Treasure Islands

Between the mainland and Vancouver Island
is some of the most unspoiled vacation
country in North America. Here, a definitive getaway guide to the Southern Gulf Islands.

In this series:

The Basics
Galiano
Mayne
Salt Spring
Saturna
North and South Pender

THE BASICS

FOR MANY VANCOUVERITES, the Southern Gulf Islands are little more than landmarks on the ride from Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay, viewed from the deck of the Spirit of Vancouver as she churns through Active Pass. The casual viewer wouldn’t know that they make up one of the most ecologically distinctive and fragile areas in southern Canada. In 1974 the province, realizing that the region would come under intense development pressure, established the Islands Trust, giving it land-use authority over the 450 islands and islets in Georgia Strait and Howe Sound, along with responsibility to “preserve and protect” the area.

The southern islands—officially, Salt Spring, North and South Pender, Mayne, Saturna, Galiano and Thetis—are home to about 15,000 residents.Thetis has 14 kilometres of roads and no public parks. It has only 375 permanent residents, including a gentleman said to make his living selling slugs to laboratories. Salt Spring is the most developed with almost 10,000 residents, including such luminaries as Randy Bachman, Robert Bateman and Arthur Black.

To many islanders, the personal is political. If you can afford one, you buy a SmartCar or a hybrid. More people than you’d guess live off the grid, collect rainwater, hang their laundry on a line and use compact fluorescent bulbs. People know their neighbours and thrive on volunteerism and camaraderie.

The islands draw more and more visitors every year, and no wonder. They’re beautiful, serene places within relatively easy reach of the more than five million residents of the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island, to say nothing of nearby Americans. Yet that serenity is at risk; as a result, islanders have an ambivalent relationship with their guests. Tourists bring needed dollars, but in large numbers they disturb the tranquility and burden the infrastructure and resources, especially the limited drinking water.

Weekend visits often wind up including a trip to the real estate office; prices have risen as sharply on the islands as they have elsewhere. Fortunately, many residents develop such an attachment to the land that they give it away. Conservancies are the immediate beneficiaries, but it’s nature that wins in the long run. Along, of course, with the people—residents and visitors alike—who get to enjoy it.

Now, on to the tour...

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