Newsletter: July 2026 – Seeing Canada with Fresh Eyes
After three years, thirteen countries, four continents, countless cafés, and more Airbnbs than I can remember, I wondered one thing as our plane touched down in Victoria:
Would Canada still feel like an adventure?
How do you return after wandering medieval Sicilian villages, admiring the Big Five up close on African safaris, and watching waves crash against the Irish Atlantic coast?
The answer surprised me.
Little June — Slowing Down with the Locals
As I write this beside the front window of the cafe, Little June, in the Fernwood area of downtown Victoria, watching people stroll past with dogs, bicycles, and grocery bags, I can’t help smiling. It’s a wonderful feeling to sit in a coffee shop while others sip their coffees and read a book.
Little June isn’t remarkable because it’s trendy. It’s remarkable because nobody seems to be in a hurry. It reminds me of our slow travel days in Europe. Not because it looks European, but because it shares the same unhurried rhythm.
Happy Birthday Canada!
It felt special to visit the downtown Victoria harbour front area for Canada Day.
Victoria BC’s Inner Harbour remains one of my favourite waterfronts anywhere in Canada. Floatplanes threaded effortlessly between sailboats, paddleboards, kayaks and water taxis, whose captains seem wonderfully convinced everyone else should move first.
Remarkably, they do.
Across the harbour, music drifted from the stage in front of the Parliament buildings while thousands wandered the waterfront with lawn chairs, ice cream cones and enough sunscreen to survive a solar flare.
Sunny summer days in Victoria, BC are glorious. Not too hot, not too cold… just right.
For a few hours, everyone seemed happy to just wander the harbour front area, and I even bumped into a couple of friends! I like how “small town-ish” Victoria can be!
Perhaps that’s Victoria’s secret. Yes, it’s beautiful, but it’s also a city that encourages people to slow down. After three years of travelling, that lesson felt wonderfully familiar.
As Courtney, her mom and I wandered around on Canada Day, it reminded me of the things I truly love about Vancouver Island—the uniquely Canadian merchants and businesses, but mostly the time prioritizing family and friends.
Sometimes it’s enough to find a patch of grass, listen to live music, and watch the planes land.
The Joy of Time with Friends and Family
After months of coordinating plans across continents and time zones, seeing family and friends became wonderfully simple again. Those ordinary moments suddenly felt extraordinary.
We were equally fortunate with our Airbnb. Anyone who has travelled long enough knows Airbnb photography often can be misleading. Apparently, every apartment is “bright and spacious,” every balcony overlooks “wonderful views”, and every living room comfortably seats twelve.
Reality doesn’t always agree. This time it did. Our Fernwood home with three bedrooms and three bathrooms on two floors feels almost extravagant. The obvious solution? Invite friends over.
One evening, M. and P. joined us for what we confidently described as “a quick barbecue.” As the minutes flew by, nobody stopped to look at a watch. Three and a half hours later, we were still chatting around the table. Somewhere during our years in Sicily, we adopted a new philosophy: Dinner wasn’t the event, conversation was. Without realizing it, we’d brought a little piece of Sicily home with us.
Our Visit to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
I’ve always believed the best art galleries don’t necessarily teach you something while you’re inside them—but they can change how you see the world after you leave.
That happened during an afternoon at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.
Three years of travelling didn’t turn us into museum snobs. If anything, it had the opposite effect. We stopped searching for famous galleries and started appreciating intimate ones.
The gallery invites you to linger rather than rush. Instead of checking masterpieces off a list, you slow down, read the artist’s story, step back, and look again.
That’s how Courtney and I discovered the work of E.J. Hughes. After watching a documentary about his life, we quickly became fans. Hughes lived a simple life near Shawnigan Lake, only minutes from the farm where I lived for ten years. His colourful landscapes suddenly connected my own memories with places I’d known for a decade.
Walking back outside, I noticed everything differently—The twisting branches of Garry oaks, the moss creeping across old stone walls, and the afternoon light filtering through the trees. Maybe that’s what great art does—It doesn’t change the world, it changes the way we look at it.
I’ve begun to learn that life just looks better after having just viewed some fantastic artwork.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Craigdarroch Castle
One warm evening, we rode our bicycles, camping chairs and all, over to Craigdarroch Castle where we settled onto the sprawling lawns of Victoria BC’s oldest castle for an outdoor performance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. It was part of the Greater Victoria Shakespeare Festival, a long-standing summertime event.
I’ll admit, my expectations were cautious. Shakespeare has a reputation for being something we’re supposed to admire more than enjoy. Thankfully, this production ignored that reputation completely.
As the sun disappeared behind the castle’s turrets, hundreds of people settled onto blankets with picnic baskets and folding chairs. Then the actors appeared, and within minutes, any concern about understanding four-hundred-year-old English disappeared.
The cast embraced every absurd twist with infectious energy. Puck delighted in creating chaos, the actors were hilariously awkward when needed in various scenes, and the audience laughed from beginning to end.
The final puppet show was a comedic masterpiece where we all laughed as the whimsical story continued to build with a playful absurdity.
Then, the shifting evening light quietly transformed the play until even the castle itself became part of the performance. Its stone walls glowed beneath the soft lights of the moon which made the last sequence with the moon and castle references even more poignant.
By the final curtain, even as one actor played the role of the wall herself, I realized I’d just spent two hours without wondering what time it was. That may be the highest compliment I can give any performance.
Old Trails, New Discoveries
Many Victorians still call it Mount Doug but its original SENĆOŦEN name—PKOLS (pronounced P-cawls)—has rightly returned to the map. It feels appropriate. A mountain this old has carried many stories, and perhaps it’s fitting that one of its oldest names has found its way home again.
I’ve climbed PKOLS more times than I can count, so I assumed I knew the mountain well.
I was wrong. The difference wasn’t the trail, it was my hiking partner. I’ve known my friend R. for nearly ten years, and friendships have a way of changing over time. Early on, conversations revolve around dating, careers, ambitions, and trying to figure life out.
A decade later, the conversations deepen as we try to understand where our futures are headed, with the occasional interruption by birdsong, footsteps, or simply admiring the view.
Somewhere along the way, silence stops feeling awkward and starts feeling earned. R. knows the PKOLS mountain the way only a local can. Not just the marked trails, but the hidden ones.
At one point he disappeared down what looked suspiciously like “not a trail.”
“Trust me,” he said.
History has taught me those two words can lead to spectacular scenery. He led me along a winding rock-lined path, and a few minutes later, we stepped onto a rocky ridge lined with twisted arbutus trees, overlooking the Strait of Georgia and the distant Gulf Islands. There were no fences, viewing platforms, or signs pointing the way—just one of those quiet places that somehow escapes the guidebooks.
Every local seems to know somewhere like this—a hidden beach, a favourite trail, or a viewpoint only shared with friends. As we sat overlooking the water eating our lunch, I realized R. wasn’t showing me the mountain—he was showing me his mountain.
There’s a difference.
"The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend." Roberton Davies
A Roadtrip = Adventure
As we drove up Island, our plan was simple: explore the area called the Cowichan Valley to rediscover some of the old spots we used to visit during the early days of dating.
We started with a visit to Drumroaster Coffee, one of my favourite coffee shops I had been to countless times when I lived in Mill Bay. I was a bit shocked and pleasantly surprised to realize the friends I met there remembered me and were happy to see me again. They were even curious about our three years of travels.
The day truly unfolded like a stroll down memory lane. Cowichan Bay has never been a place that encourages rushing. Long before “slow living” became fashionable, this little waterfront village had already embraced it. Independent shops, local food, fishing boats and waterfront cafés all seem to share the same philosophy:
Slow down.
We wandered through a beautiful pottery studio called the Mud Room Clayworks and then explored Radway Studio, a unique shop that sells handmade items, including my favourite soap from Saltspring Island. Afterwards, we strolled the marina where fishing boats gently rocked at their docks while seals patrolled below, patiently waiting for an easy meal.
We continued on our way to a roadside farm wagon I’d visited many times for eggs and fresh farm food. This time we bought some of their Shepherd’s Pie! No staff. No cash register. Just fresh shepherd’s pie, an honesty box, and the comforting assumption that people will do the right thing. There is something wonderfully Canadian about buying food on the honour system.
A little farther along, another sign tempted us to stop at Cowichan Station Creamery. I’d like to say we pulled in for the artisan sheep’s cheese vending machine, but the truth?
It was the donkeys.
Within moments, Courtney was introducing herself as though they’d been expecting us all afternoon. The donkeys seemed equally interested, wandering over to inspect us while we laughed at how quickly our schedule had been delayed. Eventually, we remembered we were standing outside a creamery. Naturally, we left with considerably more cheese than we’d planned to buy. That seems to happen surprisingly often.
A few kilometres later, blackberry bushes lined the roadside. We promised ourselves we’d pick “just enough” to make some blackberry jam. Twenty minutes later, our fingers were stained purple, I’d eaten nearly half our harvest in the name of “quality control,” and our container was somehow still only half full.
Blackberries in late July taste like Vancouver Island.
Locals know these sweet berries quietly remind us that the Island provides. They’re one of those simple pleasures that locals almost stop noticing.
By early evening, we found ourselves winding down the road toward Genoa Bay. If Cowichan Bay encourages you to slow down, Genoa Bay practically insists upon it.
The marina appeared around the final corner, tucked beneath forested hillsides, with sailboats gently rocking in the calm water below. Perched above sits The Genoa Bay Café, one of those rare places where the food competes with the view. As we sat patiently for our meal, we watched a blue heron also patiently waiting for its dinner, while the evening light settled across the harbour and boats.
As I looked back on the day, I couldn’t help smiling.
We’d left home for a simple day trip.
Ten hours later, we had wandered through a fishing village, bought shepherd’s pie from an honour-system farm stand, fell in love with a pair of donkeys, filled our cooler with local cheese, stained our fingers purple picking blackberries, and finished the day overlooking one of the most beautiful marinas on Vancouver Island.
Summer Folk Festival and Sights in Victoria
One of the joys of summer in Victoria is that there always seems to be an event or live music somewhere.
One evening, we joined thousands for the Victoria Folk Music Festival, where children danced barefoot, strangers shared patches of shade, and nobody seemed particularly concerned about the schedule.
The highlight was Chantal Kreviazuk. Between songs she shared the stories behind the music, making familiar lyrics feel unexpectedly personal. By the time she sat alone at the piano to perform “Leaving on a Jet Plane”, the audience was quietly singing along. After three years of airports, boarding passes, and goodbyes, those lyrics carried a little more weight than they once had. Sometimes a song finds you at exactly the right moment.
Hiking can also bring you to a place at exactly the right moment! That’s how we discovered the two bald eagles resting on the shoreline just outside of Oak Bay. Courtney’s patience and ninja moves got her a front row seat, as we spent nearly 30 minutes admiring and photographing two majestic bald eagles.
Looking Back on July
Before we left Canada three years ago, I thought adventure lived somewhere else: across an ocean, behind another passport stamp, or somewhere far from home. July challenged that idea.
This month wasn’t defined by bucket-list destinations or once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Instead, it was filled with simple moments that somehow became unforgettable memories: attending a baseball game with our good friends M. and P., with our deep conversations only paused by a cheering crowd or a fantastic play on the field, or discovering a coffee shop we’d walked past for years, lingering over a barbecue that lasted well into the evening, laughing through Shakespeare beneath the towers of Craigdarroch Castle, following a friend to a hidden ridge on PKOLS, turning a routine dentist appointment into an all-day adventure, picking blackberries until our fingers turned purple, cycling familiar trails, seeing films with friends M. and D. and S. and even having a friend open up his house for a film night, (thanks H.!) or the memory I have of Courtney and I cycling and then sitting silently near two bald eagles overlooking the Pacific. It was something special to be able to sit just metres away from 2 fascinating bald eagles.
None of those moments required a boarding pass.
They simply required us to notice them and then decide to participate. Showing up in life really is what makes the difference, and it’s something I continually learn from Courtney, with her determination to show up again and again.
After three years of travelling, perhaps that’s the greatest gift we’ve brought home. The world hasn’t suddenly become more interesting. I’ve just become better at noticing it, thanks to our travels, but mainly to Courtney who really takes the time needed to enjoy each moment we are offered in life.
That realization has changed the way I travel—but more importantly, it’s changed the way I try to live, so that each day I can say, “Yes, I showed up.”
Showing up, I’m learning, really is the key to living a good life.
