Nature Canada

Of Heart and Home: Nature’s Little Jewel of Solitude

Jodi Joy

Jodi Joy Director of Development and Communications

[dropcap style=”default”]J[/dropcap]oyce Nordwall chuckled when I asked her about her love of Canadian nature.  “I came to Canada from Scotland for a year and have stayed 61years. I fell in love with Canada, especially the West Coast, for its wild and raw nature”.  She credits her mom, a Queen’s Scout, with inspiring this love of the outdoors.  As a young child Joyce was always right out in nature, hiking and camping in the Lowlands, moorlands, the Highlands and Western Islands of Scotland with her family.

Early in her Canadian career, Joyce purchased 5 acres on Galiano Island, one of the beautiful Southern Gulf Islands.  It is a special place where she enjoyed relaxing and camping in a tent. It was there that she became engaged to her husband, Johan, who built a two storey log cabin, using her red cedar trees. Fittingly, her husband of 45 years is now buried in the tranquil cemetery there, overlooking Active Pass. Her cabin looks over Trincomali Channel surrounded by Arbutus and Red Cedar trees, as part of the spectacular scenery and is visited by friends and family regularly.

image of Joyce Nordwall

Joyce Nordwall, Nature Canada member

It was Johan, a Swedish Canadian, who purchased their other nature sanctuary – 5 acres of forested land, on Victoria’s Old West Saanich Road. Together they cleared and felled the red cedar trees, dug out peat from a slough to make a lake, designed and built their three-storey home out of the trees from their land.  They called their home, “Varmland “after the Province in Sweden, where Johan was born.

They wanted their home and garden to be a sanctuary for family, friends and wildlife, so devoted much time to nurture and protect the land, sculpting it into a beautiful  acreage with a loving home, surrounded by daffodils, rhododendrons, azaleas, hydrangeas, honeysuckle, wisteria and clematis with  the lake a home to wood ducks, mallards and many diving ducks. A fenced garden was made to keep the deer from enjoying her roses, but allowing them and other wildlife to roam…even once a cougar!  Her veranda is gated and graced with lilies, roses, delphiniums, gladiolas and hanging baskets. The birds flock to the feeders and the tiny tree frogs chirp their song….rivet, rivet.

Now, Joyce runs a Bed & Breakfast business, as well as serving lunches and teas.  She enjoys sharing this little jewel of nature with guests, friends and other nature lovers like herself.  When her grandchildren come to visit, she enjoys teaching them about nature too.   “Many visitors enjoy watching the flickers, hummingbirds and woodpeckers during breakfast.  Osprey and kingfishers are frequent visitors to the lake as well” reports Joyce.

a picture of bed & breakfast and landscape

At Varmland Bed & Breakfast

Joyce has been a devoted member of Nature Canada for nearly 20 years.  She believes “it is important to support national groups like Nature Canada, which are also helping to protect and preserve special places from development, especially oil and gas.”

Joyce wishes she could do more to help support our important work, but as a Guardian of Nature monthly donor, I remind her she’s been helping each and every month and that amount really adds up over time.

So glad she decided to stay on in Canada!   Her special place is “just a joy” to behold.  Perhaps you may also look forward to visiting this nature jewel, as I do, and meeting Joyce to thank her for caring about nature!

 

 

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