There was a buzz in the air tied into a powerful urge to get out on a hike, or into a kayak after the first few presentations at the first Annual Bowen Island Adventure Film Festival. The Festival kicked off on Saturday, with a great line-up of films and audience enthusiasm.
Staged at Bowen Island Lodge, seating was filled as films, still shots and animation depicted adventures around Howe Sound and on Bowen Island from sea to sky.
The purpose of the event, says co-organizer Kiley Redhead, is “to get people excited about adventures in their own backyard.” The plan was successful.
With images of colourful creatures in sunlit waters, scuba enthusiast Adam Taylor had breathtaking underwater footage of marine life from around the shores of Bowen. Ranging from an octopus to sea slugs, Taylor showed the audience the local sea creatures as spectacular, and exotic-looking as anything you would expect to find in tropical waters.” I prefer scuba diving here to the tropics,” says Taylor who grew up playing in the waters along the local shores.
Bob Turner screened his film of a stunningly beautiful expedition along the new Howe Sound Marine trail that spans from Horseshoe Bay to Squamish. Only days after the announcement of another coup for LNG in Howe Sound, his film drove home the magnitude of loss to the recovering biodiversity in the Sound, should LNG get to final approval. The beautifully shot film showed Howe sound from a snorkeler’s point of view, a kayaker, and hiker’s vantage points. It opened with a history of the Sound, and armchair kayakers got a view of the campsites, the scenery and the animal encounters along the way.
The film describes the wild archipelago of islands big and small, with seals and seabirds. The film takes a point of view ranging from that of a kayaker, a snorkeler, a swimmer and a hiker, describing a “a crazy array of extraordinary scenery and intertidal life… a wild magical place that would be a national park anywhere else in the world. “
The marine trail courses along from Horseshoe Bay around Bowen, Gambier and Anvil Island then on up to Squamish River at the end of the fjord.
The film is a great opportunity to see the kayaking routes just off our shores. Bob and his brother Tim paddle around Gambier and Halkett Bay, one of four sheltered bays with tidal flats, known for recently discovered cloud sponges. “There’s beautiful camping with an hour long hike and with views over the Sound.” They paddle onto Mc Nabb Creak, and Pam Rocks with white granite rising straight up from below the water. Pam Rocks is home and the largest colony of seals in the Sound. The pass Christie Island, a birth sanctuary with oystercatchers, eagles, and other seabirds, before going north to the second largest estuary in the Sound.
“We have to come together and create a vision for a wild how sound. Howe Sound is Vancouver’s wild neighbour, and it’s too fragile and beautiful to watch it wither under development pressure,” says Turner, reflecting on the spectacular locations.
They make their way to Porteau Cove camping, then paddle on to Squamish, and then Britannia, with its smoothed rock formations before entering the “ecological jewel of the Sound;” the Squamish river estuary. “At the completion of the expedition, Turner reflects that “The time is now, the moment is now, to stand, speak and act. The time is now to be the ones we have been waiting for.”
Following up on Turner’s and Taylor’s images, Bruce McTaggart shared footage of surf skiing in the company of porpoises, and of being herded by a transient killer whale. He had the remarkable and disconcerting experience of having the orca charge at McTaggart numerous times, only to reach the boat, make eye contact with the kayaker, before deftly diving under the kayak.
The spectacles from this area we call home continued, with images from free diving with sea lions by Peter Scott and Linda Giusti, to mountain biking with Dangerous Dan Cowan, Rock and Ice Climbing on island with Hobey Walker, and Slacklining with Baz Cardinal. This inaugural event turned out to be nothing short of jaw dropping.
Kiley Redhead and Baz Cardinal who came up with the idea for this festival, and then worked out all the logistics, know they have tapped into something perfectly suited for this island’s residents. “Next year we can make it a weekend-long event,” says Redhead, seeing the potential to build on this weekend’s success. Her own presentation depicted hiking adventures, and her commentary, remarking on the looks of joy in the images explaining, “this is what “yes,” feels like.” Her comment was also a perfect summary of the mood of the audience who couldn’t get enough of the wonders of the island and surroundings. The invitation to adventure was perfectly depicted in the festival, and one that is hard to resist.
