Plenty of action in Vancouver Island

By SUE HOFFART

Talk about bringing an audience to its knees. Within minutes of opening her mouth, the captivating guide has a posse of eager children kneeling at her feet, engrossed in her banter and desperate to hold an iridescent black beetle in their own outstretched palms.

This is Victoria Bug Zoo, inner city home to a large, hairy, striped tarantula, several luminous blue scorpions and an exceptionally good tour guide who intersperses technical terms with tales of black horned dung beetles gobbling mountains of "poop".

The unusual zoo is a must for anyone carting children around this attractive Western Canadian island city. Despite a reputation as a safe, temperate, nicely manicured haven for the grey-haired tour bus crowd, British Columbia's compact provincial capital offers plenty of enchantment for young travellers.

A short walk from the zoo - unobtrusively wedged into a small downtown shopping arcade - children can visit a mammoth at the museum, enjoy a harbour ferry ride, cuddle goats in a park and ogle a lurching unicyclist.

The Kids' Guide to Victoria and Vancouver Island, available at central city information centre (812 Wharf St) directs visitors to nearby beaches, playgrounds and child-friendly bookshops as well as local attractions.

This summer tourist season, world tensions, security scares, Sars and a strong US dollar have thinned the crowds. Many tourist operators claim business is down about 30 per cent, but a kilted boy is making a killing playing bagpipes on a corner beside the water. Canadian loonies and twonies ($1 and $2 coins) fill the case at his feet.

Nearby is the museum, the copper-topped legislative building and the stately, ivy-covered Empress Hotel. On the harbourfront promenade behind him, children revel in the bustle created by neighbouring floatplanes and boats. A walkway is abuzz with buskers, visitors and street vendors hawking cartoon portraits, juice and cookies, tacky spray paintings and beaded Indian dream catchers. On long, light summer evenings, adults and children are still meandering around this part of town until 11pm. As night slowly falls, fairy-lit buildings provide a distraction for jet lagged, wide-awake toddlers.

Zippy little ferries shuttle passengers around the harbour and some of the shorter trips offer a change of scene for kids - take the Fisherman's Wharf stop and feed the seals. A longer 50-minute tour includes a good historic commentary, but it may bore children.

Instead, wander them through Totem Park, where impressive native carvings stretch skyward, just across from the Royal British Columbia Museum (www.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca). Inside the museum, find more totem poles, carved canoes and a native Indian pit house. Children will also get a kick out of the wonderfully lifelike dioramas featuring critters such as bears and sea lions. Failing that, the in-house IMAX theatre's giant screen runs hourly.

A few blocks away, Beacon Hill Park has duck ponds, a large playground and a modest petting zoo featuring alpacas, zebus, a potbellied pig, rabbits and goats with their strokable kids. A coin donation gains entry and a brochure children can stamp after they've visited each of the featured animals.

The bug zoo also provides some good, hands-on activities, including flashlights for children who want to follow the progress of the leaf-cutter ant colony. We left via the requisite but very good gift shop with a complimentary recipe for chocolate covered tarantulas.

www.bugzoo.bc.ca

www.tourismvictoria.com