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September/October 2006 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: Gulf Islands Feature: Grey Nuns Feature: Narwhal hunters The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations Explorer À la carte Mosaic Re:Sources

Imagine a cluster of islands blanketed in evergreen forests and blessed with a mild Mediterranean climate. For those who have yet to discover the pleasures of British Columbia’s Gulf Islands, which straddle a marine thoroughfare that links Vancouver Island with the mainland, the bad news is that many others have. The good news is that the federal government has set aside pieces of the islands for a new national park reserve.

We asked Vancouver-based writer Alisa Smith to amble around Salt Spring, the Penders, Saturna and other islands in the archipelago for our cover story. We wanted her to meet a cross-section of residents, to tell us some of the history of the islands and to get a sense of how the area is changing. As for the park, we tell that story on the poster map included with this issue.

While Smith was travelling by ferry, we were ferrying back in time, deep into our archives. In 1958, writers Merton Yarwood Williams and Richard W. Pillsbury toured the Gulf Islands for Canadian Geographic and were charmed by the unhurried pace of life and work. Loggers were still swinging axes in the woods and fishermen were plying the rich ocean waters. But that way of life on the islands was passing. The two writers noted the increasing presence of tourists and retirees. They discovered a report by a census taker who wrote that the principal occupation of residents of the Gulf Islands appeared to be "cashing pension cheques." And they concluded their story with a comment on how the leisurely atmosphere "works its charm upon people from all walks of life. The person in worn clothing whom the newcomer mistakes for a beachcomber as often as not proves to be a famous scientist, novelist, admiral, politician or other notable."

Forty-eight years later, Smith found the same bucolic charm, although the islands are no longer a quiet backwater. Wealthy urbanites are building multi-million-dollar retreats, high-end resorts are trolling for weekend tourists and subsistence farms have given way to organic growers who cultivate specialty crops.

On Salt Spring Island, Smith tasted fresh melons on a farm that also produces figs, beans and a range of organic produce. Salt Spring farmers are known for their high-quality foods. The very name of the island has become a brand that boosts sales of everything from cheese to jams, chocolate and mutton.

Specialty farming has arrested the decline of the agricultural economy of the islands. The first settlers in the mid-1800s fed themselves and produced everything from fresh-cut flowers for stores across Canada to beef, lamb and wool. But distance to markets, the loss of able farm workers to the two world wars and other factors drove many producers out of business. Now, just as Gulf Islands farm goods are coming into their own again, agriculture is facing another crisis in the spiralling cost of land.

We hope these farms survive. Although the pace of life is quickening on the islands, the region will always be a place apart. Reliable ferry service may have linked the archipelago to the throbbing economies of British Columbia’s two biggest cities, but the islands remain a refuge for people who value the quality of life in scattered villages and on farms with a boundless view of the sea.

For the past seven years, as a service to our readers, we have been publishing digest-sized Travel & Adventure guides, which are mini travel magazines inserted in regular issues of Canadian Geographic that offer advice on places to visit and adventures to experience. Travel is a natural for us. As readers of geography magazines, you are, almost by definition, travellers, armchair or otherwise. You have been telling us how helpful those digests are when planning vacations, so we’ve decided to grow them into a full-sized magazine with riveting storytelling, original maps, spectacular photography and all the information you’ll need to experience the places you will be reading about.

The next issue we will mail to you, in mid-October, will be Canadian Geographic Travel. You will receive it free, in addition to your six regular issues of Canadian Geographic. It will, we hope, inspire you to get out and see the country.

— Rick Boychuk

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