This month's issue of National Geographic Traveler has a special treat for Lake Cowichan, as the article, Landscapes of my Father, makes mention of the Cowichan Lake area.
The article was written by Joyce Maynard, and surrounds her search through British Columbia to collect the path of her father, well-known painter Thomas Maynard, who died 20 years ago.
"British Columbia, in my father's youth, was a centre for logging – where he often went sketching and where my minister grandfather settled near the end of his life in a houseboat he'd brought on shore and turned into a house of worship," the article reads. “Among the most prevalent images in my dad's early works were stumps of trees and fallen logs, strewn like giant pick-up sticks on vast expanses of beach."
Joyce travelled to the Cowichan Lake area, and visited the Kaatza Station Museum during the search for her father's story.
Museum volunteers have since got a kick out of Joyce's description of museum curator Barb Simkins as "the woman overseeing the museum."
In other museum news, Simkins is still pouring over the thousands of International Woodworkers of America photographs and historical materials. She anticipates the museum holding an event during this summer's Heritage Days, featuring some of the materials.