West Coast
Craft:

After all, it’s more than 7,500 kilometres of open ocean to the nearest land mass of Japan. But as I kayaked around Ucluelet Harbour listening to the soothing hush of water caressing the rocky shoreline, I relaxed into the serenity of the sunrise scene. No five-metre-high swells here!

Located on the south-western coast of Vancouver Island, the community of Ucluelet gets its name from the local Yuułuʔiłʔatḥ word meaning “people of the safe harbour.” It’s appropriate given the inlet I’m currently paddling is protected by an eight-kilometre-long peninsula that tapers to form a narrow opening to the Pacific. I could see white caps on the open water outside the harbour but where I was paddling, the sea was mirror calm.

The Yuułuʔiłʔatḥ – Ucluelet First Nation have lived in this area and on the nearby islands of what’s now known as Barkley Sound for thousands of years. Today, the peninsula is the site of a growing town of about 2,000 people who range from retired hippies and young surfers to loggers, commercial fishers and a few tech magnates. It’s the kind of place where you can spy a hand-crafted party invitation laden with fairies and mushrooms on a telephone pole near a newly built, million-dollar oceanfront mansion.

I’d been to the well-known neighbouring community of Tofino multiple times, but this was only my second visit to “Ukee,” as the locals call it, and my first time experiencing its paddling scene.

I had flown to the BC capital of Victoria from my home in Nelson and made the four-hour drive across the island the night before. Now, I was in a double kayak with guide Samantha (Sam) Brunt, paddling alongside three other kayaks containing fellow visitors Thom Cross and Erin Martin and tail guide Kat Brenn. We were all navigating the shallow coves of the harbour while watching seagulls float on the breeze and bald eagles preen in the innumerable cedar trees on the shoreline.

Hello Nature Adventure Tours has offered guided excursions in the harbour and among the Broken Islands Group, a popular paddling destination in Barkley Sound, for over two decades. Sam told me their half-day harbour tours are hugely popular with visitors because paddling experience isn’t necessary and the waters are always calm here. Plus, there’s the opportunity to see lots of birdlife, seals, and even black bears on the rocky beaches. 

She also spoke of the plethora of sea life under our hull, including various shellfish, sculpins, flounders, and even the Giant Pacific Octopus. I imagined a huge creature rising up from the depths and wrapping its tentacles around our kayak. When I mentioned the thought, Sam laughed and recommended I visit the Ucluelet Aquarium to see one up close and put my fears to rest.

After the three-hour tour, I decided to take Sam’s suggestion and see an octopus, but first, I had lunch at The Break Café and Bistro, a local favourite celebrating its one-year anniversary. The Break is an inviting, cafeteria-style establishment in the heart of town that’s famed for its sandwiches. I ordered the Montreal smoked meat stack infused with chili oil and apple slices. Having lived in Quebec at one time, I’d enjoyed my fair share of smoked meat sandwiches over the years, but this one topped them all: it was equal parts sweet and spicy and 100% delicious. 

From there it was a three-minute stroll to the Ucluelet Aquarium, a bright blue building on pilings overhanging the water near the Main Street pier. I met Executive Director Laura Griffith-Cochrane who took me on a tour and showed me the various tanks in the main room, which are filled with seawater pumped in from the harbour. She said the Ucluelet Aquarium is unique because it’s the first in Canada to use a catch-and-release model: the animals on display are netted in the surrounding waters and then returned to the wild after a stay of three to nine months. Visitors can even touch and interact with certain marine life here, such as sea cucumbers and top snails.

There were about two dozen tanks ranging in size from a television to an eight-metre-long pool but my favourite was a medium-sized one that contained a Giant Pacific Octopus. Despite its name, the octopus’s body was smaller than a volleyball but it did look incredibly alien with its eight legs twisting and twining around itself while its siphon opened and closed, ingesting and expelling water. During the 15 minutes I stood there gawking, the colour and texture of its body changed multiple times from a dull grey with yellow flecks, similar to the rock it was tucked into, to a vibrant red.    

It was definitely a cool experience to see creatures up close that I might have floated over earlier in the day. I would have stayed longer but I had a 20-kilometre drive over some rough roads to get to the evening’s lodging. I stopped at the Ucluelet Liquor Store to grab a six-pack of Ucluelet Brewing’s La Outa Cerveza Clara, in advance of the brewery tour I’d be getting the following day, then travelled to So Damn Lucky Glamping on Mussel Beach, east of town. It was worth the bumpy, slow gravel drive to get there because the beach is remote and dramatic. I sat outside my comfortable accommodations with the tasty, easy-drinking beer in hand watching the sun set beyond the horizon, amazed I had the entire, driftwood-laden, rocky seashore to myself.  

I drove back into Ukee and searched for the Foggy Bean Coffee Company, which I had been told offered an excellent caffeine fix. When I got there, I realized the cozy café was located in the basement of the brewery I’d be visiting later that day. That’s the great thing about Ucluelet: everything is so conveniently close. I enjoyed my cappuccino made from locally roasted beans during the five-minute drive up the road to Relic Surf Shop, a local institution that sells paddle and surf gear and offers instructional courses and camps. 

Manager Olivier “Ollie” Ouellet gave me a tour of the large shop that must have housed over a hundred colourful surfboards and SUPs before we drove back through town to reach He-Tin-Kis Park and the trailhead for Terrace Beach. After an easy 10-minute hike with inflatable paddleboards on our backs, we reached a relatively sheltered horseshoe-shaped bay with a beach made up of sand and polished pebbles. We could see breakers crashing against the shore of the island that partly protects this bay, but our launching point was perfectly calm. 

We unrolled the SUPs, inflated them, and then enjoyed an hour and a half of paddling through kelp-covered recesses and over submerged rock beds carpeted in mollusks. Occasionally we’d duck out from behind the protection of the island and ride the swells in more open water but most of the time we simply coasted and observed. A great thing about paddleboarding is you’re higher up on the board and can see deeper into the water further. I watched large rock crabs scuttle away from my shadow and small fish dart among the kelp fronds. 

At the end of the experience, Ollie decided to partake in some cold-water therapy and dove into the shallows to sit in the 8°C water for a while. I declined the invitation to join him and instead deflated and packed the SUPs. On the hike out he told me the trail system we were on was linked to the Wild Pacific Trail loop that leads to the famed Amphitrite Point Lighthouse. 

Rather than follow Ollie back into town, I chose to hike the trail, which is 2.6 kilometres long and follows the coastline at the very tip of the Ucluelet peninsula. It’s perfectly maintained so it wasn’t long before I had reached the lighthouse, which resembled a two-storey-high wedding cake wearing a red top hat.  

Named for the wife of Poseidon of Greek mythology, the Amphitrite Point Lighthouse was built in 1906 but was destroyed eight years later by bad weather. That gives you an idea of the power of the storms in these parts. The current concrete lighthouse was opened in 1915 and its peculiar shape was chosen to help it withstand gale-force winds and tidal waves. The rest of the hike offered views of colourful buttercups and lupins, red-barked arbutus trees, tangled green cedar boughs and white gulls pecking at the sand. It was so beautiful on the loop I lost track of time and had to rush back to the car to make my meeting with Dennis Morgan, the owner of Ucluelet Brewing Company.

As it was a Tuesday, the brewery was actually closed for the day but Dennis opened the doors especially for me, which gives you an idea of how personable and friendly he is. He poured us pints of their new grisette, a light-bodied, low-alcohol beer with hints of lemon peel and sumac, and then shared the history of the building and his company.

Ucluelet Brewing is housed in the former St. Aiden’s Anglican church, built by volunteer fishermen on a prominent hilltop in the middle of the community in the 1950s. The church was deconsecrated in 2010, four years before Dennis moved to town from Bamfield, on the other side of Barkley Sound. He and a few others, such as Jonny Ferguson of Tidewater Timberframes, had the idea of converting the church into a micro-brewery but little did they realize the amount of work required.

To say the renovations are stunning doesn’t do enough justice because the towering ceiling timbers, bars and floors made of reclaimed wood, and the expansive deck overlooking the harbour are simply appearance: the real beauty is the fact “the building had to be re-engineered to modern-day earthquake standards,” Dennis said. The result is a structure that’s not only super solid but so inviting you want to hang out in its sun-lit glory all day. 

As it was, I could only spend a few hours at the brewery but in that time I got to hear many stories, including how one of the counters was made from a wooden lane salvaged from the former bowling alley. I also got to meet head brewer Allen Cukier and sample a few of his other creations including the Harbour View Pale Ale, a bright brew with hints of citrus and melon; the crisp and refreshing Seventh Day Kolsch; and Resurrection Red, an Irish red ale that was a perfect way to end the visit given its dessert-like flavours of caramel and chocolate. 

The one thing I missed at the brewery was the food on account of the fact it was technically closed for the day. Apparently, the menu is excellent and extensive, ranging from brisket bowls to Reuben sliders – an amazing feat given the kitchen space is exceptionally small. On Allen’s recommendation, I instead had dinner at the new Papi’s Cantina, less than a block away. I enjoyed an order of elote, which is a cob of grilled corn smothered in a creamy sauce and topped with chili powder, cheese and lime, and washed it down with Ucluelet Brewing’s South Swell IPA. Of all the offerings I’d enjoyed that day, this West Coast IPA was my favourite because the taste was a harmonious blend of citrus and pine.

The company is renowned for its zipline, which threads through towering cedar trees and crisscrosses the strikingly clear, emerald-coloured river. As I soon discovered, though, it’s the history of the surroundings and its people that truly fill a visitor with awe.

Manager Kelly Bedford met me at my car and we walked the short distance to a pebbled beach on the side of the slow-flowing river where he explained we were in Ha’uukmin Tribal Park, one of a series of areas that encompass the largest remaining, intact, ancient rainforest on Vancouver Island. Winchee loosely translates to “many species of salmon,” he said, and this area has been important to the local Tla-o-qui-aht people for thousands of years. They fish its waters, harvest cedar bark for craftwork and carve canoes from fallen trees. He also told of how men would train in the cold river for their ceremonial whale hunts, sometimes submerging themselves underwater for over four minutes.

This last point struck me. “Wait. People hunted whales from canoes?” I asked in amazement. Kelly then explained how the hunting of enormous grey whales by small teams of men in 10-metre-long cedar canoes was a task passed down by chiefs of certain Nuu-chah-nulth Nations on Vancouver Island, which includes the Tla-o-qui-aht. They were armed with only wooden spears and would set out into the open ocean during the spring whale migration to bring back an animal that would feed their people for the entire year. “Basically, the whalers were superhuman,” Kelly said.

I learned more about the fascinating culture as we prepared for our zipline experience by donning harnesses and helmets and then we were driven a few kilometres upriver to the first of six ziplines. Having rock climbed and ziplined around the world, I found the experience of whizzing down a 60-metre-long steel cable fun but relatively mild. What really astonished me were the surroundings. After the first few ziplines, we hiked through a mature forest of huge, lichen-covered cedars with evidence of cultural modifications on them that were centuries old. Our guide explained the Tla-o-qui-aht people remove long strips of bark from the trees for use in basket weaving and hat making but they do so in a way that doesn’t harm the tree. Veiled lines of white scarring were all we could detect from the practice. 

Then we followed the moss-covered trail to the edge of a spectacular narrow slot canyon: steep, 90-metre-high grey walls rose from sun-dappled water the colour of oxidized copper. During some years we were told the canyon filled almost to the top with Spring runoff. The last zipline was the longest and took us out over the river and back to the company headquarters near a covered bridge.

The second adventure of the day had Kelly, myself, and two young visitors paddle up the canyon I had just zipped down. I chose a paddleboard while the others elected for kayaks and we put in at the same beach Kelly and I had visited upon arrival. It proved to be a short journey as a waterfall blocked our way after about a kilometre but it still took us a long time because we kept stopping to admire the translucent water, the perfectly smooth scoured rock walls, and the almost painfully bright blue sky. The entire experience had an other-worldly feel, like floating through a fantastic realm where fairies and other magical creatures live. 

At the end of the excursion, we pulled up on the beach and toasted the river with beers I had purchased earlier in the day. Then I was introduced to WestCoast Wild owner and local legend Louis Rouleau who lives in Ucluelet near where he stores his classic Cessna 180 aircraft. Louis is a Kimberley, BC-born bush pilot who has had innumerable adventures and misadventures around the province and the world during his 75 years. He’s an incredible storyteller and during a lull in one of his entertaining narratives, I asked why he moved to the Ucluelet area. “Because it’s paradise,” he said. I couldn’t agree more.