Tofino or Vancouver?

Tofino's beaches are open Pacific shoreline: the long sweep of Long Beach in the national park, the tide flats at Chesterman and the surf at Cox Bay. They are wonderful for walking, beach fires and surfing in a thick wetsuit, but the water is too cold and the rips too strong for a casual swim.

Vancouver does a little better for an ordinary beach day. English Bay, Kitsilano and Spanish Banks sit inside the city, face the mountains and fill with picnics and volleyball in July and August. The sheltered water is a few degrees warmer, and the saltwater pool at Kitsilano gives a proper swim.

Tofino eats well for its size, with crab, spot prawns and Clayoquot oysters from food trucks, ocean-view seafood rooms and a few tasting-menu kitchens. Still, it comes down to a few dozen places, and many shorten their hours through the wet winter.

Vancouver is in another league, above all for Asian food. Cantonese dim sum in the city and Richmond, ramen, Korean barbecue and cheap sushi add up to a range Tofino cannot match. The same Pacific seafood shows up on its better menus, and Granville Island's market is good for grazing.

The two share a theme, the art of the Northwest Coast peoples, but at very different depths. In Tofino it means Nuu-chah-nulth galleries, carving you might watch in progress and the Kwisitis Visitor Centre, which fill an afternoon.

Vancouver has the Museum of Anthropology, with its glass hall of totem poles and canoes, and adds Gastown's Victorian brick streets, the Dr Sun Yat-Sen Garden and Emily Carr at the Vancouver Art Gallery. It is still a short list, but it gives you two or three days of real sightseeing.

Nobody goes to either place to party, but Vancouver at least gives you choices. There are cocktail and wine bars in Gastown, taprooms around Main Street, summer patios in Yaletown and Kitsilano, weekend clubs on Granville Street and the gay bars of Davie Village. In Tofino an evening means a brewery taproom, a pub or a fire on the beach, and the town is quiet early because everyone is up for the morning tide.

Both are superb, so the difference is in kind. In Tofino the wild is the whole stay: old-growth cedar on Meares Island, bears on the shore at low tide, grey whales offshore, sea kayaking through Clayoquot Sound and winter swells crashing on the headlands.

Vancouver offers more variety from a city base. You can ski the lit runs on Grouse, Cypress and Seymour, walk the canyons at Lynn and Capilano, cycle the seawall around Stanley Park or drive the Sea-to-Sky to the granite walls at Squamish and the high country at Whistler. It is less remote, but you can cover more ground.

Tofino is a place you stay put. Ucluelet's lighthouse loop fills a half day, the island communities are reached by boat, and everything else is over a long, winding mountain road.

Vancouver has a short but real list of places to go. A ferry takes you to Victoria's harbour and Parliament Buildings, and closer by are the fishing village of Steveston, the old fort at Fort Langley, Bowen Island and the resort village at Whistler.

Children have a happy outdoor time in Tofino, with tide pools, driftwood forts, beginner surf lessons and whale trips. The trouble comes on rainy days, when there is almost nothing indoors to fall back on, and the mountain drive in can be hard on young passengers.

Vancouver has plenty more to hold their interest. The aquarium, miniature train and water park are all in Stanley Park, Science World sits on False Creek, the little ferries go to Granville Island's children's market, and the North Shore has suspension bridges and the Grouse gondola. Wet weather is far easier to manage here.

In Tofino you really need a car. The village is only a few blocks, and the beaches and trailheads are strung out along the highway. A paved path makes cycling to the park pleasant in dry weather, and the best outings go by water taxi or floatplane.

Vancouver needs no car for most stays. The downtown districts are close enough to walk, the SkyTrain runs in from the airport, the SeaBus crosses to the North Shore and one card covers all of them. Kitsilano and the mountains depend more on buses.

Shopping in Tofino is a short browse along the main street: surf and outdoor shops, a few boutiques with a beach-town look and the usual souvenir stores. The galleries are what make it worth the time. They sell Nuu-chah-nulth carving, silver jewellery and prints alongside West Coast painting and photography. For almost anything else you have to wait until you are back in the towns on the east side of the island.

Vancouver is clearly the better place to shop. Robson Street has the flagship stores, the luxury houses are on Alberni, and an underground mall gives you somewhere to go on wet days. If you want more original finds, there are the studios and glassblowers of Granville Island, the vintage and design shops of Main Street and Gastown and the Asian malls of Richmond. You can buy Northwest Coast prints and carvings here too, and the city's own outdoor and athleisure brands are easy to pick up.

Neither is cheap, but Tofino is harder on the budget. A small supply of rooms, groceries trucked over the mountains and boat tours all add a remote premium. Camping and the stormy months from November to March are the main ways to save.

Vancouver's hotels are expensive too, yet the city leaves you more ways to spend less. Noodle shops, dim sum and casual sushi are good and fairly cheap, public transport is reasonably priced, and the seawall, Stanley Park and the beaches cost nothing.

In Tofino there is little more than the odd band at the pub and a few small summer festivals, so evenings are not built around performances. Vancouver has a full calendar. The symphony plays in the 1927 Orpheum, opera and Ballet BC appear at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, and in summer there is Bard on the Beach in Vanier Park, the Fringe on Granville Island and the folk festival on Jericho Beach.

Both are good places to slow down, but in different ways. Tofino's calm comes from the whole place: days set by the tides, cabins with hot tubs, resort spas using local seaweed and cedar, and a day out by boat to the natural hot pools of Hot Springs Cove.

Vancouver finds its calm inside a city. There is a long yoga tradition, there are good hotel day spas and plenty of reflexology in Chinatown and Richmond, and a quiet seawall walk is never far away. There are no hot springs, though, and the big outdoor spas are a drive away near Whistler.