In short… The Wick, as it’s known by its regulars, is a family-owned, Relais & Châteaux hotel on a remote private beach on the wild west coast of Vancouver Island—a leave-the-world-behind escape into old-growth temperate rainforests and rocky, starfish-clad coves.
It’s also a design gem, built so that every guest room and every public space is a cozy front-row seat to whatever is happening on the ocean right outside the windows, including the massive storms that wallop this stretch of coast every winter and early spring. Every room has a fireplace, a soaking tub, and head-to-toe sets of waterproof, bright orange Helly Hansen raingear.
The surroundings… The Wick is out of the way, and that’s part of the appeal: nearly at the tip of the Esowista Peninsula, at the edge of Canada’s Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, and in the heart of the Clayoquot Sound UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. You can get here by small plane, sea plane, or by car, on a three-hour road trip across the island from the ferry terminal due east in Nanaimo.
It’s situated on the mile-and-a-half-long private Chesterman Beach, scattered with surfers and strollers, and there are a dozen other beaches within a 20-minute drive, some visible from the road, but most accessible via short hikes on wooded trails through the rainforest, beneath 800-year-old cedar trees draped in epiphytes. Expect shorebirds, eagles, and ravens, and exotic, cold-climate creatures like sea anemones, starfish. In some spots, hundreds of seals.
The village of Tofino, a few minutes from the hotel, is a tucked-away community on a picturesque fishing harbor, streets lined with surf shops and whale-watching or bear-watching tour outposts, art galleries and an Indigenous-owned fishmonger that harvests local seaweed… This town is a draw for hikers, kayakers, birders (pelagic birds migrate through by the hundreds of thousands), surfers (seasoned and first-timers), researchers and conservationists, off-the-grid hippies, and stormwatchers — people who turn up in the winter specifically to see these wonderfully violent and perspective-restoring weather systems that spiral down the edge of the continent from the Bering Strait and crash into V.I. while staying at places like the Wick or the hotels that have cropped up in the past few years riding that wave.
The backstory… The Maitre de Maison Charles McDiarmid’s family first arrived in Tofino in the mid-1950s, when the only roads from Vancouver Island’s capital of Victoria were dirt logging roads. Charles’s dad was the peninsula’s lone doctor. On the former site of their family home, the McDiarmids built The Wick together, and Charles left no single design detail or finish to chance. This is true even of the property’s least trafficked spaces. The service is also dynamite. (Highly recommend, if you’re going here for a special occasion, to make note of it on your reservation. You will not go uncelebrated.)
The vibe… I’ve visited the past three years, each time in mid-April after an annual conference I attend on the mainland. Year one I found it to be the perfect place to clear my head after hearing about a lot of tech doom and gloom. (I met another conference attendee there solo doing the same thing.) Years two and three, my husband came and met me there, because as great a solo retreat as it was, it was also too romantic to leave him out. This seems to be how most guests use the Wick: feels like a good mix of generations, couples, adult children with their parents… nothing too formal in the main restaurant, but definitely no hiking attire.
The rooms… keep style and comfort in perfect balance. Big windows, incredible views, light-toned wood, artisan-crafted details, a sculptural driftwood chair pulled up to the desk.
There are two buildings — the Pointe (the original building, with its bar and its eponymous fine dining restaurant) and the Beach Annex (added in 2003, with the coffee shop opening up onto the beach on the first floor)—with 75 rooms and suites between them. Usually we stay in the original, main building, with the restaurant and bar on its first floor. It feels classic. I love these rooms. This year we were upgraded from the main house to a lofted suite in the newer beach annex building—indulgently spacious, with two large closets, two bathrooms, a full kitchen, and a deep, two-person soaking tub beside its own big window looking out over Chesterman Beach. All the rooms seem a bit different, but they all boast knock-out views. In addition to rain gear and rubber boots sized to fit, binoculars and bird guides are provided!
The food & drink… is a major focus and a major highlight, though I might feel that way because it’s become an annual tradition to splurge on the wild-caught local Dungeness crab, the consumption of which is a hands-on thrill that involves many small and precise tools and takes several hours. Also a great brunch.
If you’d rather dine in town, make reservations for dinner at Wolf in the Fog. I recommend sitting at the bar upstairs, for cocktails and small plates. And/or, try its sister restaurant Shelter, for the knock-out views, right on the harbor. In addition to great seafood options, they had a salad there that I still long for. (If the gate to the marina is open and it’s low-tide, pop down the walkway and check out, underneath the restaurant, the red and purple starfish clinging to the concrete pylons.) The owner has a third, equally hip, but laid-back daytime beer-and-burger joint, Shed, with a sunny patio and a fire pit.
The wellness… is all around. I’ve never tried the Ancient Cedars Spa at the Wick, as I’ve always been eager to spend as much daylight as I have outdoors. Local companies rent sauna floats: They boat you up to a sauna on a floating platform in a cove somewhere and you can jump into the sea for your cold plunge.
Be sure to…
1) Take note of the artwork in the rooms and halls. The late master carver Henry Nolla worked out of the carving shed on the beach (which now houses another artist). Nolla’s work is all around the property, including on the main building’s grand front doors.
2) Consider getting out on the water. The village’s various local tour providers—some of which are First Nations-owned—offer few-hour excursions to see whales or bears along the jagged coast, or to visit a coastal hot springs. We’ve actually never made time for it, I admit. The beach-to-rainforest trails at the far tip of Tofino, the lighthouse loop at Ucluelet, and the raised boardwalks through the woods along the Pacific Rim Highway have left us wanting for nothing.
Parting words… Storm season is typically Nov. to March, so we’ve never seen a banger of a storm here—just a mix of cool sunny days and pleasantly rainy ones. Surrounded by rainforest and Pacific Northwest beaches, it’s impossible for rain to ruin these things.
Literal or figurative, the Wick wants to be your port in the storm. We’re always greeted with a beautiful little decanter of port and matching glassware upon checking into the room as a reminder. I really appreciate all the little details—they’ve clearly tried to think of everything and, now in their 30th anniversary year, the full-of-heart ownership has had three decades to perfect their methods.
Date of stay… April 18–21, 2026
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.