In the Quiet surfing enclave of Tofino, the investment swell is as good as the breaks.
Story and photos by Kevin Arnold
IT’S A WET AND FOGGY AFTERNOON when
the six-seater I’m aboard touches down on the airstrip outside the
hamlet of Tofino. In spite of the weather, I’ve come to this remote
community on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia,
for a weekend of surfing with Steve Forseth, vice president and
co-owner of Canadian swimwear retailer Swimco. Forseth, who earned a
business degree from the University of Calgary, has helped make
Swimco, his family’s business, western Canada’s largest retail
swimwear chain, with 13 locations and more than 140 employees. The
man waiting to pick me up—dressed in gum boots, jeans, and a plaid,
logger-style Mack jacket—looks more like a surf punk than a bigwig
exec. At 44, an age when many guys are staring down the barrel of a
midlife crisis, Forseth is just getting started.
“I’m on a different time scale,”
says the Vancouver-based entrepreneur on the way into town. “I
didn’t take a year off college or travel the world in my twenties
like everyone else. I worked hard, and now I’m catching up.”
The keystone for those catch-up
plans—which entail working less and surfing more—is Chestermans
on the Point, his 6,000-square-foot beach house in Tofino. Set on a
promontory that juts into the Pacific between two of Canada’s best
surf beaches, it’s a prime property on a strip of coastal land that
is quickly becoming some of the most sought-after real estate in the
country. Forseth’s neighbors include an NHL player, a rock star,
and a Fortune 500 entrepreneur.
Easing into his driveway, Forseth
becomes animated, clearly excited to show off his dream house. After
pulling off his boots, he hurries me upstairs to the master bedroom.
“Check that out,” he says, opening French doors to reveal a
panorama of flat sand and pounding surf. To our left sits South
Chesterman Beach, which Forseth calls the perfect summer break. To
the right is North Chesterman, where we’ll be surfing now that the
winds have shifted for the winter. “The first time I came here with
the realtor,” Forseth says, “I walked upstairs, took one look out
at this ocean view, and said, ‘I’ve got to make this work.’ ”
Real Estate Notes
In a country not known for its beaches, Tofino beckons Canadian outdoor enthusiasts with its miles of rugged
coastline. On the western coast of British Columbia’s Vancouver
Island, it’s the gateway to world-class wilderness areas like
Pacific Rim National Park, which includes the Broken Group Islands,
Long Beach, and the West Coast Trail. For years, the town was a
quiet, solitary place, attracting mainly outdoor cognoscenti, migrant
hippies, and loggers and fishermen looking for work. That changed in
1993, when thousands of environmental demonstrators descended to
protest the logging of old-growth temperate rainforests surrounding
Clayoquot Sound. Tofino made international headlines and quickly
became a tourist hot spot.
Forseth’s love affair with Tofino
started as it has for many visitors: on a surf trip with friends.
After he moved from the landlocked province of Alberta to Vancouver
and bought a surf shack on the southern end of Vancouver Island—a
rustic place in the fishing village of Port Renfrew—Forseth hopped
on a ferry and made the three-hour drive across the island to Tofino
in 2001 to join buddies at a Quiksilver surfing contest. “We all
did a happy-hour surf just before dark,” he recalls. “To me, it
was the perfect scene.”
He quickly realized that not only was
the area’s unique environment—a mix of old-growth rainforest,
endless deserted beaches, and friendly logging and fishing
towns—perfect for recreation, but landing there also made financial sense. “It’s definitely
about surfing and fishing and being on the beach, but it’s also a
solid investment,” he explains. “Chesterman is the only sandy
beach in Canada where you can walk out your back door and go surfing.
You’d have to have something terribly wrong with you not to see the
value in that.” Forseth bought the house in 2002 for around
$650,000 and has since spent an additional third of a million
transforming it into the ultimate second home—with every detail
reflecting his passion for riding waves.
From the bedroom, we walk down two
flights of stairs to an unfinished, windowless space in the basement
with a low ceiling. “My favorite room in the house,” he admits.
Inside, a homemade rack of two-by-fours holds 30 surfboards, and
dozens of hooded wetsuits and neoprene booties and gloves are stacked
neatly on shelves. Forseth stashes his own gear here, as well as
plenty of extras for visiting friends and family. The house’s other
surf-friendly features include a mudroom with heated floors, an
air-recycling system for drying and warming wetsuits, two outdoor
showers, a locking board rack in the yard, and a ten-person hot tub
with views of the beach. When Forseth renovated the place, he added a
onebedroom apartment—complete with its own deck and outdoor
shower—on the north side of the house. Because he sometimes rents
out the main house, the apartment ensures that he always has a place
to stay and surf at a moment’s notice.
About the time we finish the tour, the
power flickers out. What started as a light rain has turned into a
massive storm that’s pounding the coastline with 25-foot swells and
60-knot winds. We decide to surf anyway—“What else are we going
to do?” reasons Forseth—and spend an exhausting afternoon at a
sheltered break on nearby Mackenzie Beach. There’s only one other
surfer in the water, and Forseth knows him. “I love the community
feel,” he says. “Whether they’re doctors, lawyers, carpenters,
restaurateurs, or surfers, I find there are a lot of kindred spirits
out here. And I’m lucky to know many of them.”
That evening, as we carry our boards to
the house, I ask Forseth what it is about Tofino that keeps him
coming back. “I’ve traveled a lot over the past few years,” he
says, detailing recent surf trips to Nicaragua, Mexico, Fiji, and
Hawaii. “But I always look forward to coming home. We have clean
drinking water, great food, comfortable surroundings, and a vibe in
the water that’s really friendly. Too often we take that for
granted.”
IT’S A WET AND FOGGY AFTERNOON when
the six-seater I’m aboard touches down on the airstrip outside the
hamlet of Tofino. In spite of the weather, I’ve come to this remote
community on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia,
for a weekend of surfing with Steve Forseth, vice president and
co-owner of Canadian swimwear retailer Swimco. Forseth, who earned a
business degree from the University of Calgary, has helped make
Swimco, his family’s business, western Canada’s largest retail
swimwear chain, with 13 locations and more than 140 employees. The
man waiting to pick me up—dressed in gum boots, jeans, and a plaid,
logger-style Mack jacket—looks more like a surf punk than a bigwig
exec. At 44, an age when many guys are staring down the barrel of a
midlife crisis, Forseth is just getting started.
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