TREASURING TOFINO

Appreciating the unique sights and sounds this West Coast village has to offer

- John A. Barrett

The road snakes through the evergreen mountain terrain of Vancouver Island to come to a fork on the Pacific Ocean’s Esowista Peninsula. I head north with my partner Sue towards Tofino’s diverse gallery of Indigenous culture, unconventional folklore and tapestries of natural phenomena in motion.

Windows down, wisps of sea air flooding into the car, we stop at Pacific Rim National Park as the surf crashes onshore. A handful of gigantic rocks interrupt this spectacularly long beach, its namesake. Barefoot, we wade into the chilly incoming tide’s invigorating wash.

Back on the road, a sign warns that this is a tsunami route, a reminder that this is part of the Pacific Ocean’s volcanic “ring of fire.” Further on, depictions of cedar carvings and symbolic totem poles are displayed by the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation, one of three First Nations Nuu-chah-nulth tribes cohabiting in the Clayoquot Sound region.

Nearing Tofino, a teepee sits at the side of a coffee shop. Cyclists carry their surfboards like badges of freedom, making their way to one of the nearby bays at MacKenzie Beach, North or South Chesterman, or Cox Bay. Once known as a “hippie haven,” Tofino offered mild winters, and surf and sand with a commune lifestyle, attracting thrill-seekers from all over the globe. Despite the growth in and around the town, evidence remains of its laid-back defiance of a developing world.

An array of laced sneakers are strewn across electric cables in a back street, while nearby a painted trash can depicts a high-flying skateboarder against the shoreline. Coincidently, a skateboarder, topped with swinging dreadlocks, glides down the street, as if the trash can image gives him licence to fly.