Just spent the weekend on Saltspring Island, which is a very different place from Bowen, but which shares many similarities, not the least of which are my favourite Gulf Island markers: twisty potholed roads that are named after the places they take you.



Not for me are the straight, numbered and well ordered blacktop streets of Vancouver. Nah. Give me potholes and frost heaves and sealed surfaces and the pleasure of coming to a freshly graded dirt road after a mile or two of pitted washboard. And instead of grid numbers and the names of dead royalty, give me destinations like Bowen Bay Road, Fulford-Ganges Road, Sutil Point Road, Mount Gardiner Road, Hood Point Road and Smuggler's Cove Lane.



How sensible and evocative and eminently practical is that?