Charles McDiarmid of the Wickaninnish Inn on Storm Watching, Sustainability, and What It Really Means to Be a Relais & Châteaux Member

There are hotels that exist because someone identified a market opportunity. And then there are hotels like the Wickaninnish Inn, born from a family's love of a place, built on eight acres of land a doctor bought because he fell in love with a remote fishing village on the edge of the Pacific, and opened by his son after years of planning written out longhand after the kids went to bed. Charles McDiarmid, the maître de maison of the Wickaninnish Inn in Tofino, British Columbia, and sustainability commissioner at Relais & Châteaux, sat down with Adam Mogelonsky to tell that story and to explain what three decades of running one of Canada's most celebrated independent hotels has taught him about hospitality, community, and the long, patient work of sustainability.  

The conversation spans the full arc of the Wickaninnish story: the McDiarmid family's roots in Tofino going back to 1954, Charles's training at Cornell and his thirteen years with Four Seasons, the financing of the inn through a small investor group and the Business Development Bank of Canada, the first year's membership in Relais & Châteaux, the invention of storm watching as a year-round destination concept, the culinary philosophy of The Pointe Restaurant and its commitment to the farmers, fishers, and foragers of Vancouver Island, and the sustainability commission that Charles now helps lead across 580 hotels and restaurants in over 60 countries.

Where you are: Tofino and the edge of the world

The Wickaninnish Inn sits on a rocky point between the Pacific Ocean, Chesterman Beach, and the old-growth rainforest at the start of Pacific Rim National Park Reserve in a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve on the west coast of Vancouver Island. From the windows, you are looking out approximately 13,500 kilometers due south to New Zealand and 8,500 kilometers due west to Japan. "We are at the end of the road," McDiarmid says. "You drive in on that road and you drive out the same road. You don't wind up in Tofino by accident."

Getting there from Vancouver requires either a float plane from downtown, landing at the dock in Tofino, where the Wickaninnish team meets you, or a Pacific Coastal flight to Tofino Long Beach Airport, or a ferry from Vancouver to Nanaimo on the east coast of Vancouver Island followed by a three-hour drive across the mountain spine of the island, through Cathedral Grove provincial park of old-growth Douglas fir trees, and into Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. McDiarmid recommends the drive for anyone who has not made it before. "The last hour and a half of your journey is nothing but trees, rivers, mountains, and lakes. No McDonald's, no gas stations. It really sets you up."

What Relais & Châteaux means for an independent hotel

The Wickaninnish Inn has been a member of Relais & Châteaux since 1997, joining within the first year of opening. For McDiarmid, the membership was a personal goal from early in his career, and its practical value for an independent property in a remote Canadian destination was immediate.

"Being welcomed into the family of Relais & Châteaux was basically the good housekeeping seal of approval," he says. "For someone from Europe who had perhaps heard about the Wickaninnish Inn and thought, 'Yeah, but what if the food is terrible when we get there?' — it's a Relais & Châteaux property. Everything will be okay." The membership opened the inn to international travelers who might otherwise never have found it, at a time when the internet was not yet the primary discovery channel for luxury travel.

Beyond the commercial benefit, what McDiarmid values most about the association is what it is structurally: not a corporation but a family of 580 independently owned hotels and restaurants across more than 60 countries, each delivering hospitality in its own way. "You get to exchange ideas with some of the brightest minds, interesting owners and managers that all have their own unique approach to hospitality," he says. "Some of the greatest lessons I get are from wonderful entrepreneurs who came from a different line of business and approach hospitality in their own unique way. Everyone gets to deliver hospitality the way they think it should be."

A curated world: standout Relais & Châteaux properties

Asked to name favorites beyond the Wickaninnish, McDiarmid offers a handful that between them capture the breadth of what the association represents.

Il San Pietro di Positano on the Amalfi coast, perched on a cliff, with an elevator built through the rock all the way down to the seashore and a restaurant right at the water's edge. Domaine Les Crayères in Reims, in the heart of the Champagne region, set on a seven-hectare park in a chateau property with a wine list running to more than 600 champagne labels. Les Baux-de-Provence's Baumanière, a longtime Relais & Châteaux member known for its handmade furniture, extraordinary cuisine, and produce from its own kitchen garden. SingleThread Farm - Restaurant - Inn in Healdsburg, California — a five-room inn above one of the most celebrated restaurants in North America, where guests dine and then sleep upstairs. And Gora Kadan in Hakone, Japan — a traditional ryokan set in a former retreat of the Imperial family, in the heart of Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park, where sliding walls of rice paper, fragrant incense, silk, and centuries of culinary tradition add up to something singular.

"Each one is its own unique piece of art," McDiarmid says.

From apple peeler to inn builder: the McDiarmid story

The Wickaninnish Inn's origin story begins not with a business plan but with a doctor. Charles's father arrived in Tofino in 1954, fresh from medical school and an internship at Vancouver General, drawn by a job at the new local hospital that no one else wanted because there was no road to the town — you arrived by boat or by plane. He came planning to stay a year or two. He stayed for the rest of his life. "He fell in love with this incredible destination," McDiarmid says. Along the way, his parents had done a tour of Europe in a Volkswagen Beetle, camping and saving their money for dining experiences at the best restaurants they could find, and his father came to believe that the beaches of the Tofino coast were every bit as beautiful as the Mediterranean, if not as warm. He bought land.

Years later, working his way through Four Seasons hotels in Calgary, Dallas, Washington DC, and Newport Beach before landing in Seattle, Charles wrote the business plan for the inn longhand after his children went to bed. He presented it to his father, who told him it was a fine plan, and that the family was land rich and cash poor. "Now I have to get financing?" Charles said. "You catch on quick," his father replied.

He moved to Vancouver, took a job as director of sales at the Vancouver Convention and Visitors Bureau, and spent his off hours shopping the plan on Howe Street. He eventually assembled an investor group, subdivided eight acres from the family's roughly hundred-acre property, had it appraised, structured a 50-50 partnership with investors who contributed the cash equivalent of the land's value, borrowed the rest from the Business Development Bank of Canada, and opened the Wickaninnish Inn on August 9, 1996. Five years later, with investors having earned approximately a 20% annual return over that period, the family bought them out with the help of the Royal Bank of Canada. "It's been strictly a family-owned and family-run property since then," McDiarmid says.

His training before all of this was Cornell's School of Hotel Administration — his undergraduate degree — followed by thirteen years with Four Seasons across a variety of cities and general managers. "My graduate degree was at Four Seasons," he says. "You really learn the nitty gritty from the ground up, doing it every day, interacting with guests, dealing with challenges, solving problems, and creating unique experiences. That's where you really learn the basics."

Storm watching: turning the off-season into the reason

When the Wickaninnish Inn opened in 1996, Tofino was known as a summer destination — a surf mecca. The idea that people would want to come in winter, to watch storms rolling in off the Pacific, struck many locals as eccentric at best. "People thought those McDiarmids are a little crazy," McDiarmid says.

The concept came from the family's own experience of the property. The cabin on the land had been a gathering place for Christmases and New Year's celebrations, and some of the most memorable times were the winter storms: sitting inside with a roaring fire while 10-meter waves crashed on the rocks outside, wind reaching hurricane force, rain coming in sideways, and the Pacific doing what the Pacific does in winter. "We just thought it was an amazing experience. We looked forward to it. We always hoped there would be a big storm when we got here."

The inn was designed from the start around this experience: every room with a view of the ocean, every room with a fireplace, a generator for when the power goes out, rain gear and rain boots in every room, and an encouragement to guests to go for a walk on the beach — "get a complimentary facial with some lashing rain" — before coming back to dry off, sit by the fire, and come down for dinner. The Pointe Restaurant has a microphone that pipes the sound of the waves outside into the dining room in real time. "You stay dry, but you get the full experience."

It took time to catch on. But it did catch on. "The word was: you might see a big storm, and what's the worst that can happen? You get a beautiful sunny day in the middle of winter, maybe 60 degrees Fahrenheit. People said, 'We came for storms, we got sunshine.' I'd say, 'Well, stay another day or two. You'll probably get a storm.'" Today, the Wickaninnish operates eleven months of the year, closing only in January for maintenance, and the winter season is genuinely busy. "As a business, we're able to stay open. That's the storm watching story."

The Pointe Restaurant: farmers, fishers, and foragers

The culinary philosophy at The Pointe Restaurant has been consistent since opening chef Rod Butters established it in 1996: put the west coast of Vancouver Island on the plate. That means chanterelles from the forest, halibut and ling cod and Dungeness crab from the ocean, berries and produce from the small farms on the east coast of Vancouver Island, cheese from the island's creameries, and whatever the foragers bring in. Seaweed has become a more significant element over the years. The foundational ingredients remain what they were at opening.

"Using local products is not just a marketing tool," McDiarmid says. "It's part of being true to the terroir of our area, just as Relais & Châteaux intends." The fishing is done with sustainability as a baseline requirement: only crab above a certain size, no female crabs kept, only species that are not under pressure. Oyster shells, crab shells, and salmon bones go back into the ocean. "There's an abundance of great resources here, and our job is to make sure we use them in a way that keeps them abundant."

The beach crab cookout is the most personal expression of this philosophy — a McDiarmid family tradition, born of summers around an open fire, now formalized into a seasonal experience for guests in a spot just above the beach, with a crab shack and the team cooking Dungeness crab al fresco, looking out at the Pacific. "If you haven't had Dungeness Crab, I swear it is the sweetest, most incredible item you can eat from the sea. It comes right from the ocean right behind me."

The sustainability commission and the Relais & Châteaux vision

In 2014, Relais & Châteaux presented a vision at UNESCO that has since been distilled into three core commitments: preserve the world's hospitality and culinary traditions; contribute to the protection and development of biodiversity; and take daily action for a more humane world. McDiarmid was handpicked by Relais & Châteaux president Laurent Gardinier to serve as one of seven sustainability commissioners, responsible for advancing those commitments across the association's global membership.

"Sustainability was never going to be turned on like a light switch," McDiarmid says. "It's a journey, and we're all on this journey together." For the Wickaninnish Inn, the journey began before the sustainability commission existed: sustainable lumber from the start, a warehouse of recycled old-growth wood maintained to this day because you cannot simply go to a hardware store and buy a recycled old-growth Douglas fir two-by-four, an electric fence around the compost so proteins can be composted safely in a UNESCO biosphere where black bears roam freely. "One bear puts his nose on an electric fence, never comes back, no matter how enticing the smell behind the fence might be."

The community dimension of sustainability extends well beyond the property. McDiarmid worked with fellow local hoteliers to create the West Coast Sustainable Tourism Association, which adds a 1% sustainability fee to guest room rates and distributes the collected funds to local organizations. Tofino receives 600,000 to 700,000 visitors a year (significant traffic for a town of 2,500) and the association has channeled approximately $400,000 in a recent year to youth organizations, food programs at the local school, First Nations youth initiatives, a roof for the local Legion, and funding for a local theater. "Not huge numbers, but for a small community of 2,500, there's a fair amount you can do with that."

The Relais & Châteaux framework supports this work across the full membership by providing guidance, commitments, and a platform for properties to learn from one another. "If you need help from someone in sustainability, you just ask. Properties that are more advanced share what they know. I've learned so much from colleagues who are further along than we are." In Tofino, where solar is not a significant option, the electricity comes largely from five run-of-river mini hydro projects between Tofino and the nearest city, providing roughly 90% of the region's electricity from sustainable sources. Every property finds its own path.

The Food Futures Lab

One of the more ambitious recent Relais & Châteaux sustainability initiatives is the Food Futures Lab, headquartered at Eleven Madison Park in New York under chef Daniel Humm. The initiative transforms a world-class restaurant into a learning platform where sustainable agriculture, biodiversity, and high-end gastronomy intersect, embedding conservation into culinary training through collaboration with agricultural students from Paul Smiths College and the Champlain Adirondack Biosphere Network.

"Daniel and his team are incredibly talented and hugely committed to sustainability," McDiarmid says. "They are a beacon for all of us." The broader purpose is to bring young people into the vision of sustainability through practice, giving them the knowledge, skills, and expertise that the current generation has accumulated, and then letting them build further from there. "Give them a head start so they can be better than we are."

What comes next: sustainability and the next generation

Asked to close on what excites him most about the future of hospitality, McDiarmid offers two things. The first is the continued journey toward sustainability — an ongoing commitment rather than a destination. The second is the people entering the industry.

"Treating young people in a way that they will embrace hospitality as a career — that's hugely important to me," he says. In Europe, hospitality has been an honorable profession for centuries. In North America, that tradition is shorter and the perception is still catching up to the reality. McDiarmid's argument to young people is consistent: even if your career eventually leads somewhere else, the skills you build in hospitality — treating people well, listening, being creative, solving problems, creating experiences for others — are lifetime skills. "Making sure you wake up when your alarm goes off and show up to work on time every day. Simple things like that. But overall, these are things you take with you for the rest of your life."

"At the end of the day," he says, "it's about creating magical experiences for each and every guest you encounter."