Sointula

I've finally gotten around to moving a substantial amount of things off of my computer so now I can finally look at the rest of the pictures from Thanksgiving weekend. So, here we have sunrise from the ferry on the way to Sointula, BC.

Sointula was originally founded by a group of Finnish settlers over a hundred years ago and is home to Canada's oldest co-op store. The Finns had come to Canada to escape a rather repressive government under the Russian Czars only to be further opressed by the forces of market capitalism as workers in the coal mines in Nanaimo.

A group moved north and founded the town on Malcolm Island, where they intended to create a utopian society based upon socialism, prohibition of alcohol and women's rights. It never quite worked out the way they had planned, but the town remains, and though it's lost a lot of its Finnish flavour over the years, the bakery still serves Finnish style bread, and you'll run into the occasional person there who speaks that strange language that seems to have far too many vowels.

The nicest thing about the place though, is that it's not touristy at all. It's surrounded by lovely scenery, and yet unlike so many other places around northern Vancouver Island, it doesn't have a Starbucks or a huge resort lodge or stores that sell all that tacky souvenir crap. It's just a little fishing village and people live there.

If I wanted Starbucks coffee and dinner at Moxies or Swiss Chalet or Ricky's or what have you, I could just stay home. But the sad thing is that every time I travel somewhere else, it seems that places just keep getting more and more similar.