TO QUADRA

Bhaktimarga Swami
Aug 3
2 min read

Monday, August 4th, 2025

Quadra Island, British Columbia

From a tiny airport on Pacific Coastlines with seven other passengers, I landed at Campbell River, Vancouver Island. From there, a ferry took us to Quadra Island (population 2,000 in the winter), and with a brief ride, Nitai Priya and Tony brough me to their lovely and modest home in the rawness of this beautiful island.

Hummingbirds are evident here, but more sizeable are the ravens. For mammals, packs of wolves, cougars, beaver, mink, otters, deer, and the occasional bear make their appearance. The home is nestled in amidst hemlock, cedar, fir, pine, maple, and plenty of huckleberry trees.

David Suzuki resides here, and he is a credible scientist who has been fighting for environmental causes for years. He grew up for a good portion of his life in London and Leamington, Ontario, close to where I’m from. His TV series, The Nature of Things, has run for a long time, and is highly educational.

It was with the kindness of Nitai Priya that a program was arranged at the local community centre for a presentation of “Tales from Trails.” The folks who showed up were all local, and most of them are from the age of remembering The Beatles and when the music outshone the stuff of today. The focus of my talk was about pilgrimage and introspective walking. I was familiarizing the group with monastic lifestyle, detachment from the world, but attachment to the Creator, which translates to me as Krishna.

I’m extremely comfortable with this type of people, people from the era of more radical thinking and less gadget-bound culturing. Their questions were relatable.

Finally, the three of us – Tony, Nitai Priya, and I, had the last look at the ocean for the day.