I am an unabashed city girl, the product of a largely urban upbringing marked by manufactured landscapes, high population density and close proximity to excellent take-out.
These days my home is a concrete and glass box in Vancouver. I have a great view and I can walk everywhere, including to some of the best restaurants and shops in the city.
But sometimes, when I lie awake at three a.m. listening to the ambulance sirens or my neighbour's drum-and-bass playlist, I think to myself, "I need to get the hell out of town."
So I make the trek to Quadra Island.
Maybe I haven't lived in BC long enough to be jaded by the 90-minute sail from Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver to Departure Bay on Vancouver Island. Its picture postcard westcoast scenery usually reminds me why getting up at dawn to wait in line for the ferry isn't such a bad idea.
From Nanaimo it's north on the Island Highway to Campbell River, then a 10-minute ferry to Quadra Island across Discovery Passage, a commuter lane for Alaskan cruise ships, dwindling numbers of spawning salmon and the occasional pod of killer whales.
My first visit to Quadra in 2001 was part of a not-too-subtle campaign by my boyfriend to convince me that I should move to BC. I was a tourist and people invariably asked me where I was from. Sure, it was a friendly inquiry one would politely make of any visitor. But what were they asking exactly, and did they have any idea that this bit of small talk triggered a complicated internal narrative that involved questions of identity, citizenship, and romantic possibility?
Where did I live?
I had no fixed address at the time. I had quit my job, discarded most of my belongings and had been living out of my backpack for a year, traveling to places as far-flung as Nepal, Turkey and Peru.
Where did I grow up?
No fixed address there either. A childhood in Toronto, followed by adolescence in Arlington, Virginia, followed by young adulthood in Southern California meant I could toggle between American and Canadian accents. My passport bore a maple leaf but I had not lived in the "true north strong and free" for years.
Or was it simply a question of ethnicity? Filipino, Pinoy, or as an Aussie surfer once blurted, "So, you're a full Flip!" even though I've only been to the Philippines twice in the last 35 years.
Truth be told, I was already pre-disposed to BC when we pulled up to Rebecca Spit for the first time. Now, if you're trying to close a deal there are far worse places to do it than Rebecca Spit on a September evening. The glassy surface of Drew Harbour on one side and, on the other, the active waters of Sutil Channel with Cortes Island and the Coast Mountain range visible beyond. It's an epic beauty spot, especially for a girl who grew up in Parkdale.
The Coast Salish people have made their home in this area for centuries. More recently, tugboat captains and world-changing environmentalists, Order of Canada recipients and semi-retired plumbers, slow-food locavores and the fastest man in the world on a bicycle spend all or part of the year on Quadra. That list now includes me, my partner and our two children.
We've camped at We-Wai-Kai near Heriot Bay in the summertime but, more often than not, we spend time on Quadra in the off-season and settle into Taku Resort where we can enjoy both fantastic views and fantastic indoor plumbing. Milton and Fei Wong, who know a good thing when they see it, bought Taku Resort 25 years ago and have turned it into a comfortable, quiet retreat tucked into one of the prettiest spots on Quadra.
It was from Taku's marina on a bright and windy day last spring that local entrepreneur Jack Mar took us on an afternoon cruise in his aluminum skiff Tenzing, christened in homage to the Dalai Lama. Jack asks me where I'm from and this time I answer Vancouver.
"I grew up near Courtenay on Vancouver Island," Jack volunteers. "I'm Chinese and when I was a kid my family owned a restaurant, of course," he adds.
"Any idea how Chinese Mountain on Quadra got its name?" I ask a bit lamely.
"Who knows? There are names like that all over the province," he replies.
Jack and his wife put down roots on Quadra and raised three daughters, one of whom currently lives in Shanghai. We talk about how we've both been to China as hapless tourists who barely speak a word of the language. Jack waxes nostalgic about real estate prices circa the 1980s and from the boat he points out spot prawn traps, David Suzuki's family cabin and stellar sea lions sunning themselves on a rock.
My older daughter beams from the stern and I realize that between this boat trip, the hours she's spent combing the beach for starfish and the fact that she just learned how to ride a bicycle, she is having the time of her four-and-a-half year old life. My younger daughter, who orders her priorities differently, has a belly full of chicken adobo (prepared earlier from the fully-equipped kitchen in our suite at Taku) and uses the time on board Tenzing to take a nap.
"So when are you finally going to move up here?" is a recurring question from Tom Rohan, my partner's old school friend who moved from North Vancouver just over a decade ago.
"Whenever we leave I can't wait to get back," says his wife Sioux, who has supervised the home-schooling of their two children and cultivated a garden roughly the same size as the entire green space of my 100-unit condominium complex in Vancouver.
My partner and I don't spend nearly enough time on Quadra to feel like the locals and I am pretty sure my Goretex-and-gumboot outfits do nothing to hide my city slicker status. But I've been coming here for the past seven years and it's where my children and I have staked a modest claim to rural British Columbia as part of our family's evolving story.
