helicopter touring, or just sitting on the dock with your feet up watching the changing moods of the water.

Address: Nimmo Bay Wilderness Resort, Mount Waddington A, British Columbia, Canada

Telephone: +1 250 956 4000

Website: nimmobay.com

Price: from about £1,170 per person per night, including transfers, all meals with house drinks and guided activities


Rosewood Hotel Georgia, Vancouver

Whether it is an overnight stay before the short onward flight to the wilderness or a longer break to explore the city, Vancouver will be part of any itinerary to Vancouver Island. A turn-of-the-century property, the Rosewood has undergone a complete renovation to transform it into the best hotel in town. There is a fabulous speakeasy bar with a range of dangerous absinthes, a buzzy courtyard café, a stunning pool and a five-star spa. Distinguished, clubby and stylishly Edwardian, it feels like an elegant throwback to the wonderful era of grand hotels.

Address: Rosewood Hotel Georgia, 801 W Georgia St, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Telephone: +1 604 682 5566

Website: rosewoodhotels.com

Price: Double rooms from about £210