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After a curvy, road along Beaver Point Road, I found myself at Ruckle Park, one of Salt Spring Island’s most beautiful parks located at the southern tip of the island. Ruckle Park is named for its founding family who once owned and worked the land, producing hundreds of apples each year. Their harvest yielded more than what the modern day Okanogan region of Southern British Columbia does these days.

In 1974 the Ruckle family gave the land to the province of B.C. to be used as a park for all to explore its beauty.

For those locals that know the land well, some may have seen the hundred year old abandoned apple orchard, next to the park land, which houses ghostly, unpruned ancient apples trees. Visions of the old times when the apple orchard was thick with fruit and merriment are now a thing of the past. Tourism and Arts are the main commerce of the island now, for apple growing died out a long time ago.



The look of rain began to make its vaporous entrance across the channel. Seawater and wind-swept beauty blew salt air my way cleansing my nostrils and lifting my hair. Waves pounded the seven kilometer rocky shoreline, getting smaller with less attack, as they entered the small coves which dotted the park coast’s line. Looking out over the Swanson Channel I surveyed the profile of two of the other seven southern gulf islands situated between southern Vancouver Island and Vancouver on B.C.’s mainland. ??Good Ol’ Salty easily boasts being a favorite by many who discover her island magic.