There can be few greater contrasts than Vancouver and neighbouring Vancouver Island. The former is a fresh Pacific capital city, bursting with confidence, while the latter - an hour's ferry ride away - is a gentle, rugged mass where the pace of life rolls with the breakers that pile in from the Pacific Ocean.
It's a part of British Columbia that many visitors often skate by en route to the province's more prominent attractions, but for Vancouverites - and particularly its sizeable Chinese population - the island ranks as their own backyard.
And it's no small coincidence that aircraft flying in from Hong Kong bound for Vancouver International coast right above the island's tiny western port of Tofino, their first Canadian landfall since setting off from Asia.
From spring until late October, grey whales are a constant feature off the coast. Their appearance begins with a migration parade, as some 20,000 head north to feeding grounds off Siberia on an 8,000-kilometre trip that started in Baja, Mexico. While most of the whales swim on past Tofino, up to a dozen take up residence, spending the summer moving from bay to bay, before moving into one of their favourite feeding grounds in Clayoquot Sound.
When the main body migrates south again to breed and give birth, the Tofino resident whales join up and swim off with them. Many of Tofino's former shrimp fishermen have converted their boats and now run whale-watching tours, offering a guaranteed sighting or a voucher - valid for 100 years - for a second, free trip.
Some 14 metres long and weighing up to 40 tonnes, these leviathans on their annual odyssey provide watchers with an experience that can only be described as awesome.
