If you need to travel from the commercial centre of BC (Vancouver) to its administrative centre in Victoria, on Vancouver Island, you could catch a ferry. it’s a 95 minute journey. Trouble is, the ferry doesn’t leave from Vancouver and it doesn’t arrive in Victoria. Or, you could nip down to the West Waterfront and fly from there straight to Victoria’s harbour heliport. Point-to-point, 35 minutes. Works for me.

Helijet operates one of the few scheduled helicopter services in the world, and has done so since 1986. I believe it has depended on the Sikorsky S-76 for all that time and, bearing in mind that the aircraft fly all day and shut down after every flight, the better to load and unload passengers, the record speaks well of its reliability. Just so you know.

Johnny learns he can’t sit up front with the driver

We flew to Victoria in the morning. As a PLM (Passenger with Limited Mobility) I was loaded first and kept well away from the doors. Since I must have been the only passenger to have completed dunker training (albeit in the olden days), this affronted me somewhat. So I leaned over and noted the door-release routine.

Needless to say. the others never got to know what good hands they had been in.

Victoria appears more formal than its free-wheeling counterpart across the Georgia Strait. It boasts lots of statues and, in season, beautiful flower gardens bordering lush green parks. We hung around the elegant Empress Hotel until politely asked to leave; Juanita then visited the province’s parliament building while Johnny sat in the sunshine with a rug over his knees.

The Royal BC Museum is well worth a visit. We headed for the First Peoples gallery and walked through some really imaginative displays. Ceremonial masks and totem poles, and even some historic film-clips of early encounters with white settlers.

We wandered along the inner harbour wall, which is lined with plaques commemorating business, family and individual contributors to Victoria’s maritime heritage. Then, what with an extended lunch (we weren’t driving) and everything, it was soon time to head back to the heliport. Talk about scratching the surface.