Tofino

Tofino has a laid-back, slightly hippie feel to it and looking at the sea and the mountains made me feel it was not quite real, the beauty was just so intense.

We had a beer at the Tough City Japanese restaurant which has a balcony on the lake, and watched the kayakers coming home and then a boat plane landing, and various swifts and cormorants flying around or in straight lines over the water, and it really was very lovely.

From Tofino you can see Mears Island, and several other islands that recede in layered shadows into the haze of the distance, and it really is incredibly beautiful. The lady in the Coop supermarket where we went to do some shopping said that she lived on Mears Island, and would get a water bus home, and when I read about the island, it is owned by a First Nation and there has been controversy over logging rights awarded by the government. So even in the most idyllic of spots, you get a sense of the complex realities of relationships between indigenous peoples and those who have settled here afterwards.