Wickaninnish Inn

The Wickaninnish sits on a rocky point at the north end of Chesterman Beach and has spent nearly thirty years persuading otherwise sensible people to pay handsomely for terrible weather. It works because every one of the 75 rooms faces the ocean and comes with a fireplace, a soaker tub, and heated bathroom floors, so the Pacific can do its worst while you observe it in a bathrobe.

Dinner is at The Pointe, a dining room with 240 degrees of ocean view, which is about 240 more than most restaurants attempt. The Ancient Cedars Spa administers hot sea stone massages while waves detonate on the rocks outside. This is a Relais and Chateaux house with a Michelin Key, and the service is famously relentless about details you did not know you had.

Storm season, November through March, is the Wick's own invention and now a high season in its own right; brochure-blue July is the other one. Chesterman runs 2.7 kilometres and this is the only resort on it, so your morning beach walk is agreeably underpopulated. The one catch is deep winter, when the whole place shuts for several weeks of annual polishing.