The Slow Death of the Best Block in Kitsilano

I've been keeping track of the comings and goings in this city for almost a decade now.
My neighborhood of Kitsilano has seen some of the most dramatic changes. I'll list some of the more interesting newcomers in an accompanying post but first on a sadder note, it's time to say a fond farewell to Duthie's and note the demise of one of the most delightful blocks in the city: 4th Avenue between Yew and Vine.

For years this hundred or so yards contained great music in the form of The Magic Flute - a store that was worth a visit for the magnificent pan-piper door-handles alone, Duthie's books, fine wines at the Kitsilano wine shop, good local food at Capers, and in the Coast Mountain adventure store, a reminder that this young, brazen city of Vancouver is only a very recent and temporary guest in some of the wildest, most majestic mountain and ocean landscape on earth.

Great music, great food, great wine, great books and great landscapes - the block once had everything necessary to feed the soul.

The Magic Flute was first to go - brilliant and dynamic local entrepreneur and owner David Lemon foresaw the collapse of the music business a few years before it happened and sold the shop. It limped on for a while but the CD business was being killed by the internet and soon music was gone.

Next out was great local food in the form of Capers. Yes, the store is still there - it's name is still on the awning but Texas-based Whole Foods bought it out and any recent shopper will see that the old, cosy store with its more cramped aisles and higgledy-piggledy lay-out has given way to a more spacious, generic supermarket-style design. Sometimes, when I am tired or distracted, I can mistake the displays for similar ones in Whole Foods on Kensington High Street back in London. So much for a neighborhood store.

The Coast Mountain store went next. You can stand right next to where it used to stand at the top of Yew and 4th and gaze out at the snow-capped summits and the Pacific Ocean but the store with its tents, sleeping bags, hiking boots, and all the rest of the paraphernalia that allows man to approach those mountains has gone.

And then, one of the saddest farewells of all, took place when Duthie's books closed in February of this year. From being a vibrant local chain to this one surviving store, Duthie's decline had been obvious. But I'd hoped against hope that they would survive. Books, we are being told on an almost daily basis, are going the way of the CD in this internet age. Duthie's held on until their knuckles were white. Then they fell and died.

Now the wine store remains but the rest of the block has gone from a nourishing place for the soul to purveying mass-produced clothes for our bodies and trinkets for our homes. Twas, perhaps, ever thus in Vancouver - the cult of the body takes precedence over the life of the mind. But for a few wonderful years, on a fine autumn day when the leaves on the trees that line 4th Avenue turned scarlet and the air took on that golden September tinge, you could walk just a few dozen yards and find the latest Douglas Coupland or the new Hilary Mantel, a fine bottle of Barolo or a home-baked raspberry and rhubarb tart, a tent to shelter you from the Pacific Northwest rains, boots to climb those snow-capped summits and some Beethoven to give you the courage and energy to set out. Everything in fact that a happy human being might want.

Blissful BC courtesy of David Attenborough and the BBC

Nature's Great Event last night, viewed from the Ealing living room, was the salmon run in BC.   Bears, wolves, eagles, orcas and the salmon themselves paraded before me on the tv.  How rare and exotic they looked after an afternoon on the Central Line. And how exquisitely beautiful was, as always, British Columbia. So green, so blue, so many trees, so many mountains, so much water.

I've had a suspicion for years that if BC were in the USA where they are so much more inclined to self-promotion, the place would be a mob scene. But it's those reserved, self-deprecating Canadians who won the Majestic Landscape lottery. And they have, on the whole, spent it in quiet sensible ways.  (Yes, yes I know ...clearcutting, Sea to Sky Olympic massacre but Greenpeace was born in Vancouver.. and vast swathes of BC remain untouched and inaccessible)

London  life feels so small-minded and banal when confronted with the drama of grizzlies descending snow-wrapped mountains to wait on the shores of sparkling rivers for the arrival of the fish from thousand of miles out in the Pacific. Fish who are compelled to return to the exact place of their birth to spawn and die. On the way, BC's spectacular wildlife  - wolves, orcas, eagles and grizzlies will kill  many of them but the salmon persist, growing pink and uglier as they do. And when they die and rot and their carcasses are devoured and scattered by scavengers, their remains sink back into those lush green forests, feeding them the precious nitrogen that gives us the great cedars, sitka spruce and western hemlock that make up these glorious forests. Round and round goes the green and blue cycle.

On my first summer in Vancouver,  I was astounded to see  whole wild salmon on sale in the Safeway for about $3. The run had been spectacular that year and we, the blundering bipeds were also getting our pickings right behind the grizzlies and eagles.

When I come out of that Safeway, if I look down the hill on which it stands, I can see mountains and forest and ocean. How lucky I am that for just a few months each year, I get to live alongside such grandeur, such ongoing spectacle.

Blissful Vancouver Sundays - without the Sunday papers

I'd been going back and forth to Vancouver for 7 years when I suddenly realized why Sundays in Vancouver felt lighter and cheerier than Sundays in London. Of course, in the Canadian city I can see the snow on the mountains when I wake up. And in winter there's the prospect of snow-shoeing on those peaks - in summer there's a dip in the Pacific at the end of the road. But all the Lotus-land pleasures of BC aside, the one enormous difference is that nobody bothers with Sunday papers in Vancouver. This pathetic ritual of loading a stonking great pile of dead tree into your supermarket trolley and lugging it home to read all those opinions of all those dried-up poseurs  would be unthinkable in Canada. The leading national paper, The Globe and Mail doesn't even bother publishing a Sunday edition. 

I remember once reading a Stephen Fry column (in something like the Spectator NOT a Sunday paper) where he said that he had found himself becoming increasingly more depressed by the Sunday press - all those dismissive opinions - all the cynicism - and had finally called a halt and felt better for it. The prospect of a hike up Mt Seymour makes it easy to ignore the press but even in London, I think the time would be better spent picking dry skin of the soles of my feet.

And yes, I do occasionally write for said Sundays. And I do my best to make my stories witty and informative. I'm happy that people read them but I'd rather they were read over a cup of tea and a bun after a good walk in the woods. And the Style section should definitely be used to wrap the fish and chips that the food section probably tells us we should no longer eat.

Posted by Janette Griffiths
at 14:34

The Last Summer of the Bed and Breakfast

On August 16th, Graeme's  House - at 22 years, one of the oldest inns in Kitsilano, closed - probably forever.

For the past 4 summers I have cleaned the place. Four summers before that I was at a dark and scary crossroads: mother dead, career flagging, love lost. I did the 21st century rounds of seers and sages. If one of them had predicted that in the very near future I would cross an ocean, land in one of the world’s loveliest settings for a city and be cleaning toilets every morning of every summer for four summers, I would have asked for my future back.

When Graeme (and yes she’s a woman - it’s a Scottish thing apparently)approached me with this proposition, she described it as ‘doing a Monica Dickens’. Graeme’s generation is probably the last to know what that is. Monica Dickens was a granddaughter of Charles; she took on humble jobs like cleaning to gather copy and write a lot of novels.

I did not want to write a novel about cleaning or cleaners. I did not want to write a novel about Bed and Breakfasts. I did need some quick extra money though, and one morning in early May found me following Graeme obediently through each of the four rooms learning how to make a bed with hospital corners - tuck in the bottom of the sheet, pull up a lower corner until it is the shape of a bishop’s mitre, tuck that in. The bed will look a lot like a neatly wrapped package. The guest, one must assume, will be overcome with an urge to become the contents.

The falling blossoms of an apple tree out on the deck signalled the beginning of my work each year. The proliferation of berries on the mountain ash in the back yard heralded the end. Sometime in September, I would look out of the window in the Rosedale Room and see that a scarlet breath of autumn had blown through the maple on 11th Avenue. By then there would be two or three guests in the house as opposed to the eight or nine that would squeeze around the kitchen table of an August weekend. 

The guests came from  all over the globe from Australia to  Finland, Switzerland to Taiwan. They would stumble in jet-lagged from a flight from Heathrow, alight from a taxi after an Alaskan cruise or drive up Waterloo Street straight from the Rockies in their camping car. They were physicists, orthopedic surgeons, psychics,  ecologists, neurologists, peripatetic grandparents, poets, lobbyists, toddlers, teenagers and new-born babies. They were very  rarely Republican. We did have two con men (not together) and one drunk but in a 22 year stint, they are barely worth a mention.

They were all invariably delighted with their stay. Other B&Bs may have been bigger, or have offered sherry at twilight or eggs Benedict for breakfast but very few had Graeme's gift for making people just plain happy to be in her home.

"We are all in this dance together," Graeme would say as she got up at 5am to serve breakfast to some early ferry passengers or allowed a trio of twenty something Finnish mountain bikers to take over the kitchen  and  fill the genteel Cornflower Room with a mountain of clothes and, what looked like armour, for their week long stay. 

"This is my life's work", remarked this former art teacher, English teacher, practicing therapist and interior designer one morning.  I paused, dustbuster in hand, ready to argue that she was far too clever, too qualified to be baking muffins and making beds. But I had failed to understand what Graeme had understood: that true hospitality - giving shelter, a room at an inn is one of the most  viscerally important and loving roles on the planet.

Graeme also gave shelter to the venerable Puhd - the black cat who wandered into her house during a blizzard and stayed to meet and greet and occasionally sleep with the guests for 21 years.  Puhd left us 3 years ago and can never be replaced  but in lush, verdant Vancouver where coyotes roam the lanes and bald eagles can sometimes be glimpsed in the sky over Graeme's house, the wild life endures.  Hummingbirds will continue to whirr round the petunias on the deck. Our neighbourhood raccoon will pursue his ambition to steal the back doormat.

But when the last of the guests wheeled their suitcase under the floral arch and down the garden path one Saturday morning last August something was lost forever in this lovely little Vancouver neighbourhood of Kitsilano.

 In this perenially perky North American culture, there is not much room for sadness, there is little room for the sense of endings. If something ends, we must rush to see what is about to begin. If one door closes, then by golly, another one had better be opening before we've had time to catch our breath. We might nod in the direction of 'closure' but we don't really care for the bittersweet emotions of an end. Melancholy, that autumnal sense of the extraordinary sadness of our human condition - as soon as we live and love something, anything, it is already slipping away from us - rarely makes an appearance on Oprah.

Well, this summer, something quite lovely ended on Waterloo St. I never thought, when I was grumbling my way through the bathrooms, dustbuster and toilet brush in hand, that I would miss these mundane tasks but they proved, like the B&B and like Graeme herself, to be rather good for the soul. So, time to mark  a moment of sadness and say goodbye to the hospital corners, the colour co-ordinated towels, the cheese muffins and the blueberry scones, to the endless slivers of left-over soap and the bottomless pot of coffee; to Puhd and the racoon and to all those strangers who came up the steps to sleep and snore and dream for just a few short hours before going on their way. Now Graeme goes on her's - off to some other adventure I am sure.  But her lovely house will be much missed.  Farewell Graeme's House - it was a privilege and a joy to know you.

Rockwater Secret Cove Resort - My hour in the Jacuzzi

I'm in a tent with a Jacuzzi. This is not a kinky choice of camping partner or the tight squeeze that it might sound. The Rockwater Secret Cove Resort on British Columbia's Sunshine Coast has pitched a colony of tents, each the size of a small cottage, on a bluff overlooking the Pacific. The tents are reached by a wooden boardwalk that starts out at the Zen-like stone garden. You pass through a mini-Stonehenge- and head up the boardwalk until it becomes a treewalk and you find yourself slightly above the foilage, on a level with the branches of hemlock, cedar and arbutus that cover the cliffs. The Pacific is off to the right, the tents are scattered here and there, some up, some down among the trees.

A big bronze bell guards the entrance to each tent, the entrance is an elegant French double door, the floor is cool earth-toned stone, the bed vast and inviting. In case you forget that you are in a tent, there are numerous zip-up windows that open up with views of the ocean which, this being a tent, you can hear crashing against the rocks.

And there's the jacuzzi - a few feet from the bed with its own view out onto the forest at one end and onto the sea at the other. It comes with an instruction manual and a control panel, even a remote control. As I prepare to step into the tub, I am quite sure that I will need none of them. How difficult can it be to take a bath with a bit of whirling water thrown in? I'm probably one of the few occupants of this tent to come alone. Children are not allowed; the boardwalk would rule out the old and infirm so the target market is obvious. The tents are meant for romantic rendezvous. And so, of course, is the jacuzzi.

Oh well, as a travel writer, I'm used to being alone in romantic spots. I've lost count of the number of times I have dined alone by candlelight while couples gazed across the flames at each other and I begged the maitre d'hotel for half a dozen candles so that I could see to write my notes.

I decide to give the jacuzzi a try. It is not yet twilight and I fancy bathing and gazing at the ocean. The tent comes complete with a CD player. I put on a Dvorak string quartet to set the mood, run the water and step in.

Hmmm. That control panel is more complicated than I thought. I may need the manual after all. Also, there is a difference between the two ends of the tub. One, facing the forest has a little seat. Perhaps better positioned for the massaging jets. But I want the view of the ocean. I've worn my glasses to that purpose. Now I'm glad I've got the glasses because the instruction manual is substantial. But before I plough through it, I see a button saying "color" on the remote.


For one wild moment I imagine that coloured water will pour from the taps. But no, a string of red lights have lit up around the inside of the tub. What with Dvorak and the lapping of the waves, it's sort of a soggy "Son et Lumiere." The instruction manual says that I should press a second time to choose colour. I press and press but seem to be stuck with the vivid red colour. "If in doubt, press everything," has always seemed a good rule of thumb so I hit a few more buttons - the red stays but I have activated a very violent set of jets . The manual gets washed to the floor. My glasses disappear into the maelstrom. The remote control has slipped under the tub.

I need to head for the fixed control panel at the far end of the tub. I set out - it is like swimming up a waterfall. The noise of the jets has drowned out my Dvorak. When I finally reach the control panel, I realize that it will mean nothing without the manual. The manual is lying in a puddle on the floor at the other end. I head back. I seem to be travelling with the current this time so make it to the puddle in a matter of seconds. While I'm at it, I fish for the remote but that has slipped beyond my reach. Clutching the manual above my head, I set back out for the fixed control panel. But once I arrive, I realize that without my glasses, still whirling somewhere in the water below my feet, I can't read the manual. I rest my weary head against the controls and decide to try the color button again. After a few presses, I get blue, then green and soon the whole rainbow kicks in - purple, indigo, gold, pink, green.

Happy and encouraged by my light show, I fiddle with the massage buttons again. They too, seem to have calmed down, and seem to be pummelling politely - except that, after a while, I notice that my breasts seem to be being pushed up to the surface in alternating rhythms. First one - then the other.

This is disconcerting but not unpleasant. I put it down to inadequacy on my part. This wouldn't happen to Angelina Joli. There again, she'd have Brad at the other end manning mission control.

Sitting in my own private rainbow, I drift into a delicious stupor. The view is wonderful. I can see a bald eagle perching on a branch just outside the window. The sea is crashing against the rocks. I've never quite fancied Brad so wouldn't want him working my remote but perhaps the head of Nasa would be up for a weekend on the stunning BC coast. Or that French geezer who does the spectacular light shows? The one who was married to Charlotte Rampling? Jean-Michel something....How would he feel about a night in a giant tent...

Canadian Wine Country in British Columbia's Okanagan

“The bears must think we are an obliging lot,” chuckles winemaker Marcus Ansems as he stands among the vines at his Therapy Vineyards in Naramata, British Columbia. “Lining up their food in neat rows and at arms’ length.”

Bears are not a problem in Burgundy and Bordeaux. And when Hollywood spotlighted the Californian wine country in last year’s Oscar nominated “Sideways,” the biggest danger came from the protagonists’ own libidos. But in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley, bears occasionally lumber into the vineyard. This is Canada, after all. But it’s not the western Canada that most of us know – that macho man’s man of a landscape with its spiky summits and brooding forests that surrounds Vancouver, Whistler and Banff .When I drove the four hours from Vancouver to the Okanagan Valley one October weekend recently, I found the Venus to the rest of the region’s Mars - a gentle land of vine-covered hills running down to a deep blue lake. The most grandiose feature in the landscape was the quasi-Tuscan architecture of Mission Hills – probably the most famous of the Okanagan wineries and whose award-winning wines are sold in the UK.

Mission Hills is situated on Lake Okanagan just minutes from the city of Kelowna. The bell tower, loggia, formal rose gardens and Chagall tapestry all testify to the ambition and vision of owner Vancouver-born, European-raised, Anthony von Mandl.

Missionaries first planted vineyards in the Okanagan Valley in the 1860s. For years the region produced basic plonk. Cheap and sweet tended to be the criteria. Canadian wines had names like Fuddle Duck and Gimli Goose. All that changed with the 1988 Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the US when local wines lost their trade advantage and had to compete with the blossoming Californian wine industry. The inferior vines were ripped out and the Okanagan wine industry started from scratch. By 1994 a Mission Hills Chardonnay had been voted best Chardonnay in the world in a blind tasting at London’s International Wines and Spirits Competition. When the panel heard of the winner’s obscure origins, they demanded a re-tasting. The results were unchanged and many of the seventy vineyards throughout the region have gone on to win awards throughout the world.

I took three days to amble along the lake shores, following the burgundy and white “wine route” signs and dropping in to any winery that took my fancy. With so many of the wineries opening restaurants or even the occasional B&B on their properties, I could have wandered happily for at least a week. A mile down the slope from Mission Hill at the Quails’ Gate Estate Winery, I ate a lunch of caramelized onion tart and spinach and scallop salad at their Old Vines Patio restaurant looking out on the vines, the glorious autumn colours and the lake. For all the dulcet beauty of this landscape, there is a gnarly finger of suburban sprawl scratching its way up these hillsides – a reminder of the long strip mall that makes up most of the city of Kelowna. After lunch I drove away from the city along the lake through Peachland and Summerland towards Penticton.

Those names tell of Okanagan’s other claims to fame. This is orchard country – the source of the peaches, apples and cherries that fill the Vancouver markets. In spring, the blossoms fill the valleys and, as I drove south with the lake on one side and the orchards on the other, I saw that peach trees turn a stunning shade of flame-orange in October. Summerland may just be an arbitrary name but the Okanagan does have some of the warmest summers of the province and the lake that, on this October day, is so blue and empty and calm, fills up with waterskiers, ski-dooers and various other noisy pleasure craft. The Okanagan Valley is a place to be saved for the blossoms of spring or the autumn harvest when the air is heavy with the scent of thousands, probably millions, of apples.

Another of the Okanagan’s cities, Penticton, lies at the south end of the lake. It’s more attractive than Kelowna but you don’t come to the Okanagan for the cities so I drove on, looping up the east side of the lake to lovely little Naramata, a village nestling in the prettiest, most Mediterranean part of the Okanagan. Ten wineries perch in the hills and small valleys that line the winding country road between Naramata and Penticton. Therapy Vineyards and Guesthouse is the newest and offers bed and breakfast accommodation – its rooms have burgundy drapes and duvets and look out on walnut trees, vines, peach trees and the omnipresent lake. Other Naramata Bench wineries include Red Rooster – its new buildings unmissable just a few yards from the road, and Hillside with its big wooden barn of a bistro. Down in Naramata itself, the elegant and cosy Naramata Heritage Inn and Spa with its Rock Oven dining room looks out on the lake at the end of the elm-lined main street.

Driving down the long main street, I was sceptical. The restaurants looked as though they might serve you a hearty slice of meatloaf and a cup of Maxwell House. Then I came to the Wine Country Welcome Centre and its Toasted Oak Wine Bar and Grill a big, cosy pub-like establishment, housed in the old firehall and with a manager, Jay Drysdale who has a mission to demystify wine in general and share his passion for BC wines in particular. Jay pointed me in the direction of the “golden mile” of Okanagan wineries between Oliver and Osoyoos. My favourite stop was the Burrowing Owl Estate Winery – a southwestern mission-style structure with an elegant restaurant, The Sonora Room, that looks out over dramatic dark hills and miles of golden and red vines.

Ten minutes south of Burrowing Owl, I heard myself announcing “I’m in Santa Fe” to the empty car. The change in landscape from Naramata’s gentle green slopes to brown hills and sagebrush is startling. The Nk’Mip (pronounced Inkameep)Cellars belong to the native band of the same name and look out over Osoyoos in the heart of the pocket desert that stretches all the way from the Sonora desert in Mexico. Signs on the road here warn of rattlesnakes. It’s hard to believe that I’m just 80 miles down the road from Mission Hill’s bell tower. I could have driven the length of the Okanagan’s wine country in less than two hours. But why on earth would anyone want to?
www.frontier-canada.co.uk feature the Naramata Heritage Inn and for 10 nights, including Air Canada flights and intermediate car hire would cost from £1387
www.missionhillwinery.com
Quail's Gate Estate Winery: www.quails-gate.com 1 250 769 4451
Therapy Vineyards & Guesthouse: www.therapyvineyards.com
Burrowing Owl Estate Winery: www.burrowingowlwine.ca 1 250 498
Nk’Mip Cellars: www.nkmipcellars.com 1 250 495 2985

Bear Watching in British Columbia

When Michael Allen got married on Whistler Mountain four bears
appeared at the wedding.

"They always show up where I am," shrugs Allen, a 41 year old British
Columbia native whose wide face and stocky build are reminiscent of the
animal that has been his lifelong obsession. And no, those four bears didn't
come and stand on the groom's side for the wedding photo. "They just
grazed close by."

These days Michael is known as the bear man in Whistler which, in addition
to being the leading North American ski resort, is also in the heart of
black bear country. About 300 black bears live in the area. Between June and
October Michael runs bear-viewing tours in the early mornings and at dusk.
On this very hot summer evening in late July our group of five travellers
has joined him in a bumpy, dusty ride across the summer ski slopes to
mid-mountain where the bears like to graze at twilight.

A decade or so ago local policy was to shoot bears that ventured too close
to a village that was beginning to attract as many visitors to its summer
activities of mountain biking, rafting and hiking as to its ski slopes.

Bears are, of course, safely asleep in their dens in the winter. Unwary
skiers and snowboarders frequently skim a few feet from the head of a
sleeping bear. But in the summer everyone is out on the slopes. Two
mountain bikers once came careering around a bend and crashed into a grazing
black bear. Nobody was hurt but all parties were extremely surprised. Local
authorities needed to find a way for the bikers and the bears to co-exist.

"Cometh the hour, cometh the man." Fourteen years ago, Michael Allen, a
resident of Trail, BC, came to Whistler with a request to study the resort'
s bears. A self-described loner with little interest in a formal scientific
education , Allen has felt an affinity with bears since the age of 12.

"I couldn't figure out why everybody was so scared of them. At first I was
nervous but the fascination outweighed the fear. I would go out and my mom
would drag me back. Pretty soon she realized that I was probably safer out
with the bears than hanging out with the other kids at the local pool hall."
.

Up here on the mountain, we've yet to see a bear. Michael is unconcerned.
He passes the time by taking us to a bear den deep in the woods. It has been
hollowed out of a tree trunk which surprises everyone in the group. We'd all
imagined caves. "That's Yogi," says Michael. As we fight off the black
flies, gnats and mosquitoes that throng around us, (insect repellent and
long pants are essential) Michael, who seems to be of no interest to the
bugs, tells us a few more bear facts.

Bears burrow into their dens in November, eating one last meal of wood
chips, pebbles and bear hair that will plug them up and close down their
digestive system for the seven month hibernation. Their heart beat will slow
to about 8 beats a minute. Sometime in January during hibernation, a female
bear will give birth to one or more babies the size of a banana.

I'm wondering why humans couldn't come up with such a simple system when
suddenly as the evening cools, the bears start to appear. First we glimpse
a yearling - a year old bear - on the edge of the forest, then in a meadow
of purple lupin and scarlet Indian paint-brush, Michael recognizes the bear
he has named Daisy, a very shy and rarely seen mother with her lone cub.
Soon the skittish Daisy has disappeared into the undergrowth.

Back in the jeep, Michael negotiates some vertiginous descents as he tells
of seeing a yearling asleep on top of a ski station coke machine and of
another bear sprawled across a chair lift.

"Ah, there she is, there's Jeanie," he says suddenly as we stop near the top
of Olympic ski run and see, less than a hundred yards away, a brownish
black bear and her two cubs ambling across the slope. Michael has known
Jeanie since he came to Whistler. He named her after his Scottish
grandmother, has an obvious deep affection for her, describing her as being
one of the "smartest, most adaptable bears." Jeanie has recently been
fending off the attentions of Slim, a male bear who wants to mate with her.
But a female bear with cubs is physically incapable of mating so Slim has
twice attempted to kill her young. "He's a very handsome bear - kind of the
Brad Pitt of the males here - but very aggressive," says Michael. "He's not
real keen on me. He hit me on the back of the head with his paw recently so
I hit him on the head with a log."

Tonight Jeanie is grazing peacefully with her cubs. We climb out and follow
behind Michael in a nervous huddle . Mothers with cubs are notoriously
aggressive but not, it seems, if they know Michael. He murmurs softly to her
as we follow her up the mountain track. She lets us get within fifty yards
of her and her cubs then wanders off into the dark forest.


The next day I am tired. The combination of fear, excitement, and bumping
around in a jeep has left me happy to stay in down in Whistler Village. In
honour of my encounter the previous evening, I eat dinner at the Bearfoot
Bistro. This restaurant has the finest wine cellar in Whistler and a menu
that features contemporary Canadian dishes such as Roast of Wild Arctic
Caribou or Roasted Atlantic Lobster with a white chocolate sauce.

As the light fades, I gaze out at the deceptively still, silent mountains
and wonder if Michael is up there whispering to Jeanie and her cubs or are
he and his old adversary Slim going another round in the forest?

End

Flights from London to Vancouver during bear-viewing season of late May to
October start at £401 plus tax on United Airlines.
Whistler is a two hour drive north of Vancouver. Perimeter and Greyhound
provide bus service.
The Fairmont Chateau Whistler has a "Wild For Bears" package that includes
accommodation, breakfast and a black bear tour : $349 Cdn per person based
on double occupancy. www.fairmont.com. All profits from the tours go towards
funding bear research.
The Bearfoot Bistro - 4121 Village Green, Whistler - www.bearfootbistro.com