- In this episode of "Fly Brother", we breathe in the woods and water of breathtaking Tofino, British Columbia, Canada.

We start off hanging ten, um, five, on Cox Bay Beach with surf sister Tiff Olsen.

Then, eco-preneur Steve Dennis takes us on a kelp-capade of Clayoquot Sound.

Next, we go shaggy-chic at the Hotel Zed with magical Mandy Farmer before we finally take a long, luxurious forest bath on Big Tree Trail with guardian Saya Masso.

It's surf and turf in transcendent Tofino.

Let's get fly.

(upbeat music) - I'm Ernest White II, storyteller, explorer.

Don't try this at home.

I believe in connecting across backgrounds and boundaries.

Join me and my friends.

Just like home.

And discover that no matter the background, no matter the history, the whole world is our tribe.

This is fun!

Come with me.

See how my friends do?

"Fly Brother".

- [Announcer] Major funding for this program is provided by (melodic music) (exciting string music) - Tofino is a place apart, tucked away at the end of the road in a wild watery landscape.

Life here runs on a clock set to nature's rhythms.

You can walk along miles of beaches, hike the back country along the West Coast Trail, or soak in hidden hot springs.

People here have an entrepreneurial streak and a deep commitment to the community.

So while you wander through art galleries or wash down ocean-to-table cuisine with handcrafted beer, you're supporting small businesses that power the local economy.

And when you catch a wave here in Canada's surf city, you're celebrating a local pastime that's become world famous.

So I'm going to try my luck and see if I can hone my carving skills instead of eating it.

Tiff Olsen teaches at the Surf Sister Surfing School in Tofino and she's put people from ages five to 100 up on boards so I'm in good hands as we head to one of her favorite spots.

Tiffany, what is so special about Cox Bay Beach?

I mean, this place has many different beaches that we could've gone to, but why this one?

- Well, generally we pick beaches because of the wave size.

So this time of year, it's still kind of summer waves.

The swell in the water is a little bit smaller, so we can come here and enjoy some nice sized waves.

It's also my favorite beach.

It has like the untouched trees in the background and it's a little bit bigger than a lot of the other bays.

(melodic music) - How long have you been teaching surf outs?

- I've been teaching surf in Tofino for eight years.

It's a great place to learn 'cause it has these nice long, shallow sand beaches.

But I think the real perk of learning to surf in Tofino is that the crowds are so friendly.

Everyone's smiling, everyone's chatting.

You won't get anyone yelling at you here for doing something wrong, and there's a lot of places where that is a thing.

It also has a lot of women in the water.

Still now, when I travel, I forget and sometimes I'll be the only woman in the lineup somewhere but here it's always almost 50/50.

- Okay, so it's welcoming, particularly for beginners, women, people who are not, who don't necessarily fancy themselves as the stereotypical surfer.

- 100%.

- Okay.

- Yeah, we'll take all levels here.

- All right, now this is my third time surfing ever.

- Okay.

- So I would consider myself to be an upper intermediate quasi, not exactly absolute beginner.

- Yes, perfect.

- So what are we going to do today?

- Okay, well, we're going to go over some safety.

We're going to talk a little bit about the equipment.

A few things you do need to worry about.

We're going to be surfing into really shallow water.

So I do some sand surfing, One arm at a time, nice long strokes.

- I definitely need a refresh.

- Perfect, awesome.

- Let's go.

They say pride goeth before a fall and few things are more humbling than swallowing seawater over and over again but there's nobility in beginnership and honor in expansion.

In other words, I'm pretty stoked.

Okay, that's not really me you all.

(upbeat music) Off the west coast of Canada on Vancouver Island, the village of Tofino sits on the tip of a peninsula in Clayoquot Sound.

First Nation Tla-o-qui-aht people had lived here for at least 5,000 years before Spanish explorers arrived.

And in 1792, they named the area for the navigator and mapmaker, Vincente Tofino de San Miguel.

Tofino was one of Canada's best kept secrets for decades.

The village wasn't officially incorporated until 1932 and the first logging road didn't come through until 1959.

But today it's still a quiet gem in the midst of old growth rainforests and rolling waves where whales drop by every spring and migrating birds soar overhead on the Pacific Flyway.

Even a blustery day is fun here where the armchair sport of storm watching brings people to witness the power of the Pacific every winter.

People who live here are passionate about protecting and nurturing the beautiful place they call home, from its waterways to its entrepreneurial spirit.

Stevie Dennis comes from a First Nations fishing family, and he grew up right here on these waters.

Today, they're helping him make a living and protect the environment.

Stevie is one of the founders of NAAS Foods, an Indigenous led company committed to feeding the planet with delicious, sustainable seafood, from fish to kelp.

So, man, why kelp?

- Well, you know, kelp is one of those things that, you know, it ticks all the boxes.

You just put it in the water and it grows.

So there's new studies coming out with how much carbon sequestering capabilities it has.

You can make fuel from it or foods.

Okay, food security, fertilizers, bioplastics, all these different things.

It's an untapped resource that's going to be growing.

The government realizes it, the First Nations realize it, and, you know, it just so happened to be something that I was getting into at the right time.

The species that myself and my business partner have been working with are the two fastest growing kelp in the ocean.

One species, the bull kelp that we're going to pull up here, is 10 centimeters a day in summer time.

- It grows 10 centimeters a day.

- Yeah.

- Wow.

- Yeah, it's wild.

- That's crazy.

- It's actually outrageous.

- Like a lawn in Florida.

- You could probably almost see it grow.

- To Stevie, kelp is a floating opportunity.

(upbeat music) - So this is a nereocystis or bull kelp.

With this plant, it can get up to, I think about 30 meters in length.

As you can see, that's a lot, a lot of mass from one plant.

Sometimes you can get like 20 or 30 kilograms just just in blades from one.

- What are some of the uses for kelp?

- So right now we did a fertilizer.

The next one is a food product.

- Okay.

- So we were taking the blades of bull kelp here, and we are drying them and smoking them and adding them into other ingredients and we've made a seasoning or let's say like a spice that you're going to add into food.

- Okay.

- Turns out it's extremely good for you.

- You are born and raised here.

- Yeah.

- What makes Tofino special for you?

- Well, it's hard to say 'cause it's just like, it's I guess just home.

You know, all of my family is around here.

I like to think, you know, when I'm going places around here, maybe a ancestor from long, long ago has been doing the exact same thing, you know.

So it's like, it's that connection.

Now that I have a daughter, you know, showing her all the things that my parents showed me.

- Yes.

- Lots of time on the water.

The beaches, the forest, the ocean, scuba diving, free diving, surfing, kayaking, hiking, fishing, hunting.

So there's kind of an experience for everybody.

- Sure.

- You know, and it's right here.

- In your backyard.

- Yeah, where else am I going to do this?

- Yeah, what do you want visitors to Tofino to experience?

- Some of my kelp, man.

(both laughing) - Well then that's easy.

Let's do it.

(upbeat music) Tofino kelp.

- May I kelp you?

- Meanwhile, back at the store, Stevie lets me sample some of the wares.

- It is a nice dried product.

It lasts a long time on the shelf.

It's one of the ways that we were looking at just trying to get kelp into people's diets.

You know, you're not.

- Sneakily.

- Yeah, and you're not going to go out there and just start chowing down on blades of kelp.

So another way we looked at it too was mixing it with other seasonings.

So this is what we like to call our popcorn seasoning.

It's a little bit spicier, has a little bit of pep and step.

- Mm, that's good you all.

- [Stevie] Not bad, eh?

- That on some meat.

- Yeah.

(upbeat music) - Featuring makers, artists, chefs, distillers, and more, music restaurants and small businesses are run by people who support their close knit community.

- Woo.

- [Josh] The city banned new franchises more than a dozen years ago to support local energy and creativity.

There's plenty of room here for free spirits and innovators, and thanks to my friend Mandy Farmer, they have the perfect place in Tofino to call their home away from home.

- Woohoo.

- It's so good to see you, Mandy.

- Yeah.

- Mandy's a rebel against the ordinary and the dynamic force behind the Hotel Zed, where you get a place to chill, dance, and dream, along with a place to sleep.

Bikes right into the lobby.

Mandy personally chose every piece of art and chachka in the place, and she shows me a select few of her favorite things.

- Okay, so I want to show you my grandfather's desk.

- Okay, looks sturdy.

- So it really is.

Now we are a third generation family business.

So our family business actually started with this desk and my grandfather, and then it was passed down to my dad.

And back 20 years ago, I inherited this desk, and then I started a hotel chain.

I'm totally grateful and love the fact that this mid-century modern desk inspired me to create a hotel chain based on retro.

- Why retro?

- I feel that hotels are a place where we get to kind of play and explore and reinvent ourselves.

I want to create a place where people feel inspired, where they're going to think differently, and so while you may never decorate your home like this, you get to come and stay and experience this place, feel the nostalgia, you're going to get different ideas, and I just, I think it inspires people to be creative and fun and whimsy and all that good stuff.

- Sure, for me, it creates a dream that I can relate to because there are elements here that I remember either growing up with in my parents' house or at my grandparents' house.

- Yeah.

- Like the light up globe behind you, like that kind of thing inspired my travels.

- Yes, yes.

- And so to see that there, it then, you know, kind of reminds me of something that feels good and then allows me the freedom to think about other things that feel good.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Or let those things come in and show themselves while I'm here.

And as a former history professor, you know, I'm always finding parallels between the past and the present.

And to me this is kind of like a physical manifestation of that.

Yes.

I'd like to place a collect call.

Jacksonville, Florida.

Mom, yes, I just dialed you on a rotary phone.

Yes, I'd like to order a large pepperoni pizza.

The new Christian Slater is playing at eight.

Oh wait, okay, I got it.

- Who are you going to call?

- Ghostbusters.

(upbeat music) - So I thrifted all of this art and I had so much fun just pulling together like weird pieces that on their own are kind of like, nah, nondescript, but you put them all together and it's magic.

- It's a vibe.

- Yeah.

- Where'd you find that?

- I bought almost everything from vintage stores across Canada.

- Finding the, just sourcing.

- Yeah.

- What was the process?

Did you go out with an intention?

- No.

- Or were you just like, whatever it calls me.

- Yep.

- I'm buying.

- Completely, like, just like, you know, you get a gut feeling where I'd be like, yes.

- So you listen.

- Yeah.

- Like you get it and then you check.

- Yeah.

- For understanding, you're like.

- Yeah, oh yeah, yeah I have to go, do I, uh huh.

- Oh, I have that same process that I, oof goosebumps.

- Yeah.

- What do you want visitors to take with them when they go home?

- I would love for visitors to take a sense of inner peace and respect for the land, as well as some knowledge as to how to care for this land in the future.

And I really do believe that we can learn that from our Indigenous elders.

There is a feeling here where you just know it's a sacred place.

- Yeah.

- There's an energy, and so whether it is, you know, you're out in the forest surrounded by these amazing big trees, whether you're on the beach and you're watching the fog roll in, there is an energy here that I've never found in any other place in the world.

- Mm, I can agree and that's why we're here.

(melodic music) One of the things I love most about Tofino and indeed British Columbia are these beautiful forests.

(upbeat music) Forest bathing is one of my favorite things to do in life, especially here in the temperate rainforest on Vancouver Island and in the Pacific Northwest.

The energy, the technology of these trees, some even a thousand years old, is calming, healing, loving.

(upbeat music) Saya Masso is the Lands and Resource Director for the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation.

He helped to create a guardian program that stations Indigenous guides out into forests to protect them for future generations and to show people how to enjoy them responsibly.

Here we hike along Big Tree Trail in Meares Island Tribal Park, barely 10 minutes from town by boat.

- This is a trailhead sign, welcome to Hilthuuis.

- Hilthuuis.

- That's right, yeah said right.

That's traditional place name for this part of the island.

- Okay, what does it mean?

- Wanachus, Hilthuuis is the island.

Wanachus is that mountain.

It hints at the visage of a cresting whale.

If you're out offshore fishing, you could see this first mountain that we're in front of.

- Alright.

Now Saya, tell me about being a tribal parks guardian.

What does that mean?

- Well, our guardians were declared by our elders in 2008, and they're mandated to, you know, restore rivers, restore salmon runs, do beach cleanups, build trails that we're on, and really just get an intimate knowledge of what's going on inside of our tribal park.

Yeah, so this is a big huckleberry bush.

This is Salal, but there's none of them that have any berries on them.

I hope to find some.

Well, the hanging garden, because there's like every berry and medicinal plants and every type of foraging and life that can come from that one tree back there.

Massive, eh?

- Wow, the standing harvest tree.

- Okay man, wow.

It is pretty large.

- It's a culturally modified tree, good 1500 years old.

Red cedar tree.

- Now I hear the term culturally modified tree.

What does that mean?

- Well, it's, you can see this sliver that's been taken out of it.

It's a tree that's been changed and affected by the Clayoquot culture.

We've pulled longhouse boards off.

- Okay, okay.

- You can see this cedar band here.

All of our clothing and tools and implements were made of red cedar.

- Sure.

- There would've been 10,000 Clayoquot living on this island and you wouldn't know it that we were harvesting that much cedar because all the trees were left alive when we would harvest boards and cedar off.

- So unlike logging, you know, it's kind of sustainable.

- Yeah, actually, sustainability is a really low bar for Clayoquot.

Our laws of respect, like ESOC, respect, laws of reciprocity and the interconnectedness of the web of life, our laws on how to harvest and manage resources leads to a system of abundance, and sustainability sounds like we're just eking by, but our laws are really meant to lead to like rivers teeming with salmon, clam gardens that are just overflowing with big clams.

And that's, this is an example of that in practice.

If this was harvested and logged, this would be brown dry soil, the sun just cooking and burning all the moss up.

But because this tree is here covering, you know, a good 50 square feet of canopies covering on those berries, the sunlight's coming through, it's allowing just for so much more density and life in this forest because it's standing.

- Then how are we seeing climate change affect the island, the forest, the ecosystem?

- We're seeing a lot, you know, the way land is managed with deforestation, you know, that rain hits it and it just runs over brown soil and into the creek.

The water's a much higher temperature than if it had trickled through moss and shade all the way to the creek.

- Sure.

- So that's hard on salmon, creates algae blooms 'cause it's a higher temperature.

So yeah, there's a lot to overcome, but it's not lost.

I think we can, you know, apply ourselves, put guardians on the land and rebuild rivers.

Some rivers could take 400 years to restore back to normal.

But with our, with effort on, you could really reduce that cycle and get us back to a healthy place.

- When you guide people here, what do you want them to experience in this particular place?

- Well, I, you know, I'd like to think that if you come here, you will passionately speak about old growth forests.

And the more people that come out of here speaking about protected areas or tribal parks, or being impassioned about interconnected old growth forests, I think that's going to serve everyone, but it also helps our Tribal Park program Educate and awareness, yeah.

- No, it's what we're here for, to be connected and I appreciate you showing us how to connect.

- It's been an honor.

- Showing us how to be more aware and educating us on just our part, what part we have to play.

And it starts with, I think just being in the space.

There really is an energy in Tofino that you won't find anywhere else.

A deep connection between the woods and the water and a spiritual bond between the people who live here and their centuries of ancestors.

It's hard to put into words, but you'll know it when you feel it.

This little corner of Canada has a powerful sense of place and its own rugged magic.

Tofino, you got me.

(melodic music) - [Announcer] Major funding for this program is provided by (melodic music) (exciting string music) To join the Fly Brother travel community or to order your own copy of this episode, visit flybrother.com.

(melodic music)