W O R D S
travel
|
“It is always a pleasure to work with such a professional writer, a man with integrity and talent, who makes a point of researching and fully understanding the issues and topics he reports.” |
|
– Shirley Lowe, Executive Director, Old Strathcona Business Association, Edmonton |
[2] Stop and Go in Victoria and Vancouver
[3] Nanaimo, Vancouver Island's Recreational Harbour
[5] Canyon Carefree: A Journey into Arizona's Indian Country
Excerpt from the intro for the 2004 Visitor’s Choice Campbell River guidebook
Positioned at the junction of a massive water highway stretching from Puget Sound in Washington State north to the Queen Charlotte Islands and Alaska, Campbell River is renowned as Canada’s Salmon Fishing Capital. Bounded by water and mountains, encircled by wilderness and blessed with mild weather, great catches abound and adventure is a way of life. This is a place you can ski in the morning, golf in the afternoon and catch the evening tide for saltwater sport fishing.
Cradled between the wild mountains that are the backbone of Strathcona Provincial Park and the Strait of Georgia, Discovery Passage and the Discovery Islands, the Campbell River region is alive with restful beaches, luxuriant forests, crystal clear lakes and streams teeming with trout. The diverse alpine-to-ocean landscape and year-round moderate climate furnishes an exceptional diversity of outdoor adventures including hiking, boating, mountain biking, skiing, swimming, diving, horseback riding and camping.
Campbell River reclines on 22 kilometres of oceanfront on the east side of Vancouver Island. The region is 266 kilometres (a three hour drive) from Victoria and 155 kilometres (less than two hours) north of Nanaimo travelling on the new inland island highway. The region includes coastal communities from Saratoga Beach northward to Brown’s Bay, inland to the lakes of Strathcona Provincial Park and across Discovery Passage to the Discovery Islands – Quadra, Cortes, Read, Sonora and Thurlow among them.
There’s an endless procession of marine traffic through Discovery Passage, which is the primary route between the open Pacific Ocean to the north and the Strait of Georgia, Puget Sound and Strait of Juan de Fuca to the south. Cruise ships, deep sea freighters and huge barges loaded with freight in transit to Alaska are punctuated with sailboats, yachts and other pleasure boats and the ferry to Quadra Island, which runs every hour for most of the year. Some weeks, 25 cruise ships pass through Discovery Passage.
The area’s nearly 60,000 residents enjoy a lifestyle that balances superb and affordable modern amenities with country retreats and year-round family recreation. Campbell River celebrates its arts and culture with its own museum, public art gallery, live theatre and dynamic music and visual arts communities. Many people, particularly young families and professionals, are settling in the Campbell River region for the enviable lifestyle, some of the most affordable housing on Vancouver Island and strong sense of close-knit community.
[ back to top ]
Excerpt from 2,400 word feature in the November 2003 issue of Horizon Air magazine and Alaska Airlines Magazine
The July week that Vancouver was awarded the 2010 Olympic Games, I went cycling the Seawall around the massive Stanley Park and could see the optimism and exuberance in the eyes and the faces of the joggers, walkers and wanderers I encountered. The bounce in the steps was a little higher, the smiles a little broader. Vancouver is a hip city that crackles with kinetic energy and embraces change with passion – especially when it means opening the door to the world.
It’s a city of two million poised to ascend a gold medal podium of growth and its citizens seem to sense life as they know it will never be quite the same. But then, after all the changes of the last 20 years, that’s nothing new for Vancouver. My bike ride took me under the brand new trendy glass and steel girdled condominium towers of the Yaletown neighbourhood just a few blocks from downtown. The new towers have transformed the False Creek waterfront where Expo 86 and vintage warehouses once held court, and their condos have been colonized by yuppies and guppies (gay urban upwardly mobile professionals), empty nesters and a smattering of Generation Xers.
They’ve been drawn here by superb location right at the beating heart of the city and, when they look out from their windows and balconies, they can see across the water and to the snow-dappled north shore mountains. While it’s become a Vancouver cliche, it’s true that one can ski the runs on those mountains and, in the same day, go sailing and play a round of golf. The “grabthe world by the horns” attitude is tempered by a relaxed friendliness that can be found in the cosmopolitan shops and restaurants and their mosaic of worldly cultural influences built by generations of immigrants, most recently from India, Hong Kong and China.
While Vancouver breathes the rarefied air of change, Victoria, an off-the-beaten path island outpost where people pause to smell the roses, thrives on the rich traditions of the past. It’s a retreat where visitors and residents sip tea at the historic Fairmont Empress Hotel, wander genteel gardens and ride atop open-air double-decker buses. Canada’s two west coast cities are as different as stop and go and entice with an invigorating balance of energy and tranquillity – yin and yang.
[ back to top ]
Excerpt from 2,500 word feature in the September 2003 issue of Horizon Air magazine and Alaska Airlines Magazine
I'm sitting on a park bench in Nanaimo, British Columbia, 70 miles north of Victoria, and admiring the view over Buttertubs Marsh towards Mount Benson. Then the showstopper arrives. A Great Blue Heron drifts across the water, wings rigid and gangly legs trailing behind. Like a jumbo jet on landing approach, he glides in, flaps extended, and then just 30 feet from my perch, sets down upon those stilty legs and gazes about, a slender beak poking into the air. I realize my mouth has dropped open.
I've seen many Great Blue Herons before but never at such close proximity right in the heart of a residential enclave. The 46-acre Buttertubs Marsh, formally established in 1977, was once part of a farm but is now surrounded by homes. It got its name in the mid-1970s when a housing development proposed to fill in the marsh was named after an area of England’s Yorkshire Dales. The proposal to build the houses was rejected by the BC Ministry of the Environment, but the name stuck. Today the wetland is an urban oasis for Canada Geese, ring-neck ducks, American Widgeon, Hooded Mergansers and a couple dozen species of songbirds. It is the only documented breeding site of American Bitterns on Vancouver Island.
Mr. Heron goes about his fishing and, after watching in amazement for a few minutes, I go aboutmy business, returning to my bike to cycle the Parkway Trail through Nanaimo's neighbourhoods and parks. I'm not alone on this cool autumn morning and, as I ride along, I pass dozens of other people out walking, cycling and rollerblading. The city of 77,000 on the sheltered eastern side of Vancouver Island is a haven for recreational and artistic endeavours and is gaining renown a place to go and sweat away the troubles of the world.
[ back to top ]
Excerpt from 2,000 word feature in the November 2002 issue of Horizon Air magazine and Alaska Airlines Magazine
I may well have tumbled headlong into an episode of the classic TV series The Twilight Zone. The winter wind howls outside, it’s 30 degrees below zero and I’m floating on my back in the world’s largest indoor wave pool, gazing up several stories at a snow speckled glass and steel ceiling -- the protective cocoon for the five-acre World Waterpark at West Edmonton Mall. “You’re travelling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind,” I mumble to myself, reciting Rod Serling’s opening monologue from the TV show. “A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead: Your next stop: The Twilight Zone.”
This part of The Twilight Zone includes not only this massive water park (the size of five NFL football fields) but also the world's largest indoor triple-loop rollercoaster, real submarine voyages in the world’s largest indoor lake, theme streets alive with the spirit of New Orleans and Paris, a Las Vegas-style casino and a dozen other diversions. Situated in Canada’s northernmost major city, 54 degrees north of the equator, the spectacle and scale of West Edmonton Mall is overwhelming at first. It’s not unusual to see first time visitors, mouths agape, wandering the mall’s bowels, bewildered by all the “world’s largest” features and the small touches, like real marble floors and mirrors refracting light this way and that.
As the world’s largest shopping and entertainment centre, West Edmonton Mall swallows 48 city blocks and contains in its 5.3 million square foot girth 800 stores and services, more than 110 eateries and seven attractions (including the water park). There’s also the Fantasyland Hotel, which bends reality in its own fashion through theme rooms which transport guests into other realms including the arctic and a desert oasis.
[ back to top ]
Excerpt from 2,000 word feature in Westworld magazines
It isn't until you get well into the bowels of Arizona's Canyon de Chelly that the size of the thing becomes apparent. On a hike from the rim to the floor of this stone labyrinth - a drop of more than 200 metres - the rock seems bigger, steeper and redder. The sun seems hotter, the cacti and other canyon plants hardier and the silence louder. I stop to savour the panorama. The only sound I can hear is my breathing. It's no wonder so many people who come here to "find" themselves later call the experience cathartic. As it turns out, I found much more.
Before the birth of Christ, hunter-gatherers were calling this place home, lured by a permanent source of water. Anasazi Indians lived in Canyon de Chelly (pronounced de shay) for more than 400 years, from 800 to 1200 A.D., carving out an existence among the up to 320 metre high sandstone cliffs and farming the fertile soil of its lap. Now, traces of that earlier civilization remain - mostly stone ruins and rock art sites. The canyon is still home for a few Najavo Indians; nomadic wanderers, coming and going between the top and bottom of the mystical, magical place which, loosely translated means "where the water comes out of the rock."
I met one that day, heading up the canyon, smiling and walking like the wind itself. "This is a good place to rest," he said, perching beside me in the shade of a stand of royal olive trees alongside the canyon creek. A raven circled overhead. I found myself asking a dozen questions about the canyon and White House Ruin, perched in a cave above our heads. Carefree and content, he mostly just smiled and nodded and was soon on his way. I knew not where he was going but wanted to follow.
My own wanderings into the depths of this sacred place came during a week-long foray to the canyons, monuments and Indian country of northern Arizona. My route took me from the red rocks of Sedona, north to Flagstaff, northwest to the Grand Canyon, east to Monument Valley and Canyon de Chelly, south to the Painted Desert and back to Flagstaff.
[ back to top ]
© Copyright 2004 Lawrence Herzog • site design and maintenance by Jaime Apolonio