Denman Island is part of the northern gulf islands between Vancouver Island and mainland BC. In reality it’s basically part of the Comox valley, a ten-minute ferry ride from the big island via Buckley Bay. Buckley Bay itself doesn’t have much aside from the ferry terminal, but it’s less than 15 minutes from the towns in the valley, starting with Cumberland.
Since the ferry comes about every hour, you could easily commute from Denman to that part of the big island daily if you wanted to, aside from very windy days with ferry cancellations. So it’s not exactly remote, but since the necessity of taking a ferry to go beyond the handful of stores on Denman makes it feel further away than its proximity to things otherwise would.
Somewhere between 1-1.5k people live on Denman, but what it’s perhaps best known for on the west coast is being on the way to Hornby. Hornby Island, more remote because it’s two ferries from the big island, has popular summer festivals and I’ve heard has the warmest ocean swimming water in the area.
People don’t talk much about Denman, despite it being so close. Normally when I hear the name I first think of the street in the West End in Vancouver. Maybe it’s too close to be interesting – far enough away to be inconvenient, but not quite far enough to be exotic or a destination.
Settlers have lived on Denman since the 1870s but it never really took off with a giant population spurt, even though ferries have been going there since the 1920s. The population in 1971 was still only 250. The town has voted against growing its tourism in the past by avoiding building accommodations that would cater to them. Seems smart. If you don’t need tourists, why would you want too many? You don’t live on a small island because you want it to be crowded.
So I went to Denman for a weekend in the off-season. It was simply a place not too far that I hadn’t been yet. It seemed relaxing.
A bumper sticker I kept seeing around Denman was “Hornby’s that way”. We followed its advice and went to Hornby for a couple hours – the ferry ride is less than ten minutes and comes every hour – and were a bit surprised to find that it was a lot like Denman. The main strip didn’t seem any bigger, despite its associations as a travel destination. I imagine in the summer it’s busier, and the beaches and hikes are more elaborate, but the town part wasn’t any different to me.
A lot of the hikes did look cool, and I’d like to go back and do some when the sun doesn’t set so early. I imagine the landscape in them is identical to Denman since they’re adjacent.
The thing about these small islands near Vancouver Island, at least the populated ones, is that after awhile it can be hard to distinguish between them. They all have their uniquenesses once you get to know them, and of course you’ll develop favourite spots if you return, but the landscape itself and what you do on them is all pretty similar. So if you’re coming from afar and trying to figure out which to go to, unless there’s something super specific you want to go to, I don’t know that you’ll find them all that different. Everywhere is nice, and I’d like to keep going back to all of them to develop more favourites.
On Denman, we stayed at a nice cabin with a fireplace and a view of the ocean, looking towards Vancouver Island. It’s kind of weird being on one of these small islands looking at Vancouver island instead of the other way around, since pretty much every day I stand on the edge of Vancouver Island and look outward, trying to see if I can remember which island is which, wondering what they’re all like, mentally taking a boat to them all just to say yup, another island, very cool.
Some of the food options at the one restaurant were missing because of the Canada Post strike. They got most of their supplies from grocery runs to the big island but a few things by post. For some people, living on Vancouver Island feels like they’re stuck. The way some people tell it it’s like they’re drowning. Personally I don’t feel the least stuck because I don’t want to go anywhere else anyway – I was more stuck on the mainland figuring out ferry bookings and traffic trying to get to the islands.
But if I had to take a ferry to do a good grocery shop – even a 10 minute one – I wonder if that restriction would start to bubble up in my mind and I’d feel claustrophobic. As nice as the walks and beaches are, it doesn’t take long for something to slip into sameness, a reminder of the boredom of everyday life that sets in when you’re complacent.
I don’t think Denman has a permanent bear population, but a couple years back there was a bear terrorizing the island, with several newsletter posts about its movements. Bears sometimes swim from the sunshine coast on the mainland to smaller islands on the way to Vancouver island – I like to think they’re vacationing. Because of where Denman is, I think it’s more likely that bear just came from Vancouver Island for a little while before heading back, taking a break from home, just like us.
One of the nights there was a winter storm, and we listened to the rain hitting the skylight and the wind swirl around the gates before drowning it out with a noise machine, which had similar sounds, just more consistent. The fragility of my sleep cannot be overstated. As nice as it is for nature to lull you to sleep, for me it’s a choppy re-awakening, my system engaged for the sound of danger. Maybe if I did it every day for a couple weeks I’d settle down.
In the summer, you can walk along the beaches at low tide for hours, traversing the edges of the island. The tide would rarely be low enough in winter to walk too far, and when we were there, the rocky beaches only peeked out at places, more often overswept by waves.
We visited a Christmas market, which seemed to be a big draw, with lots of people taking the ferry from the big island to see it. Denman claims to have one of the largest densities of artists in the country, and many of them and the artists from Hornby had things on display. I only bought hot sauce.
On our way back, there were hoards of cars parked near the ferry terminal on Vancouver Island, with dozens of folks walking from the ferry back to their cars, presumably all coming back from the market. Living in the Comox valley area, it’s a nice wrinkle to be able to take a short trip to Denman, even for something as simple as a market for a couple hours. No need for long drives for a day trip to somewhere different, no need to bring your car on if you’re just going to the main block, a short walk from the ferry. There’s a shuttle, too, that’ll take you as far as the ferry terminal that goes to Hornby.
Since the sun set at quarter after 4, there was a lot of sitting inside, building and maintaining a fire, and playing games. Something about watching a fire, and the job that it gives you, makes the evening feel like it has a purpose, like you’re doing something, even though without it – in our apartment with baseboard heating, for example – we stay warm without effort, spending that time and energy doing something else. Often for me, that just means more worrying.
We had internet that we avoided the first night but caved the second. How long can you sit in the silence of your own company?
There were two main advantages to visiting Denman – one is that it doesn’t feel completely shaken by overtourism like some of the other gulf islands do, and the other that it’s a very short and frequent ferry ride away. The ferry in itself, as a barrier, makes it more secluded and peaceful than somewhere nearby on the big island, but the inconvenience is minor, and it’s probably the most straight-forward ferry ride there is.
A lot of the houses there are on or very near the water, so there’s a good chance you’ll have a nice view and easy beach access when you’re there. The only negative for me is that it’s so small that you can drive around it quickly and it’s pretty much impossible to get lost. And when going from a small town on an island to somewhere smaller on a smaller island, I wouldn’t mind a bigger sense of isolation or strangeness, like I was somewhere where I couldn’t easily be found, pretending like I could disappear, if only for a weekend.
describing space 