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Vancouver Island
Awarded Best in Travel 2022
Awarded Best in Travel 2023
About Best In Travel 2023Vancouver Island is studded with colorful, quirky communities, many founded on logging or fishing and featuring the word 'Port' in their names.
Locals are a friendly bunch, proud of their region and its distinct differences. The island is the largest populated landmass between western North America and New Zealand – around 500km long and 100km wide – and hosts a broad range of attractions, experiences and activities that feel many miles from the bustle of mainland Vancouver.
While the history-wrapped BC capital Victoria is the arrival point for many, it shouldn't be the only place you visit here. (And, to make a good impression, don't mistakenly refer to the place as 'Victoria Island.') Food and wine fans will love the Cowichan Valley farm region; outdoor-activity enthusiasts shouldn't miss the surf-loving, wild West Coast radiating from Tofino; and visitors venturing north will find an uncrowded region of independent communities fringed by rugged wilderness.
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Top attractions
These are our favorite local haunts, touristy spots, and hidden gems throughout Vancouver Island.
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Butchart Gardens
Far more than just another pretty flower arrangement, Butchart is a national historic site and a triumph of early-20th-century gardening aesthetics. With its well-tended blooms, ornate fountains and diverse international flavor (from Japanese to Italian), it’s hard to imagine that this land was once an abandoned limestone quarry. Tour buses roll in relentlessly throughout the summer, but the gardens with their undulating topography are big enough to absorb the melee. Food outlets and gift shops crowd the entrance, including the Dining Room Restaurant, which serves a smashing afternoon tea. Butchart is open year-round, although summer is, arguably, the best (and busiest) season to visit: there are Saturday-night fireworks in July and August. The Christmas-lights season from early December to early January is another highlight. The gardens were the brainchild of Jennie Butchart, whose husband founded the limestone quarry. She began planting and landscaping over the old quarry in 1912. Expanded and manicured throughout the course of a century, the site now counts over one million blooms to cater for its one million annual visitors. Passed down through several generations, the gardens are still owned by the Butchart family.
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Royal BC Museum
Arguably the finest museum in British Columbia and carrier of a ‘royal’ prefix since 1987, Victoria’s flagship sight mixes the cream of BC’s provincial exhibits with a revolving lineup of world-class temporary exhibitions. Adding value is an IMAX Theatre and a small park replete with indigenous and early pioneer history. Permanent fixtures inside the museum are split into natural history (2nd floor) and human history (3rd floor). Both focus almost exclusively on BC. The natural history section beautifully recreates some of BC’s classic ecosystems, peppered with a selection of taxidermied animals. Highlights include hyper-realistic sea lions and a life-size woolly mammoth with meter-long fur. The human history section illuminates BC’s First Nations with a recreated Kwakwaka'wakw clanhouse and a sonic exhibit that greets you in 34 different indigenous languages. Further on, you’ll encounter a diorama of an early-20th-century BC street complete with a cinema showing Charlie Chaplin movies. In adjacent Thunderbird Park, behind a line of weathered totem poles, lie two of the province’s oldest buildings. The small log cabin St Ann’s Schoolhouse dates from 1844 when it served as a fur trading post. Next door, the Helmcken House (1852) is the former home of fur-trade-era doctor, John Helmcken.
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Craigdarroch Castle
More ostentatious country mansion than fortified castle, Craigdarroch, with its turrets, stained-glass windows and palatial interior, looks like it might have been teleported over from the Scottish Highlands. Beautifully preserved by a local historical society, the interior is filled with rich period detail and notable for its spectacular wood-paneled staircase that ascends from the entry vestibule. You’ll need at least an hour to admire the four floors of rooms, including a dining room, smoking room, billiard room and dance hall. Surrounded today by an attractive assemblage of lesser mansions in a Victoria suburb, Craigdarroch once stood on 28 acres of woodland. Built in the late 1880s, it drew its architectural inspiration from a medieval Gothic style known as ‘Scottish Baronial’, then experiencing a Victorian revival. The property is also interesting for the complex family dramas that once played out here courtesy of the feuding Dunsmuir clan, led by a Scottish coal-mining baron named Robert Dunsmuir who died before the house was finished. One room is dedicated to telling the Dunsmuir story: the family lived here until 1908 and their squabbles over money and inheritance became legendary. Before you leave, climb the tower's 87 steps for distant views of the Olympic Mountains.
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Parliament Buildings
This dramatically handsome confection of turrets, domes and stained glass is British Columbia's working legislature and is also open to visitors. You can go behind the facade on a free 45-minute guided tour then stop for lunch at the 'secret' politicians' restaurant inside. Return in the evening when the elegant exterior is illuminated like a Christmas tree. The buildings were constructed in the 1890s in a mix of renaissance, Romanesque and classical styles after the government had outgrown the original legislature, the less illustriously named 'Birdcages.' The current ceremonial entrance has a mosaic floor and is embellished with Italian marble, while the graceful dome is topped on the outside by a gold-encrusted statue of George Vancouver (an early explorer of BC's coastal regions).
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Victoria Bug Zoo
It’s not big, nor are its resident critters (although some of them are alarmingly colossal by insect standards); however, this diminutive indoor ‘zoo’ is a small marvel thanks to the enthusiasm and knowledge of its guides. Atlas beetles, dragon-headed crickets and thorny devils are all explained, admired and – on occasion – lifted out of their tanks to be handed around for closer inspection. Children are the main audience, but this is a hugely entertaining and educational experience on any level. The detailed anecdotes about ants are utterly fascinating.
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Miniature World
Tucked along the side of the Fairmont Empress Hotel, this huge collection of skillfully crafted models depicting important battles, historic towns and popular stories is far more fascinating than it sounds. Lined with dozens of diminutive diorama scenes, divided into themes ranging from Camelot to space and from fairyland to Olde England, it has plenty of push-button action, several trundling trains and the chance to see yourself on a miniature movie-theater screen. An immaculately maintained reminder of innocent yesteryear attractions.
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Beacon Hill Park
Fringed by crashing ocean, this waterfront park is ideal for feeling the breeze in your hair – check out the windswept trees along the cliff top. You'll also find a gigantic totem pole, Victorian cricket pitch and a marker for Mile 0 of Hwy 1, alongside a statue of the Canadian legend Terry Fox, who ran across the country in 1980 for cancer research. If you're here with kids, consider the popular children's farm (www.beaconhillchildrensfarm.ca) as well.
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Meares Island
Visible across Clayoquot Sound and accessible via kayak or water taxi from the Tofino waterfront, Meares Island was the site of the key 1984 Clayoquot Sound anti-logging protest that kicked off the region's latter-day environmental movement. As a result, it preserves some geriatric trees including a 1500-year-old red cedar, called the 'Hanging Garden,' that would have been a sapling not long after the Roman Empire fell. There are two hiking trails on Meares. The Big Tree Trail is a 4.2km loop, some of it on boardwalk, that takes in the Hanging Garden and other impressively large trees. The Lone Cone Trail is a steep scramble to the top of the distinctive crinkled mountain visible from Tofino. It's 7km round-trip with 730m of ascent. The trails start in different places. A water taxi costs $25 for the Big Tree and $40 for the Lone Cone.
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Raft Cove Provincial Park
Tiny (8-sq-km) Raft Cove lies south of much larger Cape Scott Provincial Park in Vancouver Island's northwest corner. A short 2km trail brings you to the wide, crescent beach and to the beautiful lagoons of Raft Cove. You're likely to have the entire 1.3km expanse to yourself, although anti-social surfers come here for some splendid isolation on the waves. To reach the park, take the Cape Scott road out of Port Hardy before turning left on Ronning Main. Continue for 25km to the parking lot.