Andrew Findlay’s family strolls down the boardwalk in Bamfield, a tiny town on the remote outer coast of Vancouver Island.Andrew Findlay/The Globe and Mail
There’s a cold plunge, and then there’s a cold plunge in the North Pacific on a summer weekend. My family and I have been in Bamfield, a tiny town on the remote outer coast of Vancouver Island, for only a day, and already we’re beyond our collective comfort zone.
An hour earlier, we were clad in thick wetsuits and snorkelling in a kelp forest off Aguilar Point with our host, Scott Wallace. Now, we’re stripped to bathing suits and following Wallace down a steep gully in flip-flops, lowering hand over hand on a fixed rope that leads to a hidden surge channel. When the tide is right, a natural rock-rimmed cauldron carved by waves from the black igneous shore rock forms a perfect plunge pool.
“Two minutes. Let’s see if we can do it,” Wallace says, sinking up to his ears in the bracing eight-degree water.
Guests take the Pacific Ocean plunge off Aguilar Point.Andrew Findlay/The Globe and Mail
The promise of the outdoor jacuzzi at his nearby Pacific Sounds Lodge gives us strength.
If a piece of topography can encapsulate the history of place, then for Bamfield you can do no better than Aguilar Point. Centuries before Royal Navy surveyor Captain George Richards sailed past in 1861 and named the headland after his 2nd officer, Henry Aguilar, this strategic spot with panoramic views of the open Pacific and Barkley Sound sheltered a village known as Ootsuu-a.
“It means something like ‘container filled with water on rock,’” says Wallace, a former David Suzuki Foundation research scientist who switched gears three years ago when he bought the lodge and got into ecotourism.
In the dark days of winter, the population of Bamfield, an isolated community of fishermen and the nearby Huu-ay-aht First Nation village of Anacla, is less than 400. In summer it swells to the thousands, with tourists staying at fishing lodges, hiking the West Coast Trail or taking in the ambience of a West Coast outpost. University students enrolled at the marine sciences centre inject a youthful vibe.
The tiny community is divided by an inlet near the mouth of Barkley Sound. The road from Port Alberni, 90 kilometres to the north, ends at East Bamfield, where there’s a grocery store, a boat repair shop, guest lodges, private homes and the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre. In West Bamfield, reachable only by boat, a boardwalk links the Coast Guard station to the post office, a restaurant and fishing lodges. A dirt road disappears into the rain forest leading to Brady’s Beach, a popular picnic spot, and more secluded residences.
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In the early 1900s, when there was no road here at all, Bamfield was selected as the eastern terminus for the 6,400-kilometre trans-Pacific telegraph cable. Beginning in 1902, messages crackled to life at the Pacific Cable Board Cable Station, where in 1930 an Australian named Bruce Scott took a job. He acquired property on Aguilar Point and built a cabin, renovating and enlarging it over the years.
Eventually, it became Aguilar House, one of the first guest lodges in Bamfield. It would see many upgrades and owners over the years including, now, Wallace, who renamed it Pacific Sounds Lodge to reflect his love of music and the coastal environment.
Towelled off and changed after our cold plunge-jacuzzi combo at the lodge, we listen to the music of the ocean swell and the throaty squawk of a raven. Later that day we stroll down to the boardwalk. It’s buzzing. Water taxis, skiffs, sport fishing boats, sea kayaks and inflatables shuttle back and forth along Bamfield Inlet, the community’s busy maritime main street. A group of tourists weigh their salmon catch on a private dock. The sea has been good to them today. Beers in hand, they watch as their guide does the dirty work of gutting and filleting.
A sea urchin harvested from the cove in front of Pacific Sounds Lodge.Andrew Findlay/The Globe and Mail
Over at the Wreckage, a fun open-air restaurant, the late lunch crowd fills the tables and chatter competes with the hiss of the espresso machine. Owner Amanda Vos grew up in Port Alberni but spent her summers camping and playing at Pachena Bay, a beautiful crescent sand beach a 10-minute drive from here. She moved to Bamfield full-time in 2014.
“The town was kind of depressed back then,” she says.
Locals blame the slump on Jack Purdy, a stock promoter and businessman who started buying properties in Bamfield in the 1990s. He collected real estate that included hotels, raw land, houses and other properties. But Purdy rarely, if ever, did anything with any of it. In 2016, the Huu-ay-aht First Nation bought a package of 11 Purdy properties in a bankruptcy sale, including the Bamfield Motel, the Kingfisher Lodge and Marina and Ostrom’s Lodge. It was like a new lease on economic life for the Huu-ay-aht and Bamfield as a whole.
For a long time, remoteness was both Bamfield’s charm and its curse. Driving here was not for the faint of heart. However, in 2023, the notorious Bamfield road, which could almost rattle an RV to pieces, was chip sealed, the next best thing to asphalt.
“It used to be a badge of honour to drive that road. Now anybody can do it,” says Rose Janelle, who manages the tiny Post Office. “I just sold my truck.”
Late in the day we meet up with Scott once again and follow him along the rocky shoreline between Aguilar Point and Brady’s Beach. A bald eagle perches regally atop a cedar snag. A harbour seal pokes its whiskered mug above the water. A black bear, foraging for seafood, scuttles into the rain forest. The sea is glassy, lulled by a lazy swell.
Wallace stops, crouches and peers into a tidepool. Green sea anemones compete with sea stars, limpets, barnacles and sea urchins for rock surface. Life is layered upon life in this mesmerizing marine world in miniature. Earlier in his biology career, Wallace taught coastal ecology at the site of the lodge he now owns, when it hosted the U.S.-based School for Field Studies. I can tell that walking along the shoreline never gets old for him.
“I started my career poking around tidepools and now it’s something I get to do with guests,” he says, before standing up and nonchalantly overturning a rock with the toe of his rubber boot.
Cover blown, a small army of tiny crab scatters in all directions, and we continue our wanderings.
If you go
By car: On Vancouver Island take Highway 4 to Port Alberni. From Port Alberni, follow signs for Bamfield via Franklin River Road and Bamfield Road.
By boat: Book passage on the MV Frances Barkley from Port Alberni with Lady Rose Marine.
Pacific Sounds Lodge is a peaceful base for exploring. It offers guided sea kayak tours, wildlife viewing boat trips, beach and rainforest walks and cultural interpretive excursions with Huu-ay-aht First Nation knowledge keepers. All-inclusive stays start at $2,950 a person for a three-night minimum.
More accommodation options can be found on the town’s website: visitbamfield.ca
The Bamfield Wreckage is the heart of the boardwalk, with great espresso, cocktails, beers on tap, a seasonally changing menu and live music events.
The writer was a guest of Pacific Sounds Lodge. It did not review or approve the story before publication.
