![]() Today, Mark is the co-owner of kayak manufacturer Delta Kayaks, but still leads a few trips each fall in Nootka as R&D for his boats, but also because it’s his favorite place to paddle. Guides there charge up to $800 per client per day to go after salmon. These days, Gold River’s population is half of its 1998 figure, but those remaining have seen a real rise in income from tourism, sportfishing in particular. When the Gold River mill closed too, in 1998, the victim of shifting world markets, Mark’s house was “worth about a dollar,” so Mark parlayed his guiding experience into a full time job with kayak manufacturer Seaward Kayaks on the south end of Vancouver Island. Mark realized he’d better start adapting to the changing times and began developing a sideline kayak guiding business. He met his wife there, “one of three single women in town,” but when the sawmill shut down, they, like many others, made the move to Gold River on the sound’s northeast arm to work in the pulp mill there. He first moved out from Quebec, drawn by the region’s adventure and by work at the sawmill in Tahsis, a town on Nootka’s northwestern end. His career there has mirrored Vancouver Island’s economy, moving from the tough labor of resource extraction to a recreation-based economy. Mark, a big man with a boyish face and the clipped modesty of so many Canadians, has plied Nootka since 1979. “That won’t help you much the next few days,” he’d said.Īs bad as it seemed, we figured if our trip leader, Mark Hall, was game, then so were we. Kevin and Adam, two of our group, had overheard one local scoff at another when he went to purchase an umbrella. The two survivors lived as slaves for three years until they were finally rescued, and a firsthand account of the captivity became a bestseller back in New England.Īll of which is why we never really thought of canceling our trip, even when our group of friends first assembled in Campbell River, the nearest town with large supermarkets, and the wind was flipping traffic lights sideways like pennants. After years of poor treatment at the hands of Europeans, the Nu-cha-nulth living at Yuquot snapped, massacring 25 of 27 crewmembers. The native village of Yuquot also gained some fame in that period as the site of the ambush of the American fur-trading ship Boston in 1803. Famed British explorer James Cook was the first European to step foot on Vancouver Island when he visited Nootka in 1778, and the sound became the focus of a territorial dispute over otter pelt trading rights in 1789-the so-called Nootka Incident. The Nu-cha-nulth people lived there for four millennia, subsisting on whale hunting and salmon fishing. Nootka’s human history is similarly rich. ![]() The landscape is typically rugged and beautiful for Vancouver Island, which is to say, very. ![]() Bear and wolves roam the shore, whales, sea otters, seals, and sea lions cruise the water. An inlet of Tksquare miles sheltered from the lashing waves of the open Northern Pacific, Nootka is replete with islands, protected coves, remote sandy beaches, and thick forests. Nootka Sound is one of a half-dozen classic sea kayaking destinations on Vancouver Island. We’d have fun, even, nine friends in candy colored red, blue, and yellow kayaks that shone brightly against the forested, cloud-swathed fjords. But if this was the worst our horrible forecast could give us, we’d be fine. Once the rain ended, we looked around at one another with raised eyebrows, bemused at how hard it had been raining, but also at the absurdity of heading out for five days despite a weather report that was making even mossy locals grimace and wish us luck. I just sat there, drifting in my kayak, mesmerized by the enormous drops splashing an inch above the flat sea’s surface as far as I could see-like a layer of ball bearings laid over the ocean. ![]() Or at least it seemed so because the only audible thing was the rain thundering off my anorak hood. The pelting had lasted 15 minutes, and our group of nine kayakers had sat and endured it silently. That’s how it felt to me, paddling in Nootka Sound on the west side of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, after the hardest rain I’d ever paddled through finally eased into a drizzle. The thing about hard rains is that once they let up-and they must, eventually, let up-when you flip your hood back off your brow the sudden brightness feels a lot like, well … happiness.
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