It’s a little easier getting to Chez Monique’s than to Milliways, the fictional “Restaurant at the End of the Universe” in Douglas Adams’s comedic-science fiction series of novels.
After all, Monique’s exists, for half the year, roughly midway on the West Coast Trail.
Its fate, however, is uncertain because 76-year-old Monique Nytol and her husband, Peter, lost their boat to a storm while it was moored in a cove off the west coast of Vancouver Island last year.
Without a boat, there’s no way to ferry supplies, nor for the couple to help transport injured or exhausted trekkers to Port Renfrew. Friends of the Nytols have set up a GoFundMe page, hoping to raise money to help buy a new boat.
Chez Monique’s began offering food and beverage to grateful trail trekkers 25 years ago.
It is usually open while the West Coast Trail is open — May 1 to Sept. 30. The beach serves as the floor, tarps anchored by driftwood provide protection from the rain and the tables and chairs are plastic.
Chez Monique’s has welcomed weary travellers, after two or three gruelling days of navigating the trail, with burgers of beef, salmon, halibut, cod and vegetarian.
Monique, a Métis originally from Quebec, doles out tips and encouragement.
Parks Canada administers the trail through the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. The bureaucrats have never liked Chez Monique’s, but the restaurant sits on Peter’s ancestral Ditidaht First Nations land, out of the civil servants’ reach.
