First Impressions

We are settling in to island life and getting accustomed to new patterns. In this blog, I share three lessons of living on Galiano Island that we have come upon in our first two weeks of residence.

Lesson #1: It’s all about the view! John thought our love affair with the view might be temporary but it seems that he may be wrong. We are so smitten with the outlook, the changing weather, the wildlife that we can see from our decks and our living room, and watching the ferries, sailboats, and other watercraft go by. It’s a never boring vista and we feel very privileged to have this opportunity to enjoy it. It’s a very different thing to have one’s attention focused outside the house rather than inside. We are frequently called to John’s scope or our binoculars to see what is going on out there. This afternoon while we were doing a carpentry project, John heard a blow and we immediately ran to the scope and I grabbed the binoculars and, sure enough, there was a pod of about four orca swimming through Active Pass right in front of our house. So incredibly beautiful… but then the giant ferry was bearing down on them and we were worried. The captain announced the presence of the pod and every single person on the ferry was lined up outside looking for the whales and the ferry passed on the other side of the pod so they were out of danger. Phew!

Lesson #2: It’s also all about the ferries! This should not come as a surprise but it is still different when you are confronted with the reality that we are beholden to ferry schedules. We don’t need to leave the island that much but there are various needs that cannot be met here such as renewing a drivers license or looking at appliances or going to Whole Foods. It turns out it is both cheaper and easier to get to Victoria on Vancouver Island than it is to get to Vancouver on the mainland, even though the latter is closer. The ferries are more expensive to Vancouver and they are frequently booked up for the evening return trip to Galiano making it risky to hope to get on without a reservation. Therefore, our trips off the island, which we expect will be once every other week, will be to Victoria, which John prefers anyway. Vancouver feels to him like “the big city,” whereas Victoria is a more accessible metropolitan area and includes many memories of his time as a college student at University of Victoria and is where his family settled when they left East Africa in the early ’80’s.

Lesson #3: Island manners and island vibe. Our lovely neighbor, Kate, who is turning out to be my very able guide to the island and its folk, told me on a recent hike that people here do not like to have anyone come onto their property uninvited. I had already wandered up a driveway and knocked on someone’s front door before she told me this – nobody answered though dogs did bark protectively. Given that I do this all the time in the city, this prohibition had not occurred to me as I think of it as a neighborly thing. So now I am informed and will stick to phone and text or running into people at the Saturday farmers market or at the bakery.

There is a very relaxed feel being on an island. The traffic is minimal and since we are at the very end of a gravel road, nobody at all comes by our house. When we do go into the town for a coffee or pastry, as we do pretty much every morning, sometimes on our bikes and sometimes in the truck, there is also a very nice feel. Those working at the two bakeries already recognize us. We are getting to know people’s names. We’ve seen live music twice already, once a jam session in a basement (photo below) and once a performance at the outdoor performance space. There are people coming onto the island every day to bike, hike, or fish but it still feels like a very private and special place to us.