FEATURE: Gulf Islands

On balance, probably not, but for a meal that’s a little more complex — while still absolutely fresh, local and seasonal, mind you — a stop at Bruce’s Kitchen in Salt Spring’s main village of Ganges is also in order. Bruce Wood is yet another Ontario refugee with a cheese connection, yet both he and the connection are unrelated to David Wood. He and his wife departed Ottawa three years ago after visiting relatives who run a second Salt Spring cheese producer, Moonstruck Organic Cheese Inc., and he launched the restaurant in 2009. Imagine a Michelin-starred chef gone all healthy and island time and you’ve pretty much got the picture: my halibut arrived amid a merry mess of greens and seeds that would have solved any omnivore’s dilemma.

A short drive away is Morning Bay Vineyards, where we pick up a second case of wine — riesling this time — to go with one we’d filled a bottle or two at a time at various previous stops. Proprietors Keith Watt and Barbara Reid have precisely the backgrounds expected of winery owners, which is to say pretty much random: he was a CBC Radio producer, she worked in the fashion industry. We find ourselves wishing we could stay a couple more weeks, until Labour Day, when they throw an annual one-day party starring bands and musicians from near and far. They call it Winestock, as if any other name were possible.

TOO SOON, IT IS TIME TO BOARD the ferry for home — somewhat unexpectedly, with money still in our jeans. The scores of bed and breakfasts in these parts aren’t necessarily expensive, and we’d further economized by bunking with friends. Nevertheless, a holiday’s a holiday, and we’d certainly done ours up properly, especially on Salt Spring. There we booked into Hastings House, which regularly features in surveys of the world’s most amazing places to stay.

Hotels like to refer to themselves as “properties,” but Hastings House genuinely is: nine hectares of gardens and sculpture gardens situated on the quiet side of Ganges’ marina and centring on a mansion built in the style of an 11th-century Sussex manor house by a retired British naval architect who arrived in 1937 with his new wife and furniture of appropriately Medieval heft. We bunked a few steps away in the “Farmhouse,” a 110-year-old residence converted into two impressive suites, awakening in the morning to find a basket of coffee and muffins on our doorstep.

That night, we ate an astonishingly good dinner that stretched over three courses and involved all manner of fish and seafood as well as Salt Spring lamb and British Columbia wine (or maybe that was wines). Over dessert, we struck up a conversation with the couple at the next table. It turned out their yacht was docked down in the marina and that they were gourmands, hopping around the Gulf Islands.

Whether they had a million dollars, who can guess. I can’t even confirm that they felt like a million dollars. But I know that we certainly did.

Jim Sutherland lives in Vancouver and writes for publications such as Western Living and Vancouver Magazine, both of which he used to edit. Andrew Doran lives in Squamish, B.C., and focuses on travel and architecture photography.