The hockey action heats up again today and tomorrow with a pair of games, but we enjoyed the quiet days out here playing tourists, watching Pad’s team practice (me anyway) and poking around.
Thursday we went to Salt Spring Island, a 20-minute ferry ride across the strait to what seems to be a haven for the rich, the eccentric and everyone from 1967 who didn’t know where else to go.
Salt Spring is sort of like Muskoka is to Toronto in some ways — the real estate is stupidly expensive and the locals like to regale you with tales of Oprah eating here or Robin Williams having a place on this beach or whatever. With an off season population of about 12,500 that swells to close to 50,000 in the summer, you get the idea. Lots of yachts, lots of chi-chi shops, lots of hippies, man.
But it is undeniably a very nice place and the ferry creates a sense of isolation — which can be good or bad, depending on your perspective. If you have to have your Jag serviced at the dealer, it’s bad. If you are trying to create a little distance between you and Hollywood, it’s good (one supposes.)
Salt Spring has a golf course and tennis clubs and marinas and docks and backcountry hiking and lots of shops to sell you the coolest, hippest things to wear in the hills while you hike.
But one thing it doesn’t have is a rink.
teamoakville 