Cathedral Grove - Vancouver Island

Cathedral Grove is a rare remnant of an ancient Douglas Fir ecosystem on Vancouver Island. The "big tree" in the Grove is featured in this video... it and a few others are about 800 years old and measure 75 metres (250 feet) in height and almost 3m (10 ft) in diameter. They are the survivors of a forest fire that ravaged the area about 350 years ago and the even more devastating invasion by Europeans who settled on Vancouver Island starting around 1850 and subsequently cut down most of the old forests on the island. Nonetheless, this little patch of giant trees remains both awesome and inspirational.
Also featured in this video is my life partner at the beginning, and yours truly at the end. We were visiting Cathedral Grove while camping on the Island and tracing our steps from our first visit way back in September 1973 - exactly 50 years earlier - when we hitchhiked out here from Toronto as teenagers !
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