Riding Wild With Salmon

Looking for a novel adventure? Snorkelling with thousands of Pacific salmon in Vancouver Island’s Campbell River is guaranteed to add a little excitement to your life … if you catch the drift

The West has enthralled me as far back as I can remember. The Lone Ranger, Once Upon a Time in the West, shots of the Calgary stampede in the yellowing pages of an old National Geographic. I was forever imagining myself out on the plains, galloping alongside a herd of bison or rounding up some wild horses to take back to the corral.

But it wasn’t until the summer of my 35th year that I finally answered Horace Greeley’s immortal call, “Go West, young man!” Gathering the horsepower to ride off into the sunset, I set out to visit Canada’s westernmost province for the first time. I quickly learned that in another sense, it’s also Canada’s most Eastern province. Perhaps I’d been too long in the saddle, figuratively speaking, but I found that in British Columbia, chopsticks outnumber chaps and people prefer fish patties to steer burgers.