October 2024

I discovered a few years ago that my parents, who live right next to the southern Gulf Islands, had actually only been to one island - Salt Spring.  To be fair, there is a direct ferry from Swartz Bay to SaltSpring and SaltSpring is the most populated Island so it gets most of the attention.  I decided to slowly try and round out my parents "Gulf Island Inventory".  This has been a multi-year project and this fall I decided to add Galiano to the list.

BC Ferries tries to be functional with their ferries, but we just weren't going to take the 5:50am ferry.  We got on a 9:35 ferry with a target of being on island by 11:30am.  Our ferry left Victoria, stopping at Pender Island first, and then the switchboard that is Mayne island and finally stopping at Galiano.

Last year we visited the Art Crawl on Mayne Island so it was nice to see the giant parking lot there again.  In a surprisingly coincidence, all three of the large "Salish Sea" class ferries were in the same view at the same time (I was standing on one of them) so I had to get a photo.

Claira found dogs.  Many of the vendors brought their dogs to the market and Claira asked first and then petted each of them.  Surprisingly, the dogs went from small (pug sized) to massive.  All the dogs were welcoming and patient with the loving.
 

I had a favorite vendor - the Gulf Islands Food Co-op.  They work with local food producers (think farmers) to both share their over production (have extra apples?  Share for someone else's extra tomatoes).  They do sell food at the market - todays table had food from 7 different producers on Galiano Island.

Our second destination is the Blackberry tea.  This is a local fundraisers where volunteers make hundreds of pies using local fruit (blackberry, blackberry + apple) which you can buy frozen or cooked.  The "tea" part is a soup and bread lunch along with fresh cooked pie and ice cream.

I have a soft spot for the community halls you find in smaller communities.  These buildings are used for weddings, family get reunions and many performances. 

There are number of good beaches in Galiano, but one of my favorites is the white shell beach in Montague Harbour Marine Provincial Park.  I believe this beach is covered in shell from a shell midden. 

We got to a point overlooking Montegue Harbour where you can go down to the rocks.  There is sand stone all over Galiano Island and the ocean has carved all sorts of galleries at waters edge.

By the time we walked back to the car, the crowds had started to ease.

 

My parents live relatively close to Outerbridge park so I can go over for walk in the morning before the kids get up. 

Last year I found out there is a bird banding station for Northern Saw-whet owls at Rocky Point.  These are relatively small owls that migrate south (although some stay all year round).  They aren't easy to spot in the wild because they are nocturnal, small and scared of larger predators so we didn't have a good idea how many of them existed.  Birding banding stations like the one at Rocky Point tell us they are actually much more common than we thought.  If you are smart, you can book tickets weeks in advance to see them do bird banding.  I was able pick up some cancellation tickets on short notice and took Claira and my Dad out to see the banding.

The birds are caught in mist nest (very fine black nets) strung up near a recording of the owls is played.  They nets are checked every 20 minutes and experienced banders pop them out of the nets and into little bags.  They birds then come back to the banding station where they are measured, banded and then slowly released.  Our bird tonight was banded earlier in the month so they were able to measure how this bird had changed in the last few weeks.

The owl was surprisingly calm.  It does click in protest from time to time, but you don't see it flap it's wings or bite at the bander.  The bird seamed downright happy to have the back of it's head lightly scratched.  They had a UV light to show how the feathers can tell you how old the bird is (first molt features have the same level of sunscreen in their feathers.  Later molts replace feathers one at a time which breaks up the age of the sun screen which you can see in UV light).

After the measurements we got to very gently pet the owl.  I don't know why humans insist on petting everything but the bird didn't seam worse for wear.  The next step was to get it used to the dark again in an open ended box before the bird flies off into the night.

The race course is at Trout Lake (John Hendry Park) is roughly 2km long.  The race has something like 162 girls running.  The race does have a rabbit (guy on a bike with rabbit ears) that the fastest kids chase around the track.  Claira placed something like 90th.

 
Being a twice around race course, parents get a chance to see their kids race by in the park.  While the race starts as a wide pack of more than 200 kids, the race quickly thins out to a steady stream of kids.

This year Claira had a few different ideas but last minute decided she wanted to wear one of her Chinese dresses as a costume.  Nara is dressed as "Plum Pudding" from the Strawberry Shortcake universe.