Taking the ferry from Vancouver to Salt Spring Island on Thursday, we passed through the Southern Gulf Islands, looking very like the Stockholm archipelago but for the distant mountains of the Olympic National Park in Washington state in the background. I asked a crew member if we were likely to see any orcas, sadly it…Read more Canada Blog #3

The Columbia ice field. There is a glacier on top of that mountain behind me which feeds some of the great rivers of Canada, some water flows to the Pacific, some across to the Atlantic and some to the Arctic ocean. It is one of the great watersheds of the world. I went running along…Read more The Columbia Ice Field

Driving past Calgary I was struck by the way it had grown in the two and a half years since I was last here. Wooden suburban family houses roll out over the bare hills. It's the oil money that makes Alberta rich and Calgary is the commercial centre for the lucrative tar sand extraction that…Read more Canada Blog #2

Dawn over the Bow River outside Banff a couple of days ago. It's often hard to get out into some of the beautiful places I go to but I've never been to Banff without taking a hike.