I had a free afternoon on a trip to Victoria BC and I was in possession of a restless four-year-old.  The four walls of the hotel room were not conducive to joy and gladness so we made our way to Beacon Hill Park. Beacon Hill Park is located in downtown Victoria and is bordered by Douglas Street to the west and Cook St to the east.  It ends at Dallas Road, but if you cross the road, you will see some amazing ocean scenery. There’s a perfectly fine playground in Beacon Hill Park where my child could climb and play […]

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Here are our 5 Best kept Secrets in Harrison Hot Springs: Spirit Trail is a 1 km loop through an old cedar forest. Looking down from their perch high on the tree trunks are several dozen incredible hand crafted masks. It gives the walk a spiritual feel which is how it came by its name. From 4 seater “Limos” to Model-T 2 seaters Jamies Quadricycle offers wheel fun! ‘Saturday Nights under the Lights’ is found at Agassiz Speedway. 1/2 km from Harrison this is the home of stock car racing in the Fraser Valley. Take a dip in our perennial […]

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The world famous Butchart Gardens are often the first stop for anyone seeking out notable local gardens in the Victoria area.  Butchart Gardens are a privately owned 22 ha (55 acre) estate that is now a National Historic Site.  The gardens are located 23 km (14 miles) north of Victoria and their street address is 800 Benvenuto Avenue in Brentwood Bay.  These spectacular gardens were begun over 100 years ago and today close to a million people visit them each year.  Visit butchartgardens.com for more details on hours of operation, admission fees and the many featured attractions of the garden […]

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The months of April and May certainly bring out the wildflowers. The south western slope of Mt Tzouhalem, home to Gary Oak Trees has been set aside as a wild flower reserve. Keeping this area free of Scotch Broom allows the sun to awaken the beautiful little flowers and fill the meadow with an amazing array of colour. Today [April 23, 2012] we enjoyed blue Camus, pink shooting stars, yellow spring gold, white saxifrage, and amazingly large yellow balsam root. Growing on the rocky edges are sedums. White Easter lilies are slowly fading and a few chocolate lilies are still […]

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Editor’s Note: Perhaps the most famous film that used Hope BC as a setting is First Blood, the first of the Rambo films starring Sylvester Stallone. In 2011, a famous bridge that Rambo walked across, was taken down, 30 years after filming. However, Hope has been the backdrop for other films located at Holiday Motel & RV Resort. The new proprietor of the resort wrote this installment. One movie, filmed in 1995, is titled Far From Home which is about friendship and survival of a teenage boy and his dog. John adopts a stray dog and names him ‘Yellow’. Both […]

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The whole of Vancouver offers a fabulous selection of great restaurants and all manner of cuisines to choose from, so much so that visiting tourists often have a hard time choosing the best place to eat. The number of choices can be overwhelming, but as someone who has visited Vancouver as a tourist on several occasions I have found the best way to choose is to narrow down your choices! Last time I visited the city of mountains and water I opted for dining out in Vancouver’s Gastown neighbourhood. Gastown Restaurants Focusing on Gastown did narrow down our choices but […]

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You may have heard of Nanaimo because of those delicious Nanaimo bars that are sold all across Canada, and yes, it was named after the city on Vancouver Island! But there’s more to Nanaimo than Canada’s favourite dessert! Did you know that this is the ‘Bathtub Racing Capital of the World’? No, seriously! Bathtub racing was invented here in Nanaimo in 1967 with a race between Nanaimo and Vancouver as a way of promoting this quirky little city to the rest of the world. The idea took off and now there’s a bathtub race here on the last weekend of […]

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I’ve only visited Harrison Hot Springs once but the stunning scenery around this quaint little resort town quickly convinced me that I should go back for a second or even a third look! It’s villages like Harrison Hot Springs after all that give British Columbia its moniker ‘Beautiful BC’, and if you’ve never experienced this type of glacial scenery before this is a great place to do it. Harrison Hot Springs is nestled at the southern end of Harrison Lake; a lake that’s about 60 kilometres long. The lake formed inside a glacial valley with steep mountainous sides to it, […]

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You may know that one of Vancouver‘s nicknames is ‘Hollywood North’ because so many Hollywood movies have been made in and around the city in the last couple of decades. It’s not just Vancouver that’s frequently been used as a movie set though; in fact there are countless communities, parks and areas of coastline that have doubled for many other locations around the world, and the small community of Britannia Beach, on the Sea to Sky Highway from Vancouver to Whistler, has seen more than its fair share of movie and TV stars. In fact over 50 movies, and numerous […]

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At any time of the year a visit to Victoria‘s Inner Harbour offers plenty of things to see and do, but during the summer this corner of British Columbia‘s capital city really comes to life! Artists, musicians, street performers and more line the walkway of the Inner Harbour and keep both locals and tourists entertained as we make our way from one attraction to the next. While there are specific attractions on the Inner harbour, just sitting and watching the float planes taking off and landing is quite an experience if you’ve never seen this before. And it makes you […]

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