Meet Tim Doyle, the owner/operator of Greylag Boat Tours running out of Cowichan Bay, B.C.. Tim had had a wonderful career as a shipwright, building and repairing boats for 40 years, mostly in the Lower Mainland. His passion was to build wooden boats but unfortunately the practice was fading just as he was starting his career. He ended up mainly building yachts where fiberglass is widely used.
Like many people visiting the Cowichan Bay and the Cowichan Valley, Tim became arrested by its beauty and lifestyle when he moved to the area in 2012. This region is highlighted in The Circle Comes Round featured in the July 2014 edition of The Source. Cowichan Bay, located just outside Duncan, B.C., became North America’s first Citaslow community in 2009. Begun 10 years earlier in Italy, this designation is given to those communities which feature slow food – meaning food that is sustainably produced using high quality, locally grown products, and encourages the interaction of local small businesses. For example, one business might produce the flour, another mill it, another create baked goods from it and sell them to the public and other local businesses. Everything is done from scratch and is just the opposite of mass produced fast food. The concept extends to the physical space of a community that encourages the pleasure of walking through an area full of art, shops and restaurants in a beautiful natural setting.
All this is Cowicahn Bay and the Citaslow concept is practiced in many places in the Cowichan Valley. One of them is nearby Genoa Bay Cafe which features fresh local seafood, and produce, poultry and meats from the farms of the Cowichan Valley. The cafe sits in the beautiful waterfront setting of Genoa Bay that thrived as a sawmill community between 1870 and 1925. Today it’s a rather quiet community with waterside homes, marinas and a floating art gallery. However, getting from Cowichan Bay to Genoa Bay required a long car drive; as well, many boaters who moored at the Genoa Bay Marina found it cumbersome to bring their boats to Cowichan Bay to enjoy restaurants, shops and sight seeing. Enter Tim Doyle who filled this gap by providing the required ferry service. His boat, Greylag, is a 26-foot former WWII Canadian Navy captain’s gig built in 1944. It had been out of service for 25 years. Tim lovingly restored the gig and converted it to a tour boat. He has his friend Ron Linsay to thank, not only for giving him the boat which was an empty hull at the time, but for also allowing Tim to help himself to his vast collection of marine hardware and materials.
Tim has been successfully operating Greylag Tours for three years. Greylag holds 12 passengers and runs seven days a week from the beginning of May through the end of September. The boat ride between Cowichan Bay and Genoa Bay is beautiful with many vistas of treed, undeveloped land, and sightings of harbor seals, ospreys and eagles. Tim’s stories of local history add greatly to the pleasure of the trip. He also does boat tours of the general area. He has taken people to places on the shore to celebrate their wedding and has also provided his boat for funerary services to scatter ashes in an area of the sea that holds a special memory. With Tim as your pleasant and knowledgeable host, it’s a real treat no matter which of his services you employ.
Tim is president of Cowichan Wooden Boat Society, with its home at the Cowichan Bay Maritime Centre that presents the maritime history of the area. The centre just celebrated its 30th annual Small Wooden Boat Festival the last weekend in June and Greylag was a participant. Tim is also president of the Cowichan Bay Improvement Association. He loves his community and in many ways embodies the essence of Citaslow. “I love this part of the world and want to keep it thriving for years to come.”
For more information:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDrYzo7YVG4
https://www.facebook.com/greylagtours
