On Canada Day, we had a little excursion over to Saturna Island with our friend David and his family for their annual Canada Day Lamb BBQ! It was a great day on the water, as David picked us up in Sturdies Bay and we boated over to Saturna and spent a lovely day celebrating Canada Day!
I’ve wanted to do this Canada Day tradition for a while - I heard about it a couple of years ago, and it sounded interesting. They have been doing this event on Saturna since 1950, and this article on the Canada Day festivities makes a pretty good argument that it’s one of the best Canada Day events around!
As we headed out from Sturdies Bay there was a ferry docked at the main berth.
David was coming over on his big boat from Point Roberts and made the kind offer to pick us up at Sturdies Bay. That made it easy for us - we just had to drive down to the south end, and away we went. The timing was perfect - he picked us up around noon, giving us a chance to grab some things for the cruise over.
Mount Baker was looking imposing as we headed out from Sturdies Bay.
The lighthouse on Mayne Island.
Mount Galiano
From Sturdies, we drove up through Active Pass (between Mayne and Galiano) and then worked our way along the edge of Mayne Island, towards Saturna. Saturna sits off the far end (relative to Galiano) of Mayne. The trip wasn’t long - about an hour total, and while we were hoping for maybe a whale sighting or two, the most we got was a harbour seal.
The boat ride to Saturna
Eventually we got to the harbour near the park where the event was taking place. We were relatively late and there were a lot of boats there already! We cruised by a huge sailboat that was clearly the class of the ships that were over for the event, and that’s saying something as there were some really nice boats on display.
This massive sailboat was the nicest of all the ships on display. It was just huge!
Mount Baker was still hovering over us; this tie over Saturna!
David navigated us through the throng of boats and found a good spot to anchor. As we were about to try and figure out how to shuttle all of us over in his small tender, a larger boat pulled up and offered to take us over to the dock. Such service! These were volunteers that were there to make life easy for everyone that came for the big day, and we really appreciated it. Certainly made things easier.
There were lots of boats tied up in the small harbour.
Which was made even more apparent when you saw the number of tenders tied up at the dock!
But if I had to pick one boat, it would be this one. I love these little tugs - so perfect for our waters.
As you may have noted in the article, there are only about 450 people on Saturna full time and they get over 220 people out to volunteer during the day. That’s amazing community spirit and it really made the day something special. After our volunteer boat shuttle service dropped us off, it was a short walk over to the site of the festivities.
It was way busier than I had expected!
It was much bigger than I had expected! They claimed to have had 1,500 people out for the day and it certainly felt busy! We had booked a time slot from 2:30-3:00 for our lamb meal, so we had a little bit of time to spare.
There was a beer garden set-up, so that seemed like the right place to start with. Our first surprise of the day was the person handing out beer for the beer garden - it was our “neighbor” at the Whitecaps, Laurie.
Laurie has season tickets like us and has the seats next to us. We’ve chatted on and off over the years, and just this year discovered that he had a place on Saturna, but here he was in person. He didn’t recognize us at first - normally we only see each other at Whitecaps games - but eventually it clicked.
He was a very busy guy, so we didn’t have a lot of time to chat, but it was great to see him.
Another view of the festival grounds.
After having a drink, we wandered out to check out the rest of the venue. They had a series of tables set-up for local vendors, the library was selling off old books, and there was a stage with a band playing. They had some games set-up for kids and the atmosphere was pretty great.
There was lots going on throughout the day!
Eventually it was time to line up for our meal. They had set-up this large fie on the grounds, and there were 27 lambs set-up on iron crosses to cook. This goes back to the first event which was organized by some locals that were originally from Argentina, and this mirrors the traditional way that lambs were cooked. The results were spectacular - the food was amazing and there was lots of it. We settled onto a picnic blanket with the rest fo the crew and enjoyed our meal.
Eventually it was time to go and so we headed back to the dock and our short trip back to David’s boat. Before long we were under way and headed back to Galiano. The trip back was smooth - the weather was good and the seas were calm. David dropped us off at Sturdies Bay and we headed home, after a very fun day exploring the Gulf Islands!
