Markets on Vancouver Island

Spring is greens, asparagus, seedlings and the first salad. Summer is berries, stone fruit, tomatoes and corn, and the markets are at their largest. Autumn brings squash, apples, mushrooms and the preserving stalls. Winter markets are smaller and run indoors — root vegetables, bread, cheese, meat and makers.

Seafood, honey, bread and cheese are year-round across the island. Anything sold as local and out of season almost certainly is not, and the vendor will tell you if you ask.

Arrive in the first hour for the best selection and the last for the best prices — the growers would rather discount than drive it home. Bring cash and a bag; most vendors take cards now but the queue is faster if you do not need one.

Ask who grew it. Genuine farmers markets require vendors to make, bake or grow what they sell, and the good ones enforce it. A stall that cannot answer is reselling.

A market morning is the single best hour to understand a town on the island: the food, the makers, the music and most of the people who live there, in one place. For a visitor it is worth planning a route around — the Saturday market towns in particular.

Night markets and summer street markets add music and hot food to the same formula, run later, and are the closest thing many of these towns have to a weekly festival.