JULY 17, 2022 – PORT McNEILL, SIDE TRIP TO SOINTULA

It’s a beautiful morning today and our plan is to visit Sointula, which is a Finnish settlement on neighboring Malcolm Island. We walked on the ferry at 10:30 and enjoyed the 20-minute crossing – we can see Sointula from the harbor and probably could have driven ourselves but the ferry dock is right next to us so we decided to be tourists. Sointula means “place of harmony” in Finnish. It was established in 1901 when a colony of Finnish settlers arrived with utopian dreams of building the perfect community. The vibe is super peaceful over there, with some homes sporting beautifully manicured lawns and gardens, and others more left to nature but still tidy for the most part. There are many Finnish residents and seasonal workers from abroad as well. After grabbing a late breakfast, we set off to walk down to the other end of town where the main harbors are located, about 2km away, desperately needing to put some miles on our legs after sitting on the boat for so long. Talked to some locals on the docks that were cleaning fish and got the scoop for where to go fishing, visited a couple gift shops and galleries along the way, and found ourselves back on the 1:45PM ferry to Port McNeill. One of the shops sells art on canvas of actual fish that have been laid on the canvas with ink making an imprint, very well done. The artwork was created by Alexandra Morton, a whale biologist turned activist who has written a book “Not on My Watch” exposing the corruption and cover up by the government regarding the devastating effects on wild salmon by farming salmon in British Columbia, who still pick up diseases and parasites from the farms as they pass by on migration. I will know more later as I bought her book to read, certainly relevant to our State of Washington as well as everywhere in the world that farms fish. I’ve always been against farmed salmon, looking forward to getting more educated on the topic. Back at the boat we had a nice catchup facetime call with John’s parents, then I spent 2 hours planning meals and making up various shopping lists as this is the last provisioning stop for next 3 weeks. Dread the shopping coming up but it’s a necessary part of our trip.

Scenes from Sointula (pronounced (Sun-Toola)