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COLLECTIVE GOOD A seaside town on B.C.'s Malcolm Island reveals great campsites and greater hospitality. By Melissa Edwards / Photos by Christer Waara Th e Wi l d a n d t h e We i rd N atu ra l wo n d e rs B i g L a ke (a b ove) a n d th e S o intul a wate r fro nt (l ef t) c o exist p e ac efully w ith th e b iz a rre a n d b e autiful K a l eva R o ad s e a s i d e a r t tra il (b e l ow). LOCAL G ETAWAYS SO I NTU L A ome camp gear you can do with- out—string lights, say, or a cornhole set. What you can't do without, as we grasp while ransacking our packs on a cold evening in a remote island campsite, is a cooking pot. Our genius idea was to blow northward past the South Coast crowds, taking the ferry from Port McNeill on the northern end of Vancouver Island over to Malcolm Island, where the shoulder season gave us a good shot at securing a chunk of ocean- front campground to ourselves. But no neighbours also means no borrowing, and it's soon clear that we'll have to head into town right away if we want to eat anything warmer than a granola bar. Luckily, town isn't far away. The busier campsite here is Bere Point, where itchy orcas come to scratch their sides on the just-sloping-enough-to-not-get- beached pebble flats. But we haven't come for fins, we've come for Finns: Sointula, the main village, was S founded as a collective utopia by Finnish free-love idealist Matti Kurikka in 1901, and my half-Finnish husband was look- ing for some cultural history with our camping getaway. That original utopia collapsed, as utopias do, but the Finnish flavour remains in the road signs, the practical Nor- dic architecture and the village name itself: sointula means harmony in Finnish. So, with a little "oh look, that's Finnish"-style walking about in mind, we'd booked at Harmony Shores Campground, which is an easy four-kilome- tre hike to town along the waterfront. As we finish setting up our tent, a cool ocean mist is pulling back into crisp bands of low-lying cloud—tempting us to stick around. But, hot food calls. Someone, some- where out there, is going to have cookware for sale. With the North Island weather shifting from fair to moody and back again, we follow the Kaleva Road seaside art trail into Sointula, spotting folksy 40 BCBUSINESS MAY/JUNE 2023