SALT SPRING ISLAND, BRITISH COLUMBIA (BC), CANADA
Salt Spring Island bed and breakfasts welcome visitors
Salt Spring Island bed and breakfast establishments are an important component of the island’s thriving tourist trade, welcoming thousands of visitors each year. Salt Spring Island (also called Saltspring Island) is the biggest, most highly populated and most popular isle among the southern Gulf Islands of British Columbia, Canada. Because it is close to Vancouver Island, Saltspring is the most accessible of the Gulf islands, well-serviced by ferry. Floatplanes also bring visitors to the island. Owners of Salt Spring bed and breakfasts are able to tell visitors how the island got its name. Officers of the Hudson's Bay Company for called it that because of the saltwater springs on the north end of the island. That was back in the mid-nineteenth century.
One of the main attractions of Salt Spring Island, and one of the main reason visitors descend on Saltspring Island B&Bs, lodges and inns, especially on weekends, is to shop at the fabulous Saturday market on the harbor-side paths of Centennial Park. The place comes alive with about 150 local vendors setting up stalls. Hundreds, if not thousands, of visitors (mainly tourists staying in bed and breakfasts and elsewhere but the locals come too) stroll through the market to buy organic foods, handcrafts and art. Everything on sale reflects Salt Spring’s idyllic lifestyle. The market started out as a car trunk sale in 1975, with people selling goods out of their cars in a parking lot. Today the Saturday Art and Farmer's Market is an institution. Only vendors who can "Make it, Bake it, or Grow it" are allowed to sell goods.
In the 1960s and 1970s many young people moved to the island attracted by the carefree lifestyle and the mild climate. Some of those hippies today own successful bed and breakfast business on the island. In 2001, Saltspring began promoting the island and this led to increased visitor numbers and a growing number of Salt Spring bed and breakfast establishment. The most famous publicity initiative was the introduction of Salt Spring Dollars, which were issued for the first time on September 15, 2001. These can be purchased from select stores on the island. They enjoy exactly the same monetary value as the Canadian dollar but they are legal tender on the island only. You can pay your Salt Spring bed and breakfast bill with the local currency if you like!
