Festival
Nanaimo's summer festival, held over a late-July weekend, culminates in a race of motorised bathtubs across the Strait of Georgia and back to Departure Bay — a local tradition since 1967. The society publishes each year's dates.
The race itself is best watched from Departure Bay beach at the finish; the festival around it fills the waterfront park with a street market, music and a parade. Nanaimo's hotels fill for the weekend.
Around the same trip
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Checked 6 Sept 2026
Every autumn tens of thousands of chum salmon return to the Goldstream River, twenty minutes from downtown Victoria, to spawn and die in the shallows beside the trail. Bald eagles follow. It is one of the most accessible salmon runs on the coast and free to watch.
Checked 6 Sept 2026