In Tofino, exploring towering trees in old-growth forests was a moment to remember | Canada Voices

I was pretty sure I’d messed up. So far, my sons, Victor, 9, and Desmond, 13, had been cheerfully leading the way through the old-growth forest of Meares Island, a 10-minute boat ride from Tofino, on the west coast of Vancouver Island. We’d stopped at the base of the Tree of Life, to look up – waaaay up – to the crown of this venerable Western red cedar, as tall as a 14-storey building. Farther along, we’d marvelled at the Hanging Garden, which is actually four trees grown into one, swaddled in lichen and sword ferns, and estimated to be 1,500 years old.

But after another kilometre, the rough boardwalk of hand-split cedar through the Big Tree Trail came to an abrupt end, and the path turned muddy and wild.

Glimpsing a brightening in the forest, I followed a narrow path, hoping to find the stretch of shore where we’d been dropped off earlier that afternoon. But there was no pier, just an expanse of tidepools and driftwood. A glance at my phone showed no bars, a battery percentage in the single digits and white space where the map should have been.

I was just beginning to think about the island’s resident population of black bears and sea wolves when I heard Dez shout: “Dad, I’ve found the trail!” He pointed to a wooden plank, propped up against the roots of a spruce tree, and clearly lettered with the words: “Return to Boat.” Twenty minutes of fast hiking later, we were back at the pier, where First Nations elder Moses Martin was waiting for us behind the wheel of his 24-foot Harbercraft.

As far as I was concerned, we’d achieved the main goal of the summer: My kids had seen some real trees. I grew up in British Columbia, but Erin and our boys are Quebeckers. They’ve gotten used to me telling them the maple woods of the east – while they’re fine for sleigh rides and sugar shacks – lack the grandeur of the Pacific rainforest. Given the ravages of heat domes, atmospheric rivers, wildfires and industrial logging, part of me feared that what old-growth forest remained out west would soon be gone. At least once, I wanted Dez and Vic to get up close to the Douglas firs, Sitka spruces and cedars whose majesty had moved me to silent wonder when I was a teenager.

As it turned out, thanks to Martin, our Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations guide, the boys were going to get something even more memorable out of this trip.

Our first stop had been at the Malahat Skywalk, northwest of Victoria, a wooden tower that spirals upward to offer a vertiginous panorama of the crook-legged Saanich Inlet. The experience began in the right spirit, with a stroll along a wooden causeway through a landscape of Garry oak and arbutus trees. But the boys were clearly more interested in taking advantage of the spiral slide at the centre of the tower, which sent them corkscrewing earthward from the height of a six-storey building.

It was only after leaving the concrete spine of the Island Highway, north of Parksville, that things started to feel really wild. The Pacific Rim Highway, which runs east and west, took us past snow-capped peaks, lakeshores and sheer cliff-faces, before veering northwest parallel to the Pacific coast. By then, we’d entered a raw and ragged biome: The moss draped over tree branches looked like seaweed over the booms of sea-changed galleons, and roadside signs pointed the way to a tsunami evacuation route. When a local radio DJ began to offer advice on how to survive a bear encounter, Dez and Vic really started showing interest in their surroundings.

In Tofino, B.C., which has become a victim of its own popularity, the only room we could find at short notice was in a motel across the road from Chesterman Beach. The boys got into the spirit of things. We lined up with surfers and paddleboarders for halibut tacos at Wildside Grill, combed the beaches for shells and driftwood, and had a memorable brunch in the ocean-facing dining room of the Wickaninnish Inn, a resort famous for winter-storm watching.

I tried to stay focused on the main mission. I took them to the Rainforest Trail, a hiking loop off the Pacific Rim Highway. We were immediately plunged into an exuberantly green world, where hemlock saplings and huckleberry rose from nurse logs; the profusion of moss and ferns made it feel like we were walking on the ocean floor. I tried to impress them by pointing out a Western red cedar that had started growing around the time Marco Polo was meeting the Kublai Khan in the late 13th century.

“Yawn,” said Dez, “it’s pretty beautiful.” Erin joined in the teasing: “Nice,” she agreed, “but I don’t know if it’s as beautiful as Quebec.”

But all sarcasm vanished in the time we left Tofino and crossed the waters of Clayoquot Sound to Meares Island. As the serpentine boardwalk led from one towering cedar to another, the boys fell silent, their gazes following furrows and involutions of red bark skyward. We lingered over the Standing Harvest Tree, whose soft inner bark the Nuu-chah-nulth people stripped to make tunics, blankets and even diapers, without killing the tree. Dez and Vic weren’t going to admit it to their father, but I could tell they were impressed, even awed.

It turned out what would really stick with them, though, was the gently commanding presence of our guide. Martin is the former elected chief of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation. With his sons, he runs Clayoquot Wild, which offers a water-taxi service to Meares Island, as well as cultural and wilderness tours of the area. Martin, who is in his 80s, didn’t feel comfortable guiding us through the forest, but he agreed to tack on a circumnavigation of the island.

Perched on his swivelling captain’s chair, Martin scanned the horizon for wildlife. He ran us out to offshore rocks dripping with harbour seals and cut the motors so we could drift past two dozen sea otters who, hands linked, formed a convivial raft. In the boat’s cabin, the boys soaked up stories that made the landscape come alive. Martin showed us where he’d witnessed the birth of a baby orca, and pointed out the patch of shorefront where he and his brother had stared into the shining eyes of a man-shaped giant, one they were pretty sure was a sasquatch. We cruised past the totem poles of Opitsaht, the village where he’d grown up.

As we motored past the site of the residential school that Martin had been forced to attend from the age of seven, Dez and Vic listened intently to his stories of trying to survive on rotten vegetables, and receiving daily beatings. As one of only about a dozen people still fluent in the central dialect of Nuu-chah-nulth, he was now teaching school kids the language the priests had forbidden him from speaking.

Then Martin took us to C’isaqis, a crescent-shaped bay on the southeast shore of Meares Island. It was here, he explained, that he and 200 members of his nation, including 50 children, camped on the shore in the winter of 1983. He described the stand-off with loggers carrying power saws, who’d come to turn the great cedars into thousands of board feet of lumber, as RCMP helicopters circled in the air.

“This is where we drew the line,” Martin told the boys. The Meares blockade succeeded, and the Big Tree Trail is now part of an officially protected tribal park, and the largest unbroken patch of old-growth forest on Vancouver Island.

As we headed back to Tofino, Erin and I expressed our gratitude to Martin for sharing his stories with us. I knew today’s experiences had broken through their skepticism: Dez and Vic would never forget the towering trees they’d seen the day we got lost in the rainforest. Just as importantly, thanks to Martin, they’d learned why those trees were still standing.

If you go

Clayoquot Wild offers a water-taxi service to Meares Island for $40 return per passenger. They also offer longer tours (six hours) to Nismaakqin Park, where visitors can soak in natural hot springs, go whale-watching and take wildlife tours of Clayoquot Sound. clayoquotwild.com

The Wickaninnish Inn hosted the family for a meal. It did not review or approve this article. Stories are based on merit; The Globe does not guarantee coverage.