Do you believe in magic? 

Sorry, let me rephrase that. What do you define as magic? 

For many, there might be a different definition of magic, including Mother Nature. And if I were to guess what she would describe magic as, it would be Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest. Lucky for us, Maple Leaf Adventures has almost 30 years of experience coming here and puts themselves in the path of magic each and every trip.

So what makes this place so magical? Well, it might be that Mother Nature is the magician herself. A pretty bold statement, yes–but when you are hiking the beach and come face to face with coastal seawolves on the same morning you spot three species of whales topped off by the Northern Lights dancing across the sky illuminating the seascapes, mountaintops, and the water below all in the same day, I bet you’d consider this a pretty sweet bag of tricks too. Not to mention this was all before finding the elusive spirit bear and swimming with migrating salmon. Yea, I was questioning if it was real life as well. Every. Single. Day of the trip.

Perhaps we had a guardian spirit on this expedition, and that is very likely so, as this was one of the most spiritually transformative journeys I had ever taken. The trip started off with a blessing from local Indigenous chief, activist, elder, and dear friend of Maple Leaf Adventures, Cecil Paul. Cecil’s traditional territory of which we explored was the Henaaksiala (pronounced Hen-ak-shela). The Henaaksiala people are Haisla, from the Gardner Canal and Kitlope region and Cecil’s Henaaksiala name is Wa’xaid (pronounced Wa-heed). Cecil is getting older now and unable to make the journey with us but luckily Kevin Smith (co-owner of Maple Leaf Adventures) and Cecil are ‘brothers’ of more than 18 years and Kevin was our expedition leader for the trip. Under this special relationship and circumstance, Cecil has given Kevin permission to share some of his teachings and stories throughout the trip. Stories are private property and important cultural artifacts so unless permission has been given, people should not share this special Indigenous history. 

So here we are at the Kitamaat Village harbour (on the Haisla side of Kitimat town) not even left the docks yet, and we meet the man who played an incredibly important role in saving the very areas we were about to explore from logging and industry. What an honour, and what a sendoff for the next 7 days of expedition.

(I could write this entire story just on Cecil but lucky for you, he’s written his own. Check out his book Stories from the Magic Canoe available from Amazon). An incredible read of Indigenous strength and resilience from life at residential school to overcoming alcoholism to then saving the world’s largest intact coastal temperate rainforest.)

I was on this trip as a solo traveller and journalist alongside 18 other wonderful guests from around the world–and I would argue, that no one stepped off Maple Leaf’s new MV Cascadia catamaran the same person they stepped on as. After departing Kitimat, I got acquainted with my rather luxurious room complete with a constantly changing million-dollar-view through big windows three-stories high on the bridge level, king-sized bed, and the rooftop hot tub conveniently located right above with the bar on the level below. It’s safe to say that there is no vessel like her cruising Canada’s west coast and what better company to be sailing her than one with the most environmentally conscious and sustainable values-driven organizations, Victoria, British Columbia’s own Maple Leaf Adventures. One of three vessels belonging to the organization with the first and smallest being a 100+ year-old schooner, the second a refurbished tugboat, and the newest and largest, the MV Cascadia.

Maple Leaf has a long history of conservation, environmental advocacy and land-use planning that, alongside coastal Indigenous communities, activists and environmental organizations, has collectively led to protecting much of the Great Bear Rainforest and saving it from logging. Most recently, they also represented tourism at the Canadian Senate and had a part in successfully implementing Bill C-48–the Great Bear Rainforest oil tanker ban. They are pioneers in Canadian sustainable travel and adhere to the highest ethics and values for protecting our environment while constantly raising the bar for responsibly exploring our coastline.

Every day was whale-mania and nearly every day, we saw countless amounts. At times there were so many whales we had to stop the vessel and just wait until the coast was clear (literally). The hungry humpbacks, fin, and orca whales we saw swim freely in the safe BC central coast waters (free of oil tankers now indefinitely) with few obstacles for them to worry about. Most days there were no other ships around apart from the occasional Alaska cruises that would unfittingly charge through the deserted waters. It was nice to hear though through the bridge that after our boat called into the coastguard advising just how busy it was out there with the cetaceans, the coastguard radioed to the cruise ships to slow down.

Have I mentioned one of my favourite luxuries of our small-ship expedition aboard Cascadia was the rooftop hot tub? Well, it was, and I totally whale watched from the hot tub one day. After I took a ton of photos, I relaxed and watched whales breach in the distance on a perfectly sunny afternoon. While the entire journey was also an experience I’ll never forget, a few key moments stood out from the rest and hot tub whale watching was one of them.

One with the wolves

Early into the trip on an ominously foggy morning, we boarded the tenders and made landfall on a Great Bear Rainforest island in search of wolf tracks–and wolf tracks we found, including the coastal seawolves who made them.

We ventured into the trees on a makeshift hiking trail to see what we could find. Still foggy, the pointy and weathered trees thin and scruffy from years of battering coastal storms pierced into the weather and barely visible in front of us. Moments into our hike, a shaky radio call from a crew member who stayed behind on the beach informed us of a wolf encounter he just had. Green with envy of his experience, we reminisced and carried on until it was our turn. One appeared on a rock above us, looking watchfully above us as we stood in disbelief. Too fast for my camera, it was gone in an instant but a moment in my memory I can picture perfectly to this day. Minutes later, howls from every-which-way around us again through the fog. Talk about eerie. The coastal seawolf residents wanted us to know their presence and who was boss. After we returned to the beach to gather our thoughts and regroup, the wolves had more in store for us. Two coastal seawolves sheepishly crept out of the trees onto the beach, heads down smelling everything around them. We stood around and sat on washed-up logs in disbelief yet again as they walked right up to and past us smelling and curious but showing no signs of aggression. Onwards they went, absolutely speechless we were. This experience was something out of the norm. In Kevin’s 18+ years of coming to the Great Bear Rainforest, he had never encountered an experience like the one we just witnessed alongside him. How lucky were we.

That afternoon we spotted fin whales, humpbacks, and orca to yet again compliment a once-in-a-lifetime day, but that wasn’t all. While myself and others were enjoying an evening soak and glass of wine in the hot tub under a perfectly cloudless night sky painted with unimaginable amounts of stars, there it was. Mother Nature waving her magic wand again, but this time with trails of green and purple. It was the Northern Lights, perhaps our guardian spirits, and a final wave goodbye from the sweet and always gifting Mother Earth complimenting an already unbelievable day.

When the ocean enters the rainforest

Witnessing the circle of life is not something we often get to see but every late August to October, the salmon run reminds us of the ocean’s importance to life on land. I am likely the only guest to bring their wetsuit and snorkelling gear on a Maple Leaf Adventures trip (said to me directly from Kevin himself) but I had a goal of capturing this place in all its beauty above and below the surface. While the rest of the group went on land in search of grizzly bears fishing for salmon, I went in the water with my underwater photography gear, also fishing for salmon. There I was met by something both disgustingly creepy and hauntingly beautiful. As I swam from the ocean into the river mouth transitioning from 8°C saltwater into what felt like minus a million glacier river water, the salmon appeared. What I wasn’t ready for was the sheer amount of ghostly salmon carcasses flowing downstream, some actually hitting me in the face as I swam against the current. I gathered my courage (it was quite creepy, also being alone in there was weird) and held onto a rock as salmon swam all around me, struggling in the currents to get to their spawning grounds. I witnessed eggs floating down the current from a recent spawn and I witnessed the ocean meet the rainforest as alive salmon about to spawn and half-dead, and dead salmon return to Mother Earth after finishing their life duty of growing up in the ocean and spawning in freshwater to then meet their demise. This, however, was not the end of my experience witnessing the circle of life. 

Joined by local Indigenous spirit bear guide, our group spent a day bear viewing. Safely perched on a purposely built platform, we waited for spirit and black bears to come fishing in the river for migrating salmon. It was a long day of testing patience, but it paid off. 

We watched as black bears arrived to pluck the salmon out of the water while feeding their cubs. Chomp chomp, and onto the next one. Nothing is wasted here though as the birds come to finish what the bears didn’t, and the bears finish what the coastal seawolves didn’t. This was the circle of life, the journey of the salmon, and my journey of seeing it come full-circle. But what about our friend the spirit bear? He came alright, and what a treat that was. I was fortunate enough to get a one-on-one experience upstream with our spirit bear guide as both a spirit and black bear fished just meters away. Wow. I wanted to see a spirit bear, but this was better than I could have ever dreamed of. (And speaking of dreams, I have a knack for dreaming these situations while on projects like these and then having them come true. Call it a premonition or what you will, but I told our group about my manta ray dream at Misool earlier that year and it coming true so when they found out I had a dream of seeing a spirit bear while on the boat a couple of days before our bear viewing day, they were jokingly excited.)

Uncharted territory

Have you ever been in literal uncharted territory? Until this trip, I hadn’t either but Cascadia’s new custom-built tenders allowed us to go places where few people have been before!

Our Garmin was no use here because today, we were exploring island coastlines and bays that were not mapped and no depths were recorded. With Jonny the rock spotter on the bow, Kevin navigated the channels while I yelled rock or log–port or starboard safely getting us deeper and deeper into the tree-shrouded channels until a big jolt and grinding crunch sound erupted and BOOM–I missed one. Just a little chip on the prop, nothing to worry about here! Oops. Did I ever tell you the story of when I accidentally sunk my parent’s boat? Yea, I didn’t tell Kevin that story either. As the tide was getting lower, we turned around before it would no longer be possible. What an adventure! The fog was rolling in from the west though and it was time to find the mothership (MV Cascadia) for another exquisite lunch prepared by our chef while Cascadia navigated to our next excursion– a beautiful beach you’d never guess was even in Canada. That night we had a beach fire, saw a magical sunset and had s’more which were definitely a novelty for those guests not from Canada.

A Spiritual Journey Continued

This part of the journey is still hard to put in words and some of it I can’t physically put here unless we converse over a glass of wine or beer one day. Here we venture into one of Canada’s longest fjords which is also home to the largest intact coastal temperate rainforest in the world – the Kitlope Conservancy. Remember our friend and brother Cecil? This was once his home until the Indian Affairs representative found his parents hiding him here and then took him off to residential school in the 1940s. This was also once home to a community of over 8000 Xenaksiala people before most of them died of smallpox. This fjord is mixed with silty runoff from ancient glaciers above, some so close you feel like you could hike to them in a few hours. The runoff from the ancient ice above mixes with seawater giving it a turquoise-green colour that looks like something out of New Zealand more than Canada. Cascadia cut through the glass-smooth waters where it was literally only us in this dramatic glacial-carved fjord. All around us was evidence of tectonic movements and ice age formations making up what I can confidently say was one of the top three most beautiful places I’ve ever been in the world. 

Zigzaging through the fjord, Cascadia navigated the constantly changing passage until we came to our first point of interest and one that would tell a story deeper than anyone could comprehend. Pictographs. Evidence of the Henaaksiala people who once occupied this area in large numbers and from which they survived on its “bank”. Cecil describes the Kitlope as a bank, and his people and visitors only withdraw the interest and never the principal. The food that swims the sea, the trees that clean the air, the animals that walk the land–these are the principal and interest in the Kitlope’s bank, never to be withdrawn unsustainably. The interest can be harvested ethically, but never the principal.

We carried on next to cascading waterfalls from which we could see their sources in the glaciers above. These were responsible for the waters below whose colour no Pantone could name. Finally, we reached the end where we then broke off in the tenders and into the river estuary. We made landfall and splashed our faces on the river’s edge in a traditional cleansing practice from the cleanest waters most of us would ever touch and it was here that we learnt of Cecil’s discovery. Amongst these massive old-growth cedars, douglas firs, and sitka spruce’s, he found the orange logging tape–the last and largest remaining intact coastal temperate rainforest in the world was about to be logged. It is here that Cecil started his journey to save this place which he successfully did, and you can read about this in the Stories from the Magic Canoe book. As we departed the estuary towards the ship anchored in the distance, Kevin had one more story for us and it was about the G’psgolox replica totem pole that stood high in front of us. This totem also has a story of its own. We were looking at a replica because the original was stolen and taken to a museum in Sweden in the 1920s. Through hard work, fundraising and advocacy, Cecil had a part in its return to their territory as well. 

For those of you reading this who know me personally, if you ask me, I may tell you the story of this pole and the dancing devil’s club plant. My spiritual journey on this trip is largely made up of an experience that I cannot write about but I would be happy to tell you in person if we have the chance to chat. 

As the trip was nearing an end, the last two days were made up of experiences largely similar to the first 5 days and right until the last moment possible, we explored this special part of the world with curious eyes and guides who took us to places they had sometimes not been to themselves. Cascadia’s new custom-made tenders allowed us to go places they never went before which is what we did even on the last day before our evening flight back to Vancouver from Terrace. 

A massive thanks to Maple Leaf Adventures for hosting me on this trip and to Beattie Tartan PR group for aligning this opportunity. This is a sustainable travel experience that I will write about for years to come and remember for the rest of my life.