Victoria is only the tip of Vancouver Island's charms.

Byline: Zeke Wigglesworth

TOFINO, British Columbia _ You could wander into the Empress Hotel across from the Parliament Building around 4 or so in the afternoon and have one of the old heap's famous High Teas.

Or drive out to the Butchart Gardens and ponder the pelargoniums or eyeball the eremurus. Maybe wander around Bastion Square downtown, looking for Inuit soapstones or other goodies in the hordes of galleries and shops ...

Just you and the other four million or so people who visit Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, every year.

Or, you could lean back in the 101-degree waters of your own private hot tub on the second floor balcony of your own private two-bedroom cabin at the Crystal Cove Beach Resort near the harbor village of Tofino and gaze out at the Pacific.

Or camp in an old growth forest in the mountains that straddle the middle of the island, just you and the trees and the wind.

As they say, it don't get much better than that.

Not that Victoria has become a metropolitan blot, by any standard, it being Canadian after all _ meaning clean and tidy.

But the city has doubled in population in the last three decades (now about 320,000), and is now showing some signs of …