In B.C., the biggest sights include massive ancient trees. Here’s how tourism can prove they’re ‘worth more standing’
Barb Sligl
Aug 14, 2021
As a Vancouverite, I can commune with big trees easily. Stanley Park is practically my backyard and a short stroll takes me to soaring Sitka spruce, Western red cedars and Douglas firs. The 405-hectare park’s establishment in 1887 kept these ancient beauties standing amid urban development. But just across the Georgia Strait, Vancouver Island is home to entire forests of these beautiful behemoths. For now.
It’s still possible to see swaths of big trees there. Less than an hour’s drive from the Nanaimo ferry terminal is Cathedral Grove in MacMillan Provincial Park, home to Douglas firs more than 800 years old. I have to crane my neck to gaze up, up, up into their crowns and stretch my arms wide to span barely one-fifth of one tree’s circumference. It’s humbling and heartbreaking.
Heartbreaking because just 3 per cent of British Columbia’s remaining old-growth forests sustain such large trees. These ecosystems are known as the “white rhino” of old-growth forests: Once cut down, they’re gone. That’s why logging protests are ongoing, especially in the Fairy Creek area near Port Renfrew.
But despite a ramped-up RCMP presence, rather than dissuading visitors, these protests bring awareness and actually boost tourism, says Ken Wu, co-founder of the Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA) and executive director of the Endangered Ecosystem Alliance (EEA). He brings up the infamous blockades around Tofino during the 1980s and ’90s. “The protests were rocket fuel for the whole tourism sector,” he says.
“With every arrest, the local economy brings in a whole lot more dollars because everybody wants to see this amazing place,” adds Wu. The AFA has literally put B.C.’s big trees on the map, with directions and easy-access boardwalks, drawing tourists from everywhere to sights like “Canada’s Gnarliest Tree” in Avatar Grove, the San Juan Spruce, the Red Creek Fir and Big Lonely Doug, as well as evocatively named areas like Jurassic Grove and Eden Grove.
Port Renfrew has also become a model for how a small logging town reinvented itself as the Tall Trees Capital of Canada. “The centre of the old-growth revolution for the past 10 years has been Port Renfrew,” says Wu. “I think it’s a catalyst to help protect old-growth [forests] across the province.” His long list of places to see ancient trees in B.C. ranges from the Giant Cedars Boardwalk in Mount Revelstoke National Park to my beloved Tatlow and Lovers trails in Stanley Park.
But Vancouver Island has most of the accessible big-tree destinations considered “classics,” including Cathedral Grove and Rathtrevor Beach Provincial Park near Parksville, where you can camp among the giant old-growth. On the west coast, the Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park and Pacific Rim National Park Reserve have some of the biggest trees, says Wu, “and the very biggest tree in the country is there: the Cheewhat Giant.”
To get to this colossal Western red cedar, also said to be one of the largest trees in the world, intrepid hikers follow a remote trail that goes from second-growth into old-growth forest before reaching the giant — 56 metres tall and 6 metres wide, with total timber equal to 450 telephone poles.
In the same Pacific Rim National Park Reserve but less far-flung, just off the Pacific Rim Highway, are two 1-kilometre boardwalk loops offering a similar sensory immersion. On the Rainforest Trail, I behold the enormity of the surrounding trees, hear the chirp of birds and gurgle of streams, inhale cedar and hemlock and even taste the tang of ocean from the stretch of Long Beach just beyond the forest’s fringe.
From the shores of Tofino itself, a 10-minute water-taxi ride to Meares Island takes big-tree seekers to the Big Tree Trail boardwalk, which culminates at the Hanging Garden. This massive Western red cedar, which seems to sprout an entire microcosm of plant life, feels as sacred as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The Hanging Garden is thought to be more than 1,000 years old, making it one of the oldest trees on the planet.
It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that recent economic studies have found that old-growth forests have much greater value than just logging, from greater tourism and recreation to carbon offsets, water quality and fisheries. “There are so many different reasons why, economically, we need to keep the ancient forests standing, let alone, obviously, for biodiversity and to help avert the climate crisis,” says Wu. “And also, of course, for First Nations cultures — these are their unceded territories.”
Back near Port Renfrew, Avatar Grove is the popular nickname for T’l’oqwxwat, as the forest is known by the Pacheedaht First Nation. A two-year campaign led by the AFA with the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce secured its protection by the B.C. government in 2012.
It’s now “worth more standing,” a hashtag that’s growing alongside logging protests. To visit this grove may take a longer walk to the trailhead, past vehicle-barring gates, but it’s a fitting pilgrimage to hike beneath the old-growth canopy, crane my neck, spread my arms, press my forehead against the trees’ gnarly beauty and witness what’s too valuable to measure.
Travellers are reminded to check on public health restrictions that could affect their plans.