Islands Of Sanctuary -- The Gulf Islands Remain A Place Of Peace And Simple Pleasures

Who has not wished occasionally for a castle and a moat, with a drawbridge to pull up against the troubles of the world?

Castles are in short supply in the Pacific Northwest. But this region has hundreds of some of the most beautiful islands in the world, their surrounding water giving them a reassuring psychological distance.

In British Columbia's Gulf Islands, I stood at night on the shore of Galiano and Mayne Islands, looked at the blaze of lights of Vancouver across Georgia Strait, and felt them as far away as the stars of the Milky Way overhead.

The "other" San Juans, just north of the U.S.-Canada border, have traditionally been a quiet archipelago of escape. They drew counter-culture dropouts and American draft dodgers in the 1960s, free blacks before the Civil War, periodic religious cults and communes, dreamers, hermits, eccentrics: people of all stripes seeking, and sometimes finding, peace with themselves.

Today they are a sanctuary of artists, writers, chefs, producers, potters, inn keepers and craftsmen who have stuck like flotsam carried in by a fortuitous tide.

"I came on holiday and fell in love," said Parisian Huguette Berengerie, who opened a French restaurant on Galiano.

"It's when you go out, and then come back, that you are so thankful you're here," said Glenda Rasmussen, an artist.

At Sturdies Bay, resident Andrew Loveridge has tried to collect at least one painting by each artist on Galiano alone, and crammed his house with more than 100 works.

The Market Cafe on Galiano Island is a time trip to the early 1970s, with its bins of organic vegetables, stockpile of bean sprouts and lentil-curry soup enjoyed by a clientele heavy on pony tails and sandals.

And like Shangri-La, the islands have a folk reputation as a place of long life. Pioneers frequently lived into their 80s and 90s and at least one resident has passed the 100 mark today.

While easy access by British Columbia ferries means accommodations on the southern Gulf Islands are crammed full in the summer months, overall the islands are still a wee bit less discovered than the San Juan Islands, their level of development closer to that of what the American side was a generation ago.

Many American visitors come in their own boat, a castle of their own. But if you arrive as a landlubber via the ferries, the advantage of untethered car, bike or legs is that you can go to the high points at mid-island, giving the scenery a third dimension.

On a recent springtime visit under brilliant sunshine, I looked from ridgetop aeries out across a panorama of rumpled islands dropped like green cookies onto a sheet of watery platinum. It seemed I had this refuge to myself.

Galiano Island is a long spine rising from the Strait of Georgia, a surfacing sea serpent. Walking the sandstone of its Bodega Ridge is like dancing on dragon vertebrae.

The Gulf Islands boast of being in a rain shadow; that was proven dramatically the day I was there. While Seattle was being doused with showers, the storm clouds attacking from the west were snared by Vancouver Island's higher peaks. I smugly watched, my castle clear. White ferries scuttled like toys far below, and the only noise was the wind and the territorial cries of birds as hawks and eagles played in the thermals.

On Mount Parke on Mayne Island, a rampart of cliffs became a seat for a theater of light, the perch upholstered by grass, moss and purple wildflowers. Beams of silver sunshine scrimmaged with clouds, giant white blimps that formed a procession like floats in a parade.

There are other pleasures as well: a silence so profound in Campbell Bay on Mayne Island I could hear the hushed metronomic hello made by the beat of a raven's wing; delicious inn breakfasts with a mixed symphony of recorded Mozart and natural bird song; playing hide and seek with harbor seals from a rented kayak in Salt Spring's Ganges Harbor; dinner too pretty to eat and too good not to eat at Mayne's Oceanwood Country Inn; a warm hospitality from islanders who contend they have the best weather, and sanest lives, in all of Canada.

This said, these Gulf Islands are not for everybody.

A bit of geography, first. The principal southern islands of Galiano, Mayne, Pender, Saturna and Salt Spring are threaded by ferries that run from Tsawwassen near Vancouver to Swartz Bay near Victoria.

These are the islands most accessible to Puget Sounders, with Tsawwassen just about 130 miles north of Seattle, not far across the border at Blaine. (The smaller islands of Thetis and Kuper are reached by ferry from Vancouver Island. Gabriola Island is reached by ferry from Nanaimo on Vancouver Island.)

A visit to the Gulf Islands can be combined with visits to Vancouver and Victoria in convenient triangle routes.

Being accessible, however, these islands are not empty. In summer, ferry and lodging reservations are a must. If it's wilderness you want, keep going north, preferably with your own means of flotation.

The Gulf Islands are lovely, but not pristine. Virtually all have been logged of their virgin timber and are cloaked now in second or third growth. Salt Spring once had 15 sawmills, and residents today on Galiano and Salt Spring are battling to limit the next round of tree cutting.

Their determination is amazing.

Galiano's 850 residents, despite having no formal government, scraped together an astounding $250,000 in one month two years ago to buy Mount Galiano and save it from logging by MacMillan Bloedel, the Canadian timber giant.

The group's battle to prevent subdivision of the company's remaining land has wound up in the B.C. Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, for better or worse the islands are seeing a surge of new lodge construction to upgrade accommodations that in the past have been more funky than swank.

"It seems like the Gulf Islands have been discovered," noted Don DeRousie, a Mayne Island lighthouse keeper of Haida Indian descent who carves museum-quality native designs in a shop on the lighthouse grounds. In the past five years he has seen a 75 percent increase in the number of tourists visiting his rocky headland, open to the public from 1 to 3 p.m. daily.

On the other hand, if you have to ask what to do in the islands, the answer is apt to be a bit vague except perhaps on Salt Spring, which with nearly 10,000 people has 10 times the population of any other island and a couple of real towns instead of a commercial intersection.

What you do on most of these islands is pull up the mental drawbridge: rest, wander, read, walk, think, paddle, observe, bike, talk, romance or muse.

Entertainment? The waves have turned sandstone headlands into sculpture worthy of Henry Moore, and blacktail deer wander with saucy impudence.

Electricity didn't begin to reach the islands until 1949. In most lodges there is no TV nor telephones. If you find a theater it likely will be live, not a movie.

On Galiano, self-entertainment closely knits the community; a production of "Under Milkwood" boasted 60 cast members who outnumbered the nightly audience.

There are 50 community organizations on Galiano ranging from a rod and gun club to Overeaters Anonymous: an average of one group for every 17 residents. The isolation of water provides a sense of community seldom encountered on the mainland.

People on these islands have fundamental pleasures.

Greg Foster came in 1970 "when I just happened to spot them on a map" and started a wooden boat-building business. Eventually his parents joined him on Galiano's Whaler Bay.

His daughter grew up and stayed there with her new husband, Foster's apprentice.

When his granddaughter is born soon, that will make four generations living in three different houses above the boat shed.

It is a gorgeous place. A cedar tree grows through the boat-shed roof and the ground is a tangle of wild roses.

People are generally fascinated with the historic wooden boats Foster recreates.

"I guess it's a reaction to the high technology of our times," he said.

His children, he noted, grew up without television, worked in the boat yard, harvested wild foods and explored surrounding coves with oar and sail. It was an upbringing more typical of a century ago, and Foster thinks they grew up happier because of it.

On the islands, there is an easy friendliness, a willingness to stop and chat instead of scheduling appointments. "People opt for lifestyles instead of careers," explained Connie Kennedy, a co-owner of Galiano's Woodstone Inn.

Hosts at island establishments are mostly gracious and gregarious. Many of them came as tourists themselves, fell in love with the place, and opened their own inns. Andrew Nielsen-Pich was a Vancouver accountant before taking the plunge, and wishes he'd done it sooner.

"I think people are more friendly in the islands," said Ulf Meiertoberens, a German student studying at the University of British Columbia and bicycling the islands with Michelle Smith.

Raccoons, he said, were more problematic: their persistent raiding of the pair's camp food ripped up one tent and forced the couple to heave their supplies up on a roof.

There is a willingness to share the islands.

At Susan Evans' bed and breakfast on Salt Spring, I was directed to a stack of books on the Gulf Islands, loaned the family's rubber boots for exploration, and learned about the island and Canadian politics over breakfast.

If there was any ominous note, it was Susan's observation that the population of Salt Spring has risen nearly 50 percent since she and Ted Harrison moved from Vancouver six years ago.

Kennedy said Galiano residents want to keep development small. "We don't want this to become an elitist place of the rich," she said.

"That would destroy what we came here for, living so near the city yet away from it, in this beautiful environment."

Not to worry. When paddling a canoe along an empty shore of South Pender Island, otters splashing and scolding on the rocks, cities seemed distant indeed.

Pick an island, any of these islands, and relax behind your moat. The stars are brighter out here.