Bella Bella visits Port Renfrew, B.C.

My goodness, my fuzzy ears do sometimes mis-hear things. I’d thought that Sue and Dave said they were taking me to Holt Renfrew’s downtown (I figured they must be buying me a spiffy new sweater there).

Instead, we embarked on a much longer drive, and a wonderful vacation in Port Renfrew! 

Have you ever been to British Columbia’s capital city, Victoria, on Vancouver Island? Port Renfrew is 110 kilometres west of Victoria, on Highway 14.

The community spreads along the southeastern side of a forested inlet called Port San Juan, at the mouth of the San Juan River. There is a beautiful stretch of beach there, where you can stroll, and even camp.

The inlet was originally called Puerto de San Juan by a Spanish explorer named Manuel Quimper Benítez del Pino, who visited in 1790 aboard a sailing ship called the Princesa Real.

The area had already been inhabited for at least 10,000 years. The Pacheedaht First Nation are a Nuu-chah-nulth people whose ancestors settled here when the great ice-sheets of the last Ice Age melted back from the coast.

 

European homesteaders arrived in the 1880s. The poor guys had trouble with their mail: Port San Juan’s letters and parcels kept being misdirected to the American San Juan Islands. To spare themselves any more headaches, the settlers changed their town’s name to Port Renfrew in 1895.

And why “Renfrew”? Well, it’s said that Baron Renfrew (a traditional title for the heir to the British throne, in this case the future King Edward VII) planned to sponsor Scottish immigrants in the San Juan valley.

Logging began around Port Renfrew in 1906. You can still meet big logging trucks on the road.

Many people now come to the area for the hiking. Two famous hiking trails start in Port Renfrew.

The 75-kilometre-long West Coast Trail was built in 1907 to help sailors whose ships had been wrecked along the western coast of Vancouver Island. Before ships got modern navigational equipment like radar, sonar, or GPS, the coast was so dangerous that it was called The Graveyard of the Pacific. Ouch! At least with the trail, shipwrecked sailors could walk out to safety. 

Now, backpackers use the trail. They plan carefully for the six- to eight-day hike through Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. It’s a really tough trek, but I’m told it’s incredibly rewarding.

The 47-kilometre-long Juan de Fuca Marine Trail is a three- or four-day hike along the southwestern edge of Vancouver Island. This trail began as part of a telegraph line in 1890; the modern trail was inaugurated in 1994. The trail’s westernmost end is at Botanical Beach in Port Renfrew.

There are other shorter hikes near town. I loved the hike along a peaceful trail through Avatar Grove, just north of Port Renfrew across the South Gordon Bridge.

 
 

 

Look up … up …  

… way up!

This is an old-growth stand of trees (one that has been disturbed very little by people), with immense Douglas firs and Western red cedars.

 

This here is said to be the gnarliest tree in Canada! It has a huge burl, where some long-ago stress made the wood’s grain all strange. I swear, this burl looks about the size of an elephant.

At Fairy Lake, a B.C. Forest Service campground, there’s a 35-minute nature trail around the lake.

You know, early fur-traders used to call Port San Juan “Poverty Bay.” They must not have been very good fishermen to feel poor around here: there is a wealth of fishing! 

I went fishing with Mike Hovey of Trailhead Resort & Charters during my stay in Port Renfrew. I’ll tell you all about it in my next post.

Story © S. Clouthier

Photos © S. Clouthier and D. Wei