Nanaimo

The Nanaimo bar is three layers, a crumb and coconut base, custard buttercream and chocolate on top, and it is not baked. Recipes resembling it appear in Canadian cookbooks from the 1950s, and Nanaimo's claim rests on an early named version in a local hospital auxiliary book; the city ran a competition in 1986 to fix the definitive recipe and has since marked a Nanaimo Bar Trail through cafes and bakeries. The city itself grew on coal from the 1850s, and the Bastion, a wooden Hudson's Bay Company tower of 1853, still stands on the waterfront. The harbourfront walkway runs several kilometres.

History

The Snuneymuxw, whose name gave the city its own, are the people of this area, and the first Europeans to reach the harbour came with the Spanish voyage of 1791 under Francisco de Eliza, who named it Bocas de Winthuysen. In 1850 the Snuneymuxw chief Che-wich-i-kan, known as Coal Tyee, brought coal samples to Victoria; the Hudson's Bay Company founded Colvile Town here in 1852 and shipped its first coal on the Cadboro that year, the Bastion was built between 1853 and 1855, 24 coal miners from England arrived with their families on 27 November 1854, and in 1858 the town was renamed Nanaimo (Wikipedia, Nanaimo).

Highlights

• The Nanaimo Bar Trail - a marked route through bakeries and cafes.
• The Bastion - an 1853 Hudson's Bay Company wooden tower on the harbour.
• The harbourfront walkway - a seawall path with float plane traffic.
• Newcastle Island - a car-free provincial park a short ferry from the harbour.

When to go

May to September; the Bastion opens seasonally with a noon cannon firing. The bathtub race, a long-running local event, is in July. Ferry queues are heaviest on summer weekends.

Before you go

The bar's origin is genuinely uncertain and the city's claim is contested. Nanaimo is a working port city, not a resort. The downtown has run-down stretches.

Nearby

Newcastle Island lies offshore; Cathedral Grove is west.

Key facts