Islander

In the four decades that I’ve walked the trail to Tod Inlet, I can’t pretend to know the place. Its apparent stillness mocks me.

More than 175 women from across Vancouver Island ran five kilometres of trails and tackled 12 demanding obstacles at Victoria’s only all-women charity obstacle adventure race last Sunday.

SAN JUAN ISLANDS, Washington — Against a backdrop of rocky bluffs, a pod of orcas jumped out of the emerald waters of the Puget Sound before splashing their massive black-and-white bodies back into the water.

Recently, at Puppet Central, I spoke with Tim Gosley, instigator of Puppets for Peace festival, which he called a “mini Fringe Festival for puppets.” Gosley is a thorough-going puppet person, a child of his father’s Victoria legend, the Smile Show.

This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on Aug. 31, 1940. Our carefree childhood in Canada has passed, and the strange sensations of adolescence are disturbing us. People are looking at us and are beginning to notice how big we are.

In the early days of Belmont Secondary School, students had to spend gym class and detention time picking rocks out of the new school’s playing field. Decades later, the fields are rock-free, but the school has reached the end of its life.

Trafalgar/Pro Patria Branch No. 292 of the Royal Canadian Legion has just announced the results of their poppy campaign from last year. The branch, which covers Victoria, Oak Bay and Saanich, collected $90,000 in donations from their 2014 campaign.

Olympic gold medalist Adam Kreek would be the first admit he’s no Tiger Woods, but his limitations on the links didn’t keep him away from the Victoria Golf Club on Thursday.

Mark Tobey/Teng Baiye Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, ed., Frye Art Museum, Seattle, 2014, 80 pp. Mark Tobey (1890-1976) was an artist of Seattle, a West Coast mystic in 20th-century art. And he played a significant role in Victoria’s art life.

Aquatic life suffering as water levels fall below amounts needed to sustain itg