November 2014 BCBusiness 75
it may be the Friday of the August long
weekend—Vancouver Island's busiest
travel season—but you'd never know
it standing out on the cedar deck of a
months-old Wya Point Resort luxury
lodge, trying to make out Ucluth
Beach through the surreal blue-sky
fog 200 metres below. Incredibly,
even as traffic on the Port Alberni-
Tofino highway is reaching its usual
congestion, there's still no one on
this particular band of sand located
between the Highway 4 junction and
the town of Ucluelet. And to accentu-
ate the point, a bear cub suddenly
scampers by, and then another in hot
pursuit. This in addition to the wheel-
ing bald eagles who've been here
since check-in.
"There are bear dens all over this
area," notes Tyson Touchie, the newly
minted
CEO of Ucluth Development
Corp., the organization responsible
for creating economic development
opportunities and sustainable
development for the Ucluelet Nation,
a few hours later during a tour of the
600-hectare property. "Wolf dens,
too. The moment people disappear
from the beach, the wildlife really
takes it back."
This exclusivity shared with a for-
tunate few outsiders is the long-culmi-
nating light at the end of the tunnel
outofoffice
How the self-governed
Ucluelet Nation is
reinventing Tofino's
tourism on their
own terms
by Tom Gierasimczuk
The Wya
Back Home
y
W
t r a v e l
SAND DOLLARS
View from the flourishing
Wya Point Resort.
7 9 f o o d
8 1 s o c i e t y
