Stroll across the nation from coast to coast to coast, all on the easy trails of Goodsir Nature Park this holiday weekend.
The trees, shrubs and flowers of the homemade botanical wonderland are always there to be seen and enjoyed, but owner-operator Jim Good is rolling up his mackinaw sleeves and giving a special set of tours of his acreage devoted to the flora of Canada.
Good is offering Walk The Country tours of his property north of the city, on Old Summit Lake Road in the Salmon Valley rural neighbourhood. Good has made a life's work out of travelling Canada and transplanting noninvasive plants back to his personal forest. The result is trees and other plants are growing there that have no other home outside their own climactic regions. All of Canada is growing on his one plot, and there's a network of walking trails, a plethora of informational signs, and a cabin by a placid beaver lake as an extra bonus.
Walk The Country Tour is a three-day drop-in offer. Payment is by donation, and Good will personally take groups large and small - office excursion size or family size - on a guided wander in his woods. Free refreshments will be available.
"I hope people come see this. There is something special going on this year," he said. "The park is having a bumper crop of wildflowers right now. It's an event I see only once every 20 years or so."
Some of those flowers are common to the area, and some are rare.
"You have to come see the lupines," he said. "I have some albino lupines blooming, they only flower every six or seven years, and they have a salty aroma to them. If you stand among them, it smells like you're by the sea."
The team of filmmakers from Telus Optik Local might have to come back to experience those. The documentarians were in Prince George doing a mini documentary on Northern FanCon and collecting story ideas for their Why I Love:... series (each episode's title is completed by a place name; the pilot episode being Why I Love: Quesnel).
When they heard about Goodsir Nature Park and its unique creator, they had to go see.
This past week they released their short doc entitled Prince George's Most Passionate Green Thumb. Now all of Western Canada is meeting Jim Good for the first time.
"We are always looking for interesting people stories," said Laura O'Grady, the supervising producer. "The things that make towns great are the people who live in them. He's a good fit for Why I Love:... because he is such an unsung hero, someone who, in a very positive way, doesn't take no for an answer, and beats the odds, and shows us what people can do when they put their mind to something."
Director Mia Jagpal said the camera couldn't get enough of the property or the interesting proprietor.
"Here was this simple, self-taught man who had this passion project, wanting to share nature," Jagpal said. "It's his life's work, no help, all on his janitor's salary, out in Salmon Valley. To me, being a city girl, a tree looks like a tree looks like a tree, but he could go around and point out each individual tree and plant and tell its story about where it came from. He was so passionate about it all."
That passion had seeped into local society, which is why the doc makers found him in the first place. They asked key Prince George contacts whom they thought might make a good story for the broader region. Both Michael Stanyer of Tourism Prince George (and a professional filmmaker) and Norm Coyne of Citizen Special Events brought up the Goodsir Nature Park idea.
The Telus crew went to see for themselves, and soon the cameras were rolling.
"It's quite amazing to know he did all that himself, and all the upkeep that he puts into it," said Jagpal. "But he loves it and he is so knowledgeable. It's a great little gem. And all he wants to do is share it, have people take a break from their busy lives, and take a second look at nature and examine plants up close, and take a deep breath in a beautiful place where nature is all around you but it is nature with a twist you can't find anywhere else."
With Huble Homestead activities in the same area, and people going for hikes at Teapot Mountain or camping at Bear Lake or Summit Lake over the Canada Day long weekend, Good hopes people will drop in, since he's in that same area. Overnight camping is welcome.
On the same site is another Jim Good passion project: the newly opened vinyl museum where he has displayed thousands of records covering a big chunk of modern music.
This weekend, being Good's favourite summertime holiday, the nature park and the vinyl museum are available as a two-for-one experience.
O'Grady said "it is clear that we are just scratching the surface on that area," so if anyone knows other ideas for mini documentaries on local people or regional points of interest, please pass them on to the Telus film department.
Contact can be made by email at [email protected] or leave a message on the Telus Optik Local page on Facebook.
Contact Goodsire Nature Park by calling 250-971-2337 or drop by, no appointment necessary, at 22825 Old Summit Lake Road.
