To celebrate British Columbia Magazine’s 50th anniversary this summer, we invited readers to share their top recommended things to do in B.C.—for a chance to win some amazing travel prizes.  To our absolute delight, thousands of you took the time to reflect, dream, and write about your favourite B.C. experiences.  Today, with great pleasure, we announce the lucky winners of our special 50th anniversary Share Your B.C. contest.

Grand prize: A luxurious three-night getaway for two at Clayoquot Wilderness Resort, a premier “eco safari” retreat on Vancouver Island’s west coast.

Winner: Frederick Donnelly of Rothesay, NB

2nd Prize: A unique three-night experience for two with Spirit Bear Adventures in B.C.’s Great Bear Rainforest, sanctuary of white bears and authentic Kitasoo culture.

Winner: Garrett Baker of Victoria, BC

3rd Prize: A four-day Rocky Mountaineer Classic Rail Vacation for two in award-winning GoldLeaf Service.

Winner: Tony Berry of Surrey, BC

4th prize: A four-day B.C. Ferries North Coast vacation package for two by land, sea, and air, including BC Ferries’ Inside Passage Cruise.

Winner:  Jerry Fazakas of Regina, SK

Congratulations to our winners, and thank you to our contest sponsors for making our 50th contest so exciting.

Most of all, thank you to all who took the time to enter our contest.  Close to 1,000 of your submissions are now a part of our permanent online Share Your B.C. adventure database, which can be searched by activity or location. More are being processed and uploaded each week, creating a wonderful, free online resource of insiders’ travel tips about the very best of British Columbia.

We continue to invite new entries at www.shareyourbc.com. All eligible submissions will be entered into our monthly draw for a chance to win a free one-year subscription to British Columbia Magazine. Visit today, and start planning your next B.C. adventure. 

Karen Davies of Victoria, winner of our Saltspring Island Getaway Contest, recently travelled to the southern Gulf Island with husband, Dai, to claim her prize. Karen and Dai met with resident artist/author Nick Bantock, creator of the bestselling Griffin & Sabine series of books, and subject of our Spring 2009 “Nick Bantock’s Saltspring” feature article. At Bantock’s airy Ganges studio, the threesome quickly fell into conversation about life, art, and politics.

“We were really surprised at Nick’s down-to-earth nature and lack of ego,” said Karen. “He’s very stimulating to be with.”

The gallery has a “happy feel” that invites discovery, Karen observed. “We loved the texture of Nick’s work,” she added. ”He creates the sort of pictures you want to be involved with, rather than just look at. . . . Nick was also very generous in the way he told us about how he works.”

The winner’s prize also included a stay at the Harbour House Hotel and $50 in Saltspring currency. Karen used the colourful bills to buy herself two of Bantock’s out-of-print Griffin & Sabine books, which, of course, Bantock personally inscribed.

The next morning, the couple visited Saltspring’s famous Saturday market, then kayaked to nearby Chocolate Beach.  All in all, it was, Karen sighed, a “wonderful getaway.”

Editor-in-Chief Anita Willis has something new and shiny to carry home from the annual International Regional Magazine Association conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, this week: a first-place plaque for her 2008 Front Lines editor’s columns!

Willis, who says she is “thrilled” at the results, accepted this and a handful of other prizes awarded to British Columbia Magazine at a special ceremony held over the weekend. Each of the following stories from 2008 beat out the entries from nearly 40 other North American magazines.

• Gold, Column: “What to do about the caribou?”; “The getaway that keeps on giving”; “Revealing secrets of the Empress Hotel” by Anita Willis
• Gold, Environmental Feature: “Desert dreams” by Brian Payton
• Silver, Travel: “The lure of Tatlayoko” by J.B. MacKinnon
• Silver, General Feature: “The good earth” by Daniel Wood
• Merit, Nature feature: “Grizzlies in paradise” by Frances Backhouse

Congratulations to all of our contributors and to Editor Anita Willis on this remarkable achievement.

The fall months are a wonderful time to travel in British Columbia. With summer holidays over and children back in school, traffic is lighter on the highways, and many accommodation properties are offering enticing shoulder-season rates.

Need some travel ideas? British Columbia Magazine’s Share Your B.C. adventure database is a great online resource. Hundreds of travellers just like you have entered their favourite experiences around the province.

You can search the database in several ways. Choose a region, such  as the Okanagan, to review all activities entered for that area, or focus in on activities closest to a particular town. Or, you can search by activity—say, paddling—and see recommended canoeing and kayaking destinations all over B.C.

We launched our B.C. adventure database to mark the 50th anniversary of British Columbia Magazine in June 2009, in conjunction with an exciting Share Your B.C. Contest. We’ve now drawn four names from all entries submitted and will announce the lucky winners of our travel-adventure prizes as soon as their eligibility (and all that legal-schmegal) has been confirmed. Stay tuned!

The zany artist behind this vegetable creation—which debuted in the Zucchini 500 at Saltspring Island’s fall fair last weekend—is none other than Susan Rybar, former director of publication at British Columbia Magazine. She and her son Kje fashioned their pirate ship to race in the fun annual event, profiled in “Zucchinis on wheels” in our Fall 2008 issue.

“The design started simply with what we could scavenge from around the house. The wheels were the only ones we had,” says Rybar. “I thought it would be good to put something on the front and found the ‘aerodynamic’ corn-cob holders, which reminded me of the mermaids at the front of pirate ships (a bit of a stretch, I know), which led me into our Lego collection where I found the crow’s nest and skeleton crew.”

Stylish looks may not equal great performance, as it turns out. In the practice run on the steeply inclined racetrack, the pirate ship blew a wheel at the halfway mark, finishing last.

Here are just a few reasons why you shouldn’t miss The Word on the Street book and magazine festival this Sunday, September 27, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Vancouver’s Library Square.

GET GREAT STUFF.

MEET COOL MAGAZINE PEOPLE.

LAUGH AT COMEDIANS.

SUPPORT LITERACY.

ATTEND AUTHOR READINGS.

What’s more . . .  British Columbia Magazine staff will be on site with loads of goodies and our giant Magazine Prize Wheel. We attract crowds every year with our $1 spin-to-win offer, and all proceeds go to the Raise-a-Reader program. We’ll have collector’s issues, magnets, posters, tote bags, T-shirts, and more to give away!

Other special deals of the day:

* 2 YEARS FOR THE PRICE OF 1. Purchase a one-year subscription to British Columbia Magazine, and we’ll give you the second year for FREE! Two years for just $20—and you’ll also get a FREE copy of our Summer 2009 50th-anniversary collector’s issue.

* 5 FOR $5 GRAB BAGS: Snap up one of our British Columbia Magazine tote bags filled with five assorted collector’s issues for just $5.

Don’t miss this fun, annual celebration of the written word. Look for the tents along Hamilton and Homer streets and around the library building.

It’s time to say goodbye to summer. It’s always a sad farewell, as we fold up our patio umbrellas and relegate our flip-flops and shorts to the back of the closet. But for readers of British Columbia Magazine, there is reason to embrace the change of seasons . . .

A new issue!

A new contest!

SNEAK PEAK: OUR LANDMARK 200TH ISSUE

The Fall 2009 edition has just come off the press. It’s a great package of stories and photographs to rev your engine for fall adventure, beginning with a small-town tour up the Sea-to-Sky Highway from Vancouver to Whistler—literally, the road to the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. Associate Editor Jenny Manzer profiles Horseshoe Bay, Porteau Cove, Britiannia Beach, and more! Plus, this issue’s featured travel destination is sporty Squamish, a Sea-to-Sky hot spot for climbing, paddling, hiking, biking, and kiteboarding.

Other highlights of the Fall 2009 issue:

* Biologists working deep in grizzly country.

* Gerry Bracewell, our Annie Oakley of the Chilcotin.

* A visit to Klemtu, land of the “spirit bear.”

* And a paddling trip through the lush Columbia wetlands.

YOU COULD WIN!

Coinciding with the launch of our new Fall 2009 issue, we also launch a new Share Your B.C. monthly prize draw. Visit www.ShareYourBC.com to search our online database of hundreds of B.C. travel recommendations, submitted by travellers just like you.

Contribute your own “Top Thing to Do in B.C.” and you’ll have a chance to win a FREE one-year subscription to British Columbia Magazine. We’ll be giving away one every month for a year.

Later this month, we’ll announce the lucky winners of our 50th-anniversary Share Your B.C. summer sweepstakes draw, which closed September 8, 2009. Stay tuned!

Every four years, salmon runs on the Horsefly River reach a cyclical peak. 2009 is the year we’ve been waiting for, and folks in the Cariboo community of Horsefly are marking the occasion with a festival on September 5 and 6.

While recent news about British Columbia’s declining salmon stocks has been bleak, Horsefly hopes to welcome home a million spawning sockeye this fall. Education is the focus of activities planned for the weekend, with information about water quality and aquatic invertebrates, as well as fish-dissection demonstrations.

Gutting fish not your idea of a good time? There will also be musical entertainment, a potluck, and a family square dance.

It takes the sockeye approximately 28 days to journey from the Pacific Ocean up the Fraser River, then along the Quesnel River to the mouth of the Horsefly River and its spawning grounds. Only 15 to 50 percent of the adult fish that set out on the 760-kilometre journey survive past the commercial fishing areas of the lower Fraser.

For more on the Horsefly River, see our Fall 2008 story “Protecting B.C. with TLC” (full article online here.)

For details on the Horsefly River Salmon Festival, visit www.horseflyriver.ca. There’s even an online video so you can see what it’s all about.

If you’re looking to grab a last bit of summer fun before fall sets in, it’s not too late to take in Vancouver’s Pacific National Exhibition. The annual fair runs through the Labour Day weekend, and if you visit between September 5 and 7, keep a lookout for the friendly folks from British Columbia Magazine.

At our booth in front of the Pacific Coliseum, we’ll be giving away FREE copies of the magazine, while supplies last (they’re going fast)! And for just $1 you can spin the British Columbia Magazine Prize Wheel for a chance to win posters, magnets, collector’s issues, hats, T-shirts, and other exciting prizes. Every spin is a guaranteed winner!

Stop by and say “hello”—we’d love to see you!

If you’re heading up Vancouver Island this weekend, you might want to slooow down at Cowichan Bay. This small seaside community on the Island’s southeast coast is North America’s first certified Cittaslow—Italian for “slow city.”

To qualify as a Cittaslow and join an international network of like-minded communities, Cowichan Bay had to excel in six categories related to quality of life: environmental policy, land use and infrastructure, strength of urban fabric, encouragement of local products, hospitality, and Cittaslow awareness.

“Lots of fundamentals of Cittaslow are already engrained in what Cow Bay does,” commented Cittaslow Cowichan Society president Bruce Stewart in a Cowichan News Leader article. “We actually scored higher than other Cittaslow cities.”

Less than an hour’s drive north of Victoria, the quaint village (pop. about 1,300) has earned a reputation as a food and wine destination in recent years, featuring artisan cheeses, breads, ciders, even old-fashioned ice cream. As writer Brian Payton revealed in our Fall 2006 Destination article “Cowichan Bay,” it is also a place rich in history and outdoor opportunities.

The community will celebrate the Cittaslow designation with an official ceremony this fall.

Info: Cowichan Bay