Whitney Lakes - Beaches and History

I am always partial to camping in the mountains, but when I asked Audrey where she might want to go this year, she said due East. When I looked for provincial campgrounds with power that weren't too far, Whitney Lakes Provincial Park fit the bill. Ready access to a number of beaches, a town with a decent grocery store only half an hour away, and with fuel nearly $2 a litre, a 3-hour drive suited us just fine.

Our campsite at Ross Lake was the last one in the loop and remarkably well treed, which meant not having to make awkward eye contact with your neighbours everytime you got up from the picnic table or what have you. Tragically, I had gotten saturated with rain while loading the trailer on Monday morning and by Wednesday had symptoms consistent with bronchitis (hey, at least it wasn't covid again, right?).

It was a nice campsite that I tragically neglected to photograph, but between the trees and our 10 x 10 sun screen, it made for a very nice spot. We strung up a line for Canéla so she spent much less time getting tangled than last year, but the abundant squirrels near to drove her mad anyways.

We spent a fair amount of time doing as much nothing as possible, but still found time to take our tubes to the Whitney Lake beach on a hot day, explore Heinsburg and Alberta's last standing wooden water tower, and stumbled across Journey North Cider Company while taking a giant loop around the area and seeing Bonnyville and Kehewin Lake - beautiful country, and taking it in from an air-conditioned vehicle with Glory at the wheel was just the thing for my post-bronchial recovery.

Two historical highlights stood out for us though. The first was visiting the interpretive centre at Fort George/Buckingham House. We would not have known about this amazing site at all had it not been for the blue roadside attraction sign we saw on the highway as we drove to our campsite the first time.

I was honestly expecting a self-guided bit of signage showing the site of competing outposts from the Hudson's Bay Company and North West Company which predated Fort Edmonton by almost a decade, but we instead found a gorgeous interpretive center with tremendous displays, a good amount of artifacts and a perspective that did a great job incorporating the indigenous perspective.

It is ideally set up for young learners and school groups, but the three of us had a great time there - should you find yourself around Elk Point or Heinsburg, make a point of checking it out!

We also took a trip out to the Frog Lake National Historic site. If the same sounds familiar, the Frog Lake Massacre was a key event in the 1885 Northwest Rebellion/ Riel Resistance, and here, signs and a memorial cairn are all that stands to mark the event, but the signs do good work.

They present the facts in a context that invites an objective appraisal of western history, starting with  Rupert's Land being sold outright to the Dominion of Canada three years after Confederation.Such a sale was something the indigenous leaders had literally no concept of - land ownership was as foreign an idea to them as any science fiction idea you might come across today. By 1876, most Cree tribal leaders had signed Treaty 6, but not Chief Big Bear, who stalled and resisted, sure that the treat would be broken and warning others against signing it. He finally relented in 1882, but was reluctant to choose lands for his people's reserve. 

In the winter of 1885, the government cut off promised food rations in order to force Big Bear and his people to move into a reserve where they faced brutal conditions. In March of that year, news of the Métis victory at Duck Lake reached Big Bear, and despite his protestations, his war chief Wandering Spirit, his own son Miserable Man (AKA Little Bad Man) and six other men went to Frog Lake intent on moving the white settlers from there onto the reserve.

Tensions ran high, the Indian agent who had denied the Cree rations was killed, and when the dust settled ten settlers were dead - it is their stone cairn that stands at the site to this day.

Prime Minister John A. MacDonald breathlessly announced the Frog Lake Massacre in the House of Commons, which galvanized the government to send both militia and North West Mounted Police to apply a heavier hand to the resistance. The rebellion was put down, and the eight Cree were tried without legal counsel and hanged in Battleford, then buried in an unmarked grave.

Children from the nearby Battleford Industrial School (an Indian Residential School) were brought to watch the hangings as a "warning," but this may have backfired, as Howard Adams wrote in his book, Prisons of Grass: 

Every member of the Indian nation heard the death-rattle of the eight heroes who died at the end of the colonizer's rope and they went quietly back to their compounds, obediently submitting themselves to the oppressors. The eight men who sacrificed their lives at the end of the rope were the champions of freedom and democracy. They were incomparable heroes, as shown by their last moments.

This grave was forgotten about until 1972 when it was rediscovered by students and eventually a simple headstone naming the eight men was placed there: Wandering Spirit, (Kapapamahchakwew) a Plains Cree war chief, Little Bear (Apaschiskoos), Walking the Sky (A.K.A. Round the Sky), Bad Arrow, Miserable Man, Iron Body, Ika (A.K.A. Crooked Leg) and Man Without Blood.

Big Bear, despite the testimony of both settler and indigenous witnesses describing his efforts to prevent the killings and keep Wandering Spirit and the others on the reserve, was convicted for them anyways as chief, and spent three years in prison, dying a year after his release.

I've forgotten so much of what I learned of the Red River and North-West Rebellions - names of battles and people like Batoche, Cut-Knife, and Gabriel Dumont are still with me but diminished in significance. I was grateful for the opportunity to re-learn a bit about it.

I was surprised to learn that Glory's curriculum had included almost no mention of these events ( I swear we covered them on three different occasions over junior high and high school) and I mused as to why this might be.

"Maybe they knew how angry it would make people like me," she said earnestly. Her sense of injustice had been especially provoked by the juxtaposition of the memorial cairn for the settler victims and an unmarked grave for the Cree.

That was the day we took our long drive, quietly appreciating the beautiful country and letting the lesson we had learned soak in.

Ideally, a vacation should promote feelings of joy and relaxation, not anger at injustices from a century ago, but we were only too willing to trade a little enjoyment for a bit of enlightenment, and hopefully some wisdom too.

And the lake was still waiting for us when Fenya joined us on Friday, and the rain stopped early Sunday, so the trailer was dry this time when we packed it. All in all a great vacation!

Betwixt the Butterflies and the Slugs

We haven't always had the best luck with private campgrounds in our past, but Whiskey Creek RV Campground turned out to be a delightful spot to camp for a week. It's less than ten minutes from Qualicum Beach and Coombs, on an acreage sized lot off Chatsworth Road. There are other houses in the neighbourhood, and a farm or two, but the lot next to the campsite is undeveloped, and judging from the intermittent chainsaw sounds, the owner is either meticulously clearing the land or harvesting timber from it.

There's only 16 sites and some are more open than others, but we had a bit of bush on one side of ours, and a fence separating us from the woods next door.

There was plenty of room to bring the picnic table and fire pit in closer to the Bride, and to set up the camp kitchen (packed away in this picture).

The campground was tidy, the washrooms were clean, and the hostess, Joy, a delight to deal with. I'd actually booked a site in Oceanside, but it was pretty much in the town and right next to the highway to boot, so I cancelled it once Joy returned my call to say there was an opening here. Plus, the seventh night's stay was free.

The washroom building and dishwashing station is on the left, with Joy's cabin/office on the right.

There were notices about wolves, bears and cougars in the area, but the garbages weren't secured and the recycling bins full of pop cans were fairly accessible, so I think it was just to keep people from doing anything overtly stupid.

Not to say there was no wildlife - near the end of our stay, a deer swang by for a visit.

And just before we left, we finally saw the enormous slugs we had expected to see earlier. First the invasive black slug, the first we'd encountered:

And then the banana slugs we'd spent so much time fruitlessly looking for on the Amphitrite Trail in Ucluelet.

Yeah, not exactly charming, but kind of cute in their own way I suppose. Certainly not something we'd come across back in Alberta!

Butterfly World in Coombs has a much prettier collection of invertebrates and was a wonderful place to get out of the rain one afternoon.

There was a large tortoise named Samson and a bearded dragon as well.

And a tremendous collection of orchids.

Perhaps most delightfully of all, they had a pond full of turtles out back.

For what is essentially a tourist trap, Butterfly World was a tranquil space in which to wrap up one of our last days on Vancouver Island.

Dads and Crawdads in the Little Qualicum River

Our campsite at Whiskey Creek was only a few minute's drive from Little Qualicum Falls Provincial Park, and since the day after our beach excursion had ahint of warmness to it, Glory and I took our swim togs along.

Not that I am too much of a scofflaw or anything, but when we had visited there in 2009, we had left the trail at one point and found an amazing swimming hole formed by the fortuitous placement of enormous pieces of rock, downstream from both the upper and lower falls. The sides were a little slick and steep to be bringing in two small girls with little swimming experience, so we abandoned our attempt to swim in there fairly quickly, and I have dreamed of returning there ever since.

Sadly, the water levels were not as generous this time around but since my fencehopping ability has diminished in the intervening decade, so it may have been a blessing in disguise.

So instead, we trekked up the trail, past the lower:

and upper falls of the Little Qualicum River.

It's a gorgeous spot, with good trails and stairs in the steep bits. Despite the humidity and ever-present threat of rain, it was not too buggy, either.

It got up to about 24 degrees, and by the time we had climbed up past the upper falls, I was drenched in sweat, and eager for a chance to cool off. Eventually, we came to a bend in the river, just before it takes another turn and picks up speed before turning into a proper waterfall. It looked familiar, but I couldn't be sure it was the same spot we had swum in a decade earlier - it looked smaller, somehow.

With sweat pouring off my brow and no better opportunities in sight, I ducked behind some trees and put on my swim clothes, while Glory trotted off to change in an outhouse just down the trail.

Thankfully I had picked up a pair of river shoes (or water socks or whatever you call them) so my increasingly tender tootsies were able to make it across the gravel beach and into the water without incident. Once there, however, the size of the rocks increased dramatically and were impossible to stand on due to their slickness.

Oh, and it was cool. Like, 5-7 degrees kind of cool. I didn't have a thermometer with me, but I have drank many a beer at temperatures warmer than that river and thought, "mm, that is a cool and refreshing beverage." With a wide and unstable stance, and my right foot wedged under a particularly large stone, I was uneasy about taking the final plunge into the briskness of the river, but there was nothing else for it, so I leapt in.

By the time Glory arrived, I had acclimatized quite a bit and was finding my time in the river quite enjoyable. I hadn't bothered with the flippers and snorkel I had brought, but was doggedly perusing the river bottom. I was certain this was the same spot, but the rocks had looked more colourful, and had been positively teeming with crayfish that I hadn't yet seen. At 12-15 feet at its deepest, I felt certain it had been deeper too, but then, the mid-island had been dry most of the spring and summer.

Glory's entry into the river was just as apprehensive as mine, but more surefooted all the same. Eventually, she too took the plunge, but lacking my insulation, she did not find it quite as comfortable as I had.

Still, she borrowed my mask and was excited to see a fish (presumably a young salmon) shortly after that.

It was a little tricky extricating the straps of my mask from her hair, but when I joined her in looking underwater at the freshwater fry, I was thrilled to finally spot the crayfish I had come to find. 4-6 inches long, with white bands crossing their claws, they appeared to have vacated from one side of the river to the other over the past ten years. Since crayfish can't live in polluted waters, it is always a blessing to see them where you are swimming, even if they are a little creepy and vaguely menacing looking. (They are also astonishingly fast; Audrey reached out toward one in the shallows and it darted back perhaps 18 inches in the blink of an eye.

We swam in the river for perhaps half an hour before I came out to dry off on a nearby bench. A group of hikers smiled when they saw me, and asked if I'd had a dip. Still unsure of the legality of my immersion, I nodded, but replied, "If it's a ranger who's asking, I fell over while looking for crayfish!"

Once we were dry, we made our way back out the parking lot, checking a trail map and determining that where we were was a completely legitimate swimming spot.

You know what? Honestly, I was a little disappointed.

Reunited On the Island - Qualicum Beach, Coombs and Ucluelet

Family vacations are becoming more and more challenging to arrange; last year Fenya went off to China on a school trip while Audrey, Glory and I travelled to Drumheller, and she will be working full-time at the UAlberta ombuds office for the next year, with no real vacation time to speak of. 

Thankfully she had banked up enough hours in May and June to entitle her to a couple of days away from the office, so we split the cost of airplane ticket with her and flew her from Edmonton to Comox on Thursday night. It was a bit late when we got back to our campsite at Whiskey Creek, but it was grand having everyone together and our first full family night in Bride of Frankentrailer. 

The next day we lazily explored Qualicum Beach and caught up with Island Mike and his wife Kelly, who Audrey and I've chummed around with on and off for a quarter-century or so. We took a stroll in the amazing heritage forest not far from their house and enjoyed a wonderful supper with them. 

On Saturday, our laziness almost prevented us from visiting the Qualicum Beach farmer's market, but we got there in time to get some fresh salad greens for that night's supper and some blueberries for snacking. I also found a delightful honey liqueur called krupnik brewed right on the island in Courtenay, and the girls found some jewelry as well. We also made a trip out to the Coombs Country Market, home of the (in)famous Goats on the Roof.

Here we found a brilliant peach vanilla vinaigrette for our salad and some buns for the bratwursts we had brought for supper. Grilled over an open fire at the campground, and served with mixed greens and a fancy dressing, it felt like a true feast.

The following morning we arose on time for once and piled into the Flex. We headed out to Ucluelet on the west coast of Vancouver Island, stopping in Port Alberni for some breakfast sandwiches. It took about two-and-a-half hours with the construction stoppages, but we still got in before 11:00. We drove through the town to get the lay of the land and ended up at an entrance to the Wild Pacific Trail. With adequate time and decent weather, we decided to check it out, despite the grim warnings contained in the signage.

Right from the start of the trail there are things to check out, including the Amphitrite Lighthouse.

And even on an overcast day like this, some of the seaside vistas were a sight to behold.

The trail itself took us through some of the gnarliest rainforest, with moss-covered stumps and wildly twisted roots exposed by high winds and tidal actions.

 

We returned to the Flex for some pepperoni sticks and cheese curds before heading back to town, stopping at a scenic former church that now contained a coffee shop and will eventually be home to a microbrewery. From there we made our way to the Ucluelet Aquarium, a catch-and-release enterprise staffed by enthusiastic and knowledgeable young people.

Sadly, they had just released the only octopus they had managed to capture so far this season, as she had doubled in size in under a month and had become far too big for her tank. Thankfully there was still much to see, including a wolf eel and a number of young jellyfish.

We toodled about Ucluelet a little more that afternoon before supping at the Raven Lady food truck. A group from Calgary had set her up, specializing in oyster dishes and offering free shucking lessons to passersby. Full of seafood and marvellous chips, we headed home.

Monday was Fenya's last day on the island, and we would need to leave the area by 3:00 in order to get her to her flight in Comox on time. Surely that would be enough time to visit the beach to she could get some surfside action in?

Well, yes, but since it never got warmer than 16 degrees, it wasn't exactly sunbathing weather. Thankfully, Glory was not about to let a little thing like cool weather prevent her from having her bathing beauty moment, which the rest of us enjoyed from closer to the shore.

I was disappointed at not being able to swim (and from watching a crow fly off with a zip-loc bag full of Jelly Bellies that had been stashed in the cupholder of my chair), but we still had a good time beachcombing and collecting driftwood. We even managed to get the beans back, although only one of us was willing to eat what the girls termed "crowbeans" and it wasn't me, surprisingly. 

We headed back to camp with enough time for Fenya to change and shower, then got an order to go from Bigfoot Burgers, a restaurant close to our campsite with amazing french fries. Wolfing them down on our way to Comx, we reflected on what a gift it was to able to spend some time together in such a wonderful environment, so different from where we live. 

Even though they are sure to become rarer as the girls leave school and enter (and re-enter) the workforce, I am confident there are more excursions like this in our collective futures - I just hope we don't have to wait too long until the next one!