Yet another beautiful day in Victoria so I walked down to Dallas Rd to enjoy the view and reminisce about the submarine races of my youth. Halfway there I was feeling a bit thirsty and stopped at the Beagle Pub on Cook Street for a cold beer. The Beagle is a bright, airy pub with [...]

TOFINO AND UCLUELET 40 YEARS LATER It was the late 1960s and the surf music of the Beachboys had given way to the Abbey Road sound of the Beatles on Canadian pop charts but surfing was big news at Long Beach. Most of us teenagers down in Victoria had only ever heard of Long Beach, [...]

  I hadn’t heard of the Vancouver Island Feast of the Fields until my favourite ‘Winey Wednesday) bartender Heather told me she would be having a stall there this year. When not working the bar at Doubles’ in the Executive House Heather is busy making chocolates, cakes and other sweet treats for her company Vin Coco. [...]

 I was going to sample a red this week but when my brother phoned to say he had caught a salmon (a rare feat for a guy whose nickname is ‘Fishless’) I changed my mind and went for a white. What better combination for a summer afternoon barbeque than straight-from-the-water Pacific Salmon accompanied by a [...]

When it rains in August I think of London so what better drink for the clime than stout. This week I tried Lighthouse Keeper for the first time and was pleasantly surprised to find a local stout that can compete with best from the other side of the Atlantic.         Lighthouse Brewery describes Keepers as “Irish [...]

A high-powered executive told me how he was using the rather posh public washrooms in the Hotel Vancouver when his cell phone rang. The call was from an important client in Edmonton so the exec opened his briefcase and proceeded to combine business with…er business. When the user next door was leaving he knocked on [...]