Story: Ice Breakers

Canadians are outdoors people, and for good reason too - they have a lot of it. Ice hockey on frozen lakes, cross country skiing, mountain biking, white water rafting, fly fishing and all sports and hobbies in between are exercised in the Great White North. Surfing, however is not a sport that springs to mind. Odd, what with the vast coastlines it has to flaunt.
As a keen surfer who honed my skills on northern New South Wales but was born in Ontario Canada, I never thought my first surfing session off Australian waters would be in the six degree water of Vancouver Island.
When my mate Andy, from Vancouver Island visited Australia in 1998 and called himself a surfer, I passed him off as a snowboarder who watched surf videos. We had a couple of sessions here on the North Coast and it was apparent that he had gotten some practice before he came.
I expected that on his return to British Columbia, after tasting the longboarding banquet Byron Bay had served up to him, that it would be pretty hard to go back to a Canadian winter, which unfortunately is the surfing season, getting the same swell lines as Hawaii and Northern California.
I asked Andy, with doubt, if he had been in the water lately and he replied: "Yah, but I screwed up the nose of my board when I hit a submerged log". It seemed that Australia had only fuelled his fire. Just as well, he'd need all the heat he could get for Canada.
Three years later, my friends and I left our place of Canadian winter snowboarding refuge for the coast. It was a surf trip down the west coast of North America - From Tofino BC, Canada to Puerto Escondido Oax, Mexico - traveling in our converted school bus.
Andy, still surfing and based in British Columbia's capital, Victoria on the Southern tip of Vancouver Island told us to head north first, to Tofino. It's undoubtedly Canada's most renowned surf town, positioned about a three hour drive from Victoria.
With a wide range in demographics, the relaxed town "is the one place," one local said, "you can find hippies and environmental activists sharing a beer with the loggers and salmon farmers." Though relaxed, the locals - and all Canadian surfers for that matter would have to be some of the most hardcore in the world.
Don't be surprised to be wiping snow off the deck of your board in the winter. Sharks aren't so much of a problem as angry sea lions in mating season, and in Andy's case, wayward trees that have escaped from log booms down rivers and into the ocean.
As locals of northern New South Wales, my friends and I were used to warmer waters, spring suits suffice in winter and shorts are the uniform for summer. We didn't have any of the necessary equipment for near arctic surfing, which comprises of a five mm wetsuit with hood, booties, gloves and an icebreaker on the nose of the board.
Longbeach, Tofino's main beach, is in a temperate rainforest, but even these giant trees cower away at the beginning of the cold sand as it's just a hint of what's to come. Driftwood litters the tide line, gnarly in the tree trucks' bends and twisted among each other. It's a beautiful image until you realise each log has a definite edge.
The town itself is beautiful, but seemingly always damp. It is originally a fishing town but has been turned into a destination for tourists in more recent years. There are backpackers' hostels and cheap hotels around the town, with other suggestions for when the surf is just too cold, like whale watching, hikes and lots of past indigenous culture and art to explore.
Sombrio, south of Tofino and within the Olympic Peninsula, is nestled in a small cover protected from the fierce northerly Arctic winds. You can camp and start fires on the beach in Sombrio without the fear of any hassle from Smokey the Bear Park ranger, as opposed to Tofino.
The Beach, again right on the edge of a rainforest, has three breaks all within a half a kilometre's walk. The break furthest south is simply called "Firsts", a left/right peak. Past the pit toilet, driftwood and resident campers (including a tent-kitchen and chef), is a right handed reef called "Chickens" that generally breaks smaller than the other two, but keeps a better wall to the wave. It's a good place for the beginner. The third is another peak called "Seconds" and it breaks left and right; be prepared for dodging submerged rocks on the right break. Sombrio definitely surprised me with the quality of its wave.
Although small on my visit I was assured it did get bigger and keep its form.
Heading south from Sombrio, is Jordan's River, which acts as a filter for those traveling from Victoria, or nearby Sooke, to dilute the crowd at Sombrio. It only really works with bigger waves because of the reef's angle to the approaching swell lines and its location, which is further down the peninsula than Sombrio. It's a right hand point that rolls on for about 300 metres.
Spotted along the coast are many other breaks waiting to be discovered - and it's not just the west coast. The Maritimes, on the East Coast gets surf as well, but it's even colder, generally coming down from the Arctic Circle with the well insulated beluga.
Probably the one thing Canada has over Australia, Indonesia or Mexico is the ability to surf inland. The great Lakes of Canada do get surf. Lake Erie, Lake Michigan and Lake Ontario sport the best, but even their best comprises a windswept swell only three or four times a year.
Before taking the plunge myself, I was bewildered as why these Canucks bothered. Surely the discomfort level far outweighed the joy of surfing. And with the sports spawned from surfing - Like wakeboarding, kiteboarding and snowboarding available in the lakes and mountains, and the host of other national sports available in Canada, surely the great outdoors has enough to offer the 31 million inhabitants.
Once wet though, it’s not so bad, providing you have the stipulated outfit on. A couple of waves and you start to enjoy yourself. One Tofino local we met, who went out for a weekend and has never left said he couldn't imagine paddling out without the five mm neoprene suits and ice cream headaches with every duck dive. "It just wouldn't be surfing."
After your session, invigorated and warmed up with a cup of something hot between your hands, the whole thing is just as rewarding, if not more so than the equatorial equivalent of boardshorts and a cold drink on getting out.
On saying that, I received an email from Andy the other day who had just arrived in Rio Nexpa, Mexico for a holiday and didn't look like leaving - ever.

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