HERITAGE/ Islands – The Beautiful Marvels

The west coast of Canada is a dense crazy-quilt of forested islands, the largest by far being 460 km/290 mile-long Vancouver Island. Travelling north along its east coast from Victoria or from Nanaimo where a ferry from Vancouver on the British Columbia mainland intercepts the four-lane highway, visitors arrive at Campbell River (pop. 35,000), more than half way up the east coast. From there, a 10-minute car ferry ride across Discovery Passage makes it easy to explore Quadra Island, one of the m...

A fact so charming, it always has to be mentioned first: The Caribbean island of Sint Maarten-Saint Martin is the smallest land mass in the world to be shared by two different nations. Only 37 square miles are shared by France and the Netherlands Antilles. The French territory covers about two thirds of the island and is technically part of Europe and the European Community. The Dutch side is a member island of the Netherlands Antilles and part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, but not consi...

"The Mysterious Paradise Island" said the sign above the airport terminal door. I had just landed on Kosrae, one of the four Federated States of Micronesia, and I would soon discover that this tiny island was brimming with mysteries. Of course, one of its biggest mysteries is that most people, aside from Micronesians, have never even heard of Kosrae. That exclusivity appealed to me. Located in a nearly empty part of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii, the Philippines, Japan and New Guinea, Kosr...

The Virgin Islands consist of two groups of islands, the United States Virgin Islands (USVI) and the British Virgin Islands (BVI). Between them there are 8 major islands and over 90 smaller islands and cays. You likely can name the major islands: St. Croix, St. Thomas, St. John and Water Island in the USVI; and Tortola, Virgin Gorda, Jost Van Dyke and Anegada in the BVI. Now it is trivia time; one point each, how many of the small islands can you name? If you can’t think of any, take a clu...