Small Town, Big Picture: Tofino
2025-09-10 17:00 - 20:00 (America/Vancouver) | Tofino Visitor Centre, 1426 Pacific Rim Highway, Tofino, BC, V0R 2Z0
The West Coast Ambassador Program: This three-hour orientation session delivers the “big picture” of living in Tofino. Learn about local history and basic ecology, cross-cultural understanding, businesses and activities, festivals, host etiquette, and important civic information. This is a great way to get up-to-date local’s information about living and working in Tofino.
Location: Tofino Vistitor Centre Conference Room
Time: 5:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Dates: September 10th

The West Coast Ambassador Program is a joint initiative of the Raincoast Education Society, the Tofino-Long Beach Chamber of Commerce, Ucluelet Chamber of Commerce , Tourism Ucluelet and Tourism Tofino. The Raincoast Education Society is responsible for course curriculum, registration, and program delivery.

Mushrooms of the West Coast 2025
2025-10-10 19:00 - 2025-10-12 13:00 | Ucluelet Community Centre, 500 Matterson Drive, Ucluelet, British Columbia, V0R 3A0, Canada
This weekend field course will introduce participants to the wonderful world of West Coast Mushrooms. Topics to be covered include introduction to fungi (what are they, and what is their role in our forests?), essentials of collecting and identifying fungi in the field, edible, medicinal and poisonous fungi, cooking with wild mushrooms, and more!
Thank you to Dr. Andy MacKinnon & Dr. Shannon Berch for joining us on the West Coast to share their knowledge & passion!
Course Registration is $350. per person.
Friday (7:00 pm – 8:30 pm)

Presentation – overview of wild mushrooms, different fungus groups, role of fungi in ecosystems, and mushroom identification.

Saturday (8:30 am – 5:30 pm)

Field collection of wild mushrooms at field site.
Sorting of mushroom collections, spore prints, microscope ID session.
Afternoon presentation on foraging and identifying edible mushrooms.
Mushroom cooking demonstration and tasting with Chef Ian Riddick of Heartwood Kitchen!

Sunday (8:00 am – 1:00 pm)

Field collection and identification of wild (edible) mushrooms.
Group lunch and course wrap-up.

About the instructors:

2024 Mushroom Course Photos!

Small Town, Big Picture: Tofino
2025-10-15 17:00 - 20:00 | Tofino Visitor Centre, 1426 Pacific Rim Highway, Tofino, BC, V0R 2Z0
The West Coast Ambassador Program: This three-hour orientation session delivers the “big picture” of living in Tofino. Learn about local history and basic ecology, cross-cultural understanding, businesses and activities, festivals, host etiquette, and important civic information. This is a great way to get up-to-date local’s information about living and working in Tofino.
Location: Tofino Vistitor Centre Conference Room
Time: 5:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Dates: Wednesday, October 15th

The West Coast Ambassador Program is a joint initiative of the Raincoast Education Society, the Tofino-Long Beach Chamber of Commerce, Ucluelet Chamber of Commerce , Tourism Ucluelet and Tourism Tofino. The Raincoast Education Society is responsible for course curriculum, registration, and program delivery.

Raincoast's 25th Anniversary Party
2025-10-17 18:00 - 22:00 | Ucluelet Brewery, 1601 Peninsula Rd, Ucluelet, V0R 3A0
This year we’re hitting a big milestone — we’re turning 25! 🎉
To celebrate, we’re throwing a community party at the Ukee Brewery on October 17th from 6 – 10pm. We hope you can come join us for an evening of good food, good people, some meanders down memory lane, and music by the one and only Geoff Johnson.
The food will be delicious, Ukee’s finest beer will be on tap, and we’ll even have some limited-edition RES merch for sale. Come on out and celebrate everything we’ve accomplished together, and let’s toast 25 years of education, research, and community engagement!
This year we have decided to ditch the silent auction for an online auction so that folks can contemplate and bid at their own pace. The auction is live now and ends at midnight on Wednesday, October 29th. We have an incredible catalogue of unique experiences, stunning original art, and some fun little treats too — all generously donated by local individuals and businesses, and all highlighting the best of what our region has to offer. Bid, celebrate, and help us keep bringing education & research to Clayoquot & Barkley Sounds. 🌊
friends + online auction + music + food + drink = fun
Space is limited, so book your tickets now!
🙏🏽 If ticket price is a barrier, please contact us.

Small Town, Big Picture: Tofino
2026-02-11 17:00 - 20:00 | Tofino Visitor Centre, 1426 Pacific Rim Highway, Tofino, BC, V0R 2Z0
Small Town, Big Picture: Tofino is one of 5 courses available within the West Coast Ambassador Program. This three-hour orientation session delivers the “big picture” of living in Tofino. Learn about local history and basic ecology, cross-cultural understanding, businesses and activities, festivals, host etiquette, and important civic information. This is a great way to get up-to-date local’s information about living and working in Tofino.
Location: Tofino Visitor Centre Board Room
Time: 5:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Dates: Wednesday, February 11th

The West Coast Ambassador Program is a joint initiative of the Raincoast Education Society, the Tofino-Long Beach Chamber of Commerce, Ucluelet Chamber of Commerce , Tourism Ucluelet and Tourism Tofino. The Raincoast Education Society is responsible for course curriculum, registration, and program delivery.

Small Town, Big Picture: Tofino
2026-03-11 17:00 - 20:00 | Tofino Visitor Centre, 1426 Pacific Rim Highway, Tofino, BC, V0R 2Z0
Small Town, Big Picture: Tofino is one of 5 courses available within the West Coast Ambassador Program. This three-hour orientation session delivers the “big picture” of living in Tofino. Learn about local history and basic ecology, cross-cultural understanding, businesses and activities, festivals, and important civic information. This is a great way to get up-to-date local information about living and working in Tofino. This is a great way to get up-to-date local’s information about living and working in Tofino.

Location: Tofino Visitor Centre Board Room
Time: 5:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Dates: Wednesday, March 11th

The West Coast Ambassador Program is a joint initiative of the Raincoast Education Society, the Tofino-Long Beach Chamber of Commerce, Ucluelet Chamber of Commerce , Tourism Ucluelet and Tourism Tofino. The Raincoast Education Society is responsible for course curriculum, registration, and program delivery.

Birds of the West Coast 2026
2026-04-24 19:00 - 2026-04-26 13:30 | Ucluelet & Tofino
The west coast of Vancouver Island features some of the best birding opportunities in North America. Lying directly along the Pacific Flyway, this region hosts huge numbers of migrating birds of all kinds each spring and fall. In the winter, the diversity and abundance of non-breeding birds remains high thanks to wide range of habitats and a mild climate.
Expansive mudflats near Tofino provide an ideal stopover site used by tens of thousands of shorebirds each spring and fall, highly productive coastal waters sustain several large colonies of seabirds and a mix of coastal rainforest and deciduous forest habitats attract a wide variety of breeding songbirds. A little further south down the coast, Amphitrite Point in Ucluelet offers some of the best sea watching opportunities on Vancouver Island.
In this weekend workshop (Friday evening until Sunday afternoon), participants will be introduced to the general ecology and biology of birds with an emphasis on commonly encountered species. This course is specifically scheduled to overlap with the peak shorebird migration as well as the presence of large numbers of other migrating species.
Topics covered will include: basic ID skills, breeding biology, physiological adaptations, migration ecology, and conservation issues. This course is designed as a way to learn more about birds in general rather than how to ID specific species. Extensive birding experience is NOT required.

Course Registration is $330.

About your instructor(s):
Mark Maftei serves as Executive Director of the RES and he draws on 20+ years of experience as a field biologist specializing in the ecology of birds. From the Arctic to the Antarctic to the open ocean, Mark has traveled the world studying birds. His research has included work on migration ecology, population biology and the census of poorly known species. His work in BC (including several years spent working with the Wildlife Research Division of Environment and Climate Change Canada) was focused on colonial seabirds and migratory shorebirds. One of Mark’s greatest pleasures is sharing his passion for birds with like-minded nature lovers, and there is nowhere he’d rather doing that than his home on the West Coast of Vancouver Island.

Recommended Equipment and Reading

Any good bird guide (Sibley’s, Peterson’s, National Geographic)
A decent pair of binoculars
Field notebook and pencil
Camera
Appropriate clothing for all day in the field—rain or shine
Bring lunches, snacks, water/drinks on both days

Seaweeds of the West Coast 2026
2026-05-15 19:00 - 2026-05-17 13:00 | Ucluelet Community Centre, 500 Matterson Drive, Ucluelet, British Columbia, V0R 3A0, Canada
This weekend field course, based out of the Ucluelet Community Centre, will introduce participants to the world of west coast seaweeds. Topics to be covered in this year’s course include an introduction to seaweeds (What are they? What is their role in coastal ecology? How are they used in B.C. aquaculture? How are seaweeds impacted by climate change?) Learn of the biodiversity of west coast seaweeds, essentials of collecting and identifying seaweeds, seaweed foraging, the relationship between seaweeds and people, pressing and preserving seaweeds, cyanotype and more!
We are excited to welcome back course instructors Dr. Bridgette Clarkston and Dr. Jennifer Clark, coming to Ucluelet to share their seaweed knowledge and expertise with us.

Course registration is $330 per person.

Friday, May 15th (7:00 pm – 8:30 pm)

Presentation – Seaweeds are weird. Weird, but oh so wonderful. And for coastal marine ecosystems, they are vital.

Saturday, May 16th (7:30 am -8:30 pm, with breaks) Low tide is at 6:53 am (0.094 feet / .3 m)

Field trip to explore seaweeds on Ucluelet’s rocky coast and practice naturalist skills, including fundamentals of seaweed identification.
Collection of seaweeds at field site.
Workshop to practice using dichotomous keys, field guides and online databases to identify unknown specimens
Create your own scientific and artistic seaweed presses.
Cynaoptype, Seaweed as art: create your own beautiful botanical blueprint using the traditional method of cyanotype printing.
Presentation – From Tradition to Innovation: How Seaweed is Changing our Future.

Sunday, May 17th (8:00 am – 1:00 pm) Low tide is at 7:41am (-o.o56 feet / -o.2 m)

Putting it all together – field trip to identify seaweeds and their communities in nature, including opportunities to share what you’ve learned with the group.
Course wrap-up.

About the instructor:

Dr. Bridgette Clarkston loves seaweeds and thinks you should too. Bridgette is an Associate Professor of Teaching at the University of British Columbia and co-author of the field guide Pacific Seaweeds: A Guide to Common Seaweeds of the West Coast (Harbour Publishing). A delightful moment in a lifetime spent appreciating BC’s seaweeds was discovering a new genus of beautiful red seaweeds and naming it after the Salish Sea (Salishia). A Vancouver Island settler, Bridgette was born and raised on the unceded traditional territory of the K’ómoks First Nation, the traditional keepers of this land. Learn more about Bridgette on the UBC Botany website here.

Dr. Jennifer Clark grew up on the coast on the traditional lands of xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations in BC and always knew that she would pursue a career studying the ocean, especially with the ocean as her backyard. She has 10+ years of research and cultivation experience of seaweeds in Canada and Australia where she focused on understanding climate change impacts on seaweeds. Although Jennifer received her PhD in Australia, the cold waters of the Pacific Northwest were calling and she returned to Canada to undertake a postdoctoral research position with the University of British Columbia, Hakai Institute in collaboration with the Heiltsuk and Wuikinuxv First Nations. During this time, she learned the importance of coastal foods to coastal communities and the nutritional and health benefits of seaweeds. In her current role as Chief Scientist at Cascadia Seaweed, Jennifer leads the research and cultivation of kelp seed used to grow nutritious, regenerative kelp for use in agricultural products and restoration efforts. Jennifer is passionate about seaweeds due to their status as a renewable and nutritional food source, beneficial in their ability to buffer the effects of climate change and their vital role in maintaining healthy coastal ecosystems.

Check out photos of the previous years:

Mushrooms of the West Coast 2026
2026-10-09 19:00 - 2026-10-11 13:00 | Ucluelet Community Centre, 500 Matterson Drive, Ucluelet, British Columbia, V0R 3A0, Canada
