Quesnel

Quesnel, British Columbia

It’s cold but it’s not that cold. At least not as cold as it can be in this part of British Columbia. Still, chunks of ice float down the mighty Fraser River and snow banks are piled four feet high along the roads. It’s the dead of winter in Quesnel, British Columbia.

Quesnel is a vibrant little city in a relative wilderness about 700 kilometres north of Vancouver’s sandy shores on Hwy 97. Almost smack dab in the middle of this expansive province we call home.

Depending on where your road trip is taking you, some places seem more like a delay than a destination…unless you simply cannot hold “it” any longer. To Ryan and I, Quesnel has always been such a place. What a mistake that was.

Unlike many of the other sleepy roadside towns that speckle Hwy 97 North, Quesnel has a “vibe.” Good food, great beer and damn fine people. Like Brooklyn meets The Dream Academy’s signature song Life in a Northern Town. 

We stayed at the historic Billy Barker Casino Hotel. Drank and ate at the Bakerville Brewery. Stuffed our guts with delicious Red Tomato Pies pizza (a regional icon), had some spicy and delicious Mexican burritos  and fried chicken at HAB97, and topped that off with breakfast sandwiches, cinnamon buns and cappuccinos at Granville’s the next morning.

Only 10,000 people call Quesnel home, but everywhere we went, it was buzzing! Heck, the town even has a nightclub (named “Hooligan’s”), a pool hall, and a hostel for tree planters during the summer planting season.

Many of the town’s buildings and monuments were designed to reflect the Gold Rush roots. The walls and fire hydrants are artfully painted and lit up at night, which provides some much-needed brightness in the gloomy winter. Again, nice vibe.

An hour east is the famous historic gold-mining town of Barkerville, where Billy Barker’s legendary gold strike on Williams Creek triggered a multi-billion dollar industrial revolution that literally built this province. And nearby is the colourful artsy little town of Wells — which has, we're told, a seriously rocking summer arts and music festival. More Woodstock than Coachella, and a perfect example of the vibrancy of this little part the province, which is seemingly next to nothing while on the way to everything else.

The lesson learned from our overnight in Quesnel, when we don’t just stop to pee, we encounter all kinds of pleasant discoveries that small-town life in BC has to offer.