In the classrooms I occupied as a child, there was always a globe perched on the bookcase. During long, tedious afternoons, it was a reminder of the world outside the school. The continents had green forests and tawny deserts, and the wide Pacific had a thin dotted line where today was supposed to turn into tomorrow.
Still, its designers must have been better poets than geographers, because they would leave out certain large cities. Instead – right there on the raised edge of North America – there would be a dot for a tiny British Columbia village called Bella Coola.
There are better reasons to visit a place than its musical name. But in my 20s, that did the trick. And it was a time when I could afford extended, aimless camping trips, so I persuaded a pal to spend a month exploring three roads that cut across B.C. to the ocean: the Trans-Canada, the back-woodsy Yellowhead and Highway 20 – which runs through the province's interior and hits salt water in Bella Coola.
We spent a few weeks exploring the first two roads, then started down the third, driving west from Williams Lake along Highway 20. But we soon found out that whoever named Highway 20 a “highway” must have enjoyed the same powers of imagination that awarded Bella Coola its own dot on the globe.
The first two-thirds of the journey are easy enough – an empty road running through the open range of the Chilcotin Plateau. In dusty little communities such as Riske Creek and Kleena Kleene, we saw saddle horses tied up in front of the stores and old-timers hobbling around in cowboy boots and sweat-stained Stetsons.
But when we reached Anahim Lake we hit the Coastal Mountains. The range was a mile high and as jagged as a collapsed apartment building. Our plan to go to Bella Coola in my little two-wheel-drive van engendered snorts of amusement from the locals. As one guy put it, “I hope you're not taking that thing on the Hill.”
“The Hill,” as it's called, was for many years considered an impassable obstacle by provincial engineers. But in the early 1950s a handful of can-do locals decided to show B.C. Highways how to get her done: With a couple of bulldozers and plenty of dynamite, they cut switchbacks through the mountains – although in some places, roads were little more than narrow ledges hacked from cliffs.
This was the route my friend, Dave, and I encountered. To make a long story short, we survived. But it was edgy. As we climbed the mountain, the valley fell away beneath us, a misty chasm with eagles drifting like flakes of soot far below. On the switchbacks, Dave had to climb ahead of the vehicle, filling in the ruts with broken rock that he swept and stamped with his feet.
We finally topped the summit and rode the brakes down into Bella Coola Valley. Flanked on both sides by snow-capped mountains, it looked like one of those luminous western landscapes painted by Bierstadt. Or, as Lord Tweedsmuir aptly put it: “I have travelled all over Canada and have seen many wonderful things, but I have seen nothing more beautiful or more wonderful.”
Or, for that matter, more untouched. On its last few kilometres to the sea, Highway 20 does loop past picturesque ranch houses and old barns. But thanks to the Hill there were no tour buses or knots of tourists snapping pictures. The village of Bella Coola turned out to be a quiet fishing and logging community. This was the Vancouver that never was.
Now what? We spent the next couple of days camping, fishing and exploring the valley. But the necessity of retracing our journey across the Hill weighed on my mind like dental work. And as we clambered our way back over it, we received a rock through the windshield as a keepsake. Because of that road, I never went back.
But in due course – about 18 years after my first visit – B.C. Ferries finally got around to establishing regular service to Bella Coola. So on the excuse of doing research for a book, I went back for another look. This time, taking the easy route.
