A personal essay by Julie Smith
What began as simple family vacations turned into some of the most memorable experiences and some of the best lasting relationships of my life.
Almost every summer of my life has included a trip to my grandparents’ home in Victoria, B.C., where my mother grew up. Victoria is located on Vancouver Island, one of the most beautiful places you will ever visit. Since all of my cousins, aunts, and uncles on my mother's side live in Canada, this summer trip is usually the chance I have to see them for the year.
Canada is a very special place to me. Since my mother is still a Canadian citizen, I was able to get dual citizenship! Even though I don’t live there, Vancouver Island is a place I consider to be home.
It is the island that brings my family together.
The Journey
My alarm clock goes off at 6:00 AM – but I’m already awake, which is unusual for me. Why am I awake this early? There must be something happening today… oh that's right, we’re leaving for Victoria!
Wait, why is no one else awake yet? We’ve got to get going!
From our house in Utah, it is a 15–16-hour drive, a border crossing, and a ferry ride to get to Vancouver Island. I suppose it would be possible to make this trip in one day, but we always take two days. The first day consists purely of driving until we reach our first destination for the night (with breaks, of course). We stop at the same Oxford Suites in Pendleton, Oregon every year, so I know it well: the indoor pool, the carpet in the halls with intricate patterns and bright colors, and the breakfast in the morning that we all struggle to get up for. Who knew sitting in a car all day could make you so tired?
I don’t know why, but I’m always a little nervous going through the border – like everyone who’s nervous to go through TSA at the airport. You know you are not hiding anything, but there’s something about the atmosphere surrounding an international border that makes you feel like you’re suspicious (especially coming back into the United States). We’ve never had an issue, though, and after the border comes the ferry ride across the ocean to Vancouver Island!
The ferry can carry several hundred cars on its lower decks, and once you’re on, you can go to the upper decks for some fresh air during the 90-minute voyage. We always go up to the restaurant to get poutine, a French-Canadian dish involving French fries, gravy, and cheese curds. I usually end up getting plain French fries because I do NOT like gravy, but for my sister and my mom, poutine is essential to the trip. After that, we’ll head outside to look at all the islands we're passing and to watch the foam left behind from the ferry’s passage through the ocean.
Now, after two long days in the car, we’ve finally made it to Vancouver Island! A half hour drive later and we’re at my grandparents’ house, with its deck that serves as an extension of the dining room for the cousins and its long driveway with a steep hill. My grandma always comes to the door when we drive up and does what my cousins and I have termed “a grandma scream,” she’s so excited to see us.
My grandmother loves to bake for people – she’s known as “the cookie lady” in her neighborhood. She and my mom taught me how to bake, and now I help her bake things for various events when I’m at her house. We’ll make rolls for holiday dinner parties, muffins for breakfast, and cookies for... cookies. In the quiet moments, my grandfather loves to talk about our lives with us. I’ve talked to him a lot about becoming a teacher, since I am graduating next year and he was a teacher for most of his life. He shows an interest in whatever it is we are interested in and loves hearing about how life is going for us!
I’ve heard it said before that your first friends, if not your siblings, are your cousins. I am the oldest of my Canadian cousins, so I’ve seen everyone grow up over the years. My mom’s three siblings will try to come with their families at the same time as us, (they all live in Canada, although not all of them live close), and we’ll all stay in my grandparents’ house together. This usually involves several air mattresses and a couple of tents in the backyard to accommodate all of the “big cousins,” as the adults and small cousins get the beds. It’s hard for the adults to get us to go to bed, because these summer trips are the only time we see each other!
Over the years we’ve spent hours upon hours running around the backyard, picking raspberries, making up dances to songs and performing for the adults, eating cookies, and doing whatever seemed like fun at the time. One of our most memorable cousin traditions, started by my cousin Tara, was begging our grandma for a Toonie, (a two-dollar coin), and walking to the 7/11 down the street. At this 7/11, you could grab individual candies with small tongs for 5-10 cents each to fill small plastic bags. We spent many minutes carefully calculating how we could maximize our two dollars each, not realizing that the reason my dad came with us was to make up for the tax we didn’t realize was looming with his spare coins.
Among my favorite memories are many walks along the edge of Telegraph Bay, just a few minutes’ drive from my grandparents’ home. Unlike the beaches of Hawaii, this beach has freezing cold water and I’ve never gone swimming there, but my grandmother had a better activity in mind. She would bring empty ice cream buckets, left over from her many dinner parties, and help us collect the most interesting rocks we could find. The beaches on Vancouver Island are the perfect places to find all sorts of amazing rocks! My siblings and my cousins were never really into collecting rocks, but I got hooked!
My grandmother, who sits on the driftwood that lines the shore with the other adults while the cousins frolic along the edge of the water, will always have a pile of rocks for me to look at when I come back from my collecting spree. This excerpt from the poem “Collecting Pebbles” by George Krokos explains how I’ve felt better than I ever could:
I have several Ziploc bags full of rocks from various beaches on Vancouver Island, each one full of as many rocks as my parents would allow me to bring home. I’ve found a few patterns in the rocks that I collect and keep – they have interesting colors, stripes, huge chunks of quartz, or are so smooth they are like the stress rocks you can buy at mall boutiques for a few dollars. I especially like trying to find every color of the rainbow in one trip, and I’ve done it before! I usually have to sort through the rocks before we leave to go back to Utah, because I “have too many.” How could you possibly have too many rocks?
The ferry can carry several hundred cars on its lower decks, and once you’re on, you can go to the upper decks for some fresh air during the 90-minute voyage. We always go up to the restaurant to get poutine, a French-Canadian dish involving French fries, gravy, and cheese curds. I usually end up getting plain French fries because I do NOT like gravy, but for my sister and my mom, poutine is essential to the trip. After that, we’ll head outside to look at all the islands we're passing and to watch the foam left behind from the ferry’s passage through the ocean.
Family Shenanigans
Over the years we’ve spent hours upon hours running around the backyard, picking raspberries, making up dances to songs and performing for the adults, eating cookies, and doing whatever seemed like fun at the time. One of our most memorable cousin traditions, started by my cousin Tara, was begging our grandma for a Toonie, (a two-dollar coin), and walking to the 7/11 down the street. At this 7/11, you could grab individual candies with small tongs for 5-10 cents each to fill small plastic bags. We spent many minutes carefully calculating how we could maximize our two dollars each, not realizing that the reason my dad came with us was to make up for the tax we didn’t realize was looming with his spare coins.
The Ocean, Rocks, and Geology
It was almost as if I’d found treasure on the seashore
and couldn’t help myself as I looked around for more.
The simple joy of collecting something that attracts the mind
is an age old activity which all people do have of some kind.
As time went on, I developed an interest in geology and learned more about the rocks themselves. Collecting rocks is still a tradition for my grandmother and me to this day. She is always interested to hear my explanations of where I think the rocks came from or what I think they’re made of.
Heading Home - Until Next Time
And then, the week is over, and it is time for my family to reverse our journey to go back home to Utah. One week never feels long enough, but then again, would any amount of time ever feel long enough? It will be at least another year before I see my grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles again, and there are usually tears in my eyes, (and my mother’s), as we pull away from my grandparents’ house.
I said at the beginning that we visit Victoria almost every summer, because this past summer was different. The Peace Arch that stands right on the US-Canada border has a sign that reads, “May these gates never be closed,” meaning that the gates would be closed if the two countries were ever at war (which I hope will never be the case). Although we all thought they would never be closed, something drastic happened last year: a worldwide pandemic.
I said at the beginning that we visit Victoria almost every summer, because this past summer was different. The Peace Arch that stands right on the US-Canada border has a sign that reads, “May these gates never be closed,” meaning that the gates would be closed if the two countries were ever at war (which I hope will never be the case). Although we all thought they would never be closed, something drastic happened last year: a worldwide pandemic.
The border has been closed for over a year now and is still closed, to help stop the spread of the pandemic, and my high-risk grandparents still need to be fully vaccinated. It’s been so hard not to see them! As soon as it is safe and allowed, I hope that my family can be brought together under one roof again. Then I can add new memories, (and rocks), to my collection.
- The images used in this article are all personal images taken by family members or by me.
- The poem excerpt used is from "Collecting Pebbles" by George Krokos, taken from https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/collecting-pebbles/
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