Field Trip Photo: On Camping For Food And Throwing Up Rocks

(posted via iPhone) We’re still in Tofino, enjoying the last throes of this, our final expedition of a summer that has been blessedly full of them. Yesterday, after watching the kids try in earnest to dig to China and a healthy twirl through the skateboard park, we spent hours at the beachfront cabin of a friend enjoying a marvellous spread of barbecued spot prawns, freshly shucked oysters, beach-fire smoked chicken, sweet corn, addictive flatbread, local sockeye, cold beer and crisp wine. This was followed by a game of “Welfare Skeet Shooting”, a very sporting endeavour that sees one person throwing up a large rock and the rest trying to boozily pick it off in mid-flight with stones of their own to giggled yells of “pull!” (despite a few close calls, no one was injured). Sated and long-shadowed, we then went on a seriously tripped-out jaunt through the Botanical Gardens for this small but always enthusiastic town’s annual Lantern Festival. The citizenry really get deep into it with costumes, stunning mobiles that look as if they’re about to burst into dangerous flames, and enough rolled and aromatic recreational fun tubes to steer a herd of elephants into forgetting where they put their trunks. Today, everyone in my party is either going surfing, kayaking or engaging in something called yoga, which leaves me largely alone at our beach camp to drink hot coffee and write by an omnipresent fire that seems to have an appetite equal to my own. The weather, which has been drearily reported since we arrived, dawned mercifully wrong once again. The sand is warm and the crows are well-fed in a blue sky that is, at noon, nearly free of clouds. Beyond them, oppressive billions of stars float in waiting. When they pop for this one last time, we will quietly obscure them with our smoke, drinking long and happy and smelling of the place we loathe to bid goodbye.

The View From Your Window #40

Reader “B.R.” | Mackenzie Beach | Tofino, BC | 9:00am | SHARE YOUR VIEW

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The View From Your Window #24

Reader “M.R.” | Saanich, BC | 12:00pm | SHARE YOUR VIEW

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Hanging With Frodo Baggins At The Tofino Food & Wine Festival

We’ve just returned back from a stay at Tofino’s stunning Long Beach Lodge on Cox Bay. It seemed like we’d only just left (we were there last month, too), but what can I say? There is no other place on earth that I’d rather be than on a beach in Tofino, taking it nice and easy.

The reason for this particular trip was to take in the 8th Annual Tofino Food & Wine Festival, which – as I’ve noted in past years – is always the coolest and most highly anticipated local event on my work/pleasure calendar. If you’ve never been before, the best way I’ve found to describe it is this: imagine if a bunch of hobbits high on Longbottom Leaf and Old Toby got together dozens of wineries, breweries, artisan food producers and top drawer local restaurants and set up stalls for them to dispense their awesomeness in a rainforest on a perfect June day with the occasional naked woman wiggling her painted boobs for extra fun and a band that plays on and on. That’s what it’s like for me at least. I suggest you go next year and create your own memories.

Between skating the skatepark with a brand new board (weird), watching a Rip Curl surf contest go down in front of our room (a pleasant surprise), going on shell collecting hikes (we found plenty of good ones) and just plain hanging with good friends (always wonderful), we were able to pay visits to some of our favourite scarf spots, including Tacofino, Wildside, Tough City Sushi, Sobo, the Long Beach Lodge’s beautiful Great Room, and for the first time ever, Spotted Bear. With the season now well underway, all were on their game. We had great food within the festival and without, as we have year after year. The good luck flows in this town, and we lap it up. Here are over 100 photos that Michelle and I took to give you a scattered idea as to how it all went down… Read more

The View From Your Window #22

Scout | Long Beach Lodge | Tofino | 8:50pm | SHARE YOUR VIEW

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An Afternoon Well Spent With Tofino Fisherman Lutz Zilliken

photo | Derek Cruikshank

by Bobby Lax | In this interview I sit down with Lutz Zilliken, owner of Tofino’s West Pacific Seafood and the Fish Store (because he smokes a beautiful fish and has a great big grin on as he does it).

Born and raised: Born in Weilburg Germany, moved to Canada when I was 13.

Education: Bailed after grade 11.

What brought you to Tofino? Salmon fishing and commercial diving for geoduck and sea cucumbers.

What keeps you here? In the short term my store needs fish cut. In the long term I love the summers.

The person in town you most respect and why? Spencer Vaird. I have never heard him say a single bad word about anybody.

The best place to go in the area that not many people know about? Cannery Bay. There is this dock with a slide. You got to go there to understand.

The number of times that you have moved away from Tofino and then moved back? Zero, been here since 1993.

Your favourite local artist? Can’t pick one so I would say Mark Hobson for his underwater paintings, Paul Sam for his jewellery and Keith Plummley for his beautiful wooden plates.

First place you take friends who are visiting? Out on the ocean.

Best drink in town? SoBo’s hand squeezed key lime Margaritas.

Best job you have ever had? Cod Jigger. You just had to reel them up nice and slow.

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Field Trip #581: Digging The Rad Fruits Of Island Collaboration

We recently took a kid-less trip up to Tofino to see and celebrate the launch of the Tofino Ucuelet Culinary Guild, the just-baptised association of west-Island cooks and restaurateurs.

First off, how awesome is it that Tough City and Ukie now have their own organised collective of “like-minded chefs, restaurant entrepreneurs and culinary visionaries whose mission is to work closely with each other and regional farmers, foragers and fishermen to provide, support and promote a unique culinary experience that relies on sustainable farm-to-table practices and the freshest local ingredients prepared with integrity and passion”? That’s pretty cool.

At first blush you probably wouldn’t think chefs would be great collaborators, especially here in hyper-competitive BC where many tend to be dictators in suspiciously guarded fiefdoms of their own making. Cooperation would seem anathema to the job description. But I’ve seen it work splendidly in Vancouver with the Chefs’ Table Society of BC (witness their Spot Prawn Festival, underway now, and the two Vancouver Cooks cookbooks). I also know that the bonds of kitchen camaraderie are some of the strongest in the human experience, somewhere on the band of brothers (and sisters) ladder between firemen and soldiers. So what if the towns are small and membership in the Guild is consequently limited? The fruits of their zeal and common purpose matter most, and I was therefore very keen to witness the TUCG’s first pluck, a fundraising dinner held at Tin Wis. Read more

New Guinea’s “Hooded Pitohui” Is The 1st Known Poisonous Bird…

This is for my friend Artie, a bird nerd who goes to Herculean lengths to document his sightings on the few field trips he undertakes (for R&R) each year. For example, last Fall he spent his “alone time” on a boat trip way off the coast to confirm the presence of a South Pacific seabird that had never been photographed off North America (and yes, he found one). The video I present to him shows Jack Dumbacher, a researcher at the California Academy of Sciences, talking about his recent brush in Papua New Guinea with the Hooded Pitohui. It is the first ever poisonous bird to be discovered by science.

Goodbye Ross Sinclair 1944-2010

Sorry for the lack of posts these last few days. Sad to report my step-father of 33 years has died after a short fight with cancer at his home in Victoria. He was 66. I came over with my brother yesterday to be with my sister and Mom. All are in good spirits, remembering how he’d lived well and relieved he’s free of pain. Together, we wrote his obituary this morning:

Ross Sinclair, surrounded by loving family, passed away peacefully in the early morning of February 26th. Born in Vancouver in 1944, he graduated from UBC (Economics) before moving to Victoria, where he is survived by his wife Laura, brother Alex, sister Kathy, children Kate (Robert Duncan), Alex and Andrew (Michelle Sproule), and grandchildren Alexander, James and Isabelle. Ross was instrumental in the preservation and restoration of several heritage buildings in the city – among them Market Square and his own MacClure heritage home – but he was most proud of his final building project, the Cedars treatment facility at Cobble Hill. He will be remembered most of all for his phenomenal cooking, his love of golf and the open water, his ability to put others at ease with great humility and an always available ear, and the wicked sense of humour that helped to steer him and countless others through many trials.

Ross was a real character, as genuine as could be. True to form, his last words were “Fuck off”, muttered to the nurse who stuck him with his last IV. He will be missed.

Chef Edward Tuson Of The Sooke Harbour House To Open The Edge

Great news for Island dwellers. Long-time Sooke Harbour House executive chef and locavore extraordinaire Edward Tuson (interview) will be opening a restaurant of his own, perhaps as soon as this week or the next. Read more

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