Paddling Among Giants

 Whitewater kayaking is even more exhilarating when you share the adventure with your dad

- Pamela Roth

Now this is living!” I yell to my father as another metre high wave lifts our kayak and pushes it forward with ease.

The gusty wind roars in my ears. The salt water sprays my sun drenched face. But I can’t stop laughing—a reaction I have whenever I’m barrelling down a roller coaster, gripped with fear, adrenaline and excitement all at the same time.

“I didn’t think we’d be surfing today,” replies my nervous father, concentrating on how to manoeuvre our tandem kayak through the turbulent waters in the John stone Strait—a narrow and major navigation channel separating Vancouver Island from the mainland.

Whitewater ocean kayaking isn’t what I had in mind when we signed up for a two-day overnight kayaking trip with North Island Kayak off the rugged north coast of Vancouver Island, but it was certainly setting the stage for one heck of an adventure.

I wound up on these choppy waters after a local resident told me the strait comes alive in late summer with humpback whales readying for their winter migration to Hawaii. The humpbacks migrate farther than any other mammal on Earth, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, travelling around 5,000 kilo-metres between their breeding and feeding grounds on a regular basis.

The area is also home to more than 200 northern resident killer whales, Steller sea lions, harbour seals, the Pacific white-sided dolphin, otters and porpoises, making it one of the best places to view marine life. Twenty kilometres south of Telegraph Cove is the only sanctuary for killer whales on Canada’s West Coast—the Robson Bight/Michael Biggs Ecological Reserve—a protected area where whales come to feed, socialize and rub themselves on barnacle-encrusted rocks, providing plenty of opportunities for scientists to study their behaviour.