THE 'Island Highway' stretches along the eastern shore of Vancouver Island on Canada's west coast, from Victoria at its southern tip to Port Hardy in the north, where the 'British Columbia Ferries' motor vessel Queen of the North leaves for Prince Rupert. Highway 19, it is called, and it is a broad, paved road which in places becomes a four-lane motorway cutting through reforested woodlands, as straight as a Roman road and as indifferent to the local terrain, and the old highway, ...