Why I Moved to Hornby Island to Open a Spa

People have been asking me why I decided to open a second Stillwater on Hornby Island.

It's actually kind of a funny story because if you'd asked me a few years ago where I'd expand, I don't think Hornby would have even crossed my mind.

In the summer of 2025, my then-boyfriend invited me on a sailing trip aboard a little sailboat called Astral Blue—which I still think is one of the best boat names ever. It was him, one of his close friends and me. We left from Hornby, anchored overnight at Jedediah Island, and ended the trip in Nanaimo at his childhood home.

It was probably my favourite memory from that summer.

I had been talking for years about wanting to open a second Stillwater somewhere one day. At some point during the trip he looked around and said, "You should open your second location on Hornby."

I remember thinking, Really?

But then we wandered through the little town and something about it stayed with me. It felt small and unpretentious. People were riding bikes everywhere, walking around barefoot, eating ice cream in the sunshine. After so many years in Tofino, where summer often arrives wrapped in fog, Hornby felt warm in every sense of the word. It reminded me a little of Kauai, where I went to massage school years ago. Not because they look exactly the same, but because they share that feeling of slowing down.

One of my favourite parts of the trip was Jedediah Island. Sheep still wander the island today, left behind from the family who once built a life there. I remember walking around thinking about them. What would it have been like to choose that island? To build a home there? To raise a family there? I don't know if places literally hold energy, but I do think they hold stories. Sometimes you can almost feel that people loved a place deeply, and somehow that love becomes part of the landscape.

I've always been someone who's looking for meaning in things. Maybe it's a blessing, maybe it's a curse. I notice the little moments that linger. A conversation that keeps coming back to me. A place I can't stop thinking about. An unexpected opportunity. I've learned not to dismiss those things anymore because, looking back, some of the biggest chapters of my life have started exactly that way.

The relationship eventually ended, and it broke my heart.

For a long time I kept asking myself what I was supposed to take away from it. I didn't want all of that love and hope and grief to exist for nothing. I wanted to find the beauty within it somehow. Looking back now, I think Hornby was part of that. The relationship wasn't meant to last, but maybe the seed it planted was.

To be honest, that's how Stillwater has always been born.

When life hurts, my instinct isn't to close my heart. It's to create.

I think Stillwater exists because I've always wanted to create beauty from pain.

It's my way of making sense of the world.

Sometimes that looks like planting lavender outside a treatment tent. Sometimes it's choosing the perfect music for a massage. Sometimes it's spending an unreasonable amount of time thinking about how someone will feel when they first walk down the path into the spa. And sometimes it's opening a second location on an island that I'm still trying to understand.

Because if I'm really honest...

Hornby hasn't been the dreamy, effortless chapter I imagined.

The opening was delayed. The original build had to be redone after major mistakes. There were days I cried, days I wondered if I'd made a terrible decision, and days I wanted to pack everything up and go home.

I'm still in the middle of that story.

I don't know yet whether Hornby will become one of the best decisions I've ever made or one of my greatest lessons. Maybe it'll end up being both.

These days I'm splitting my time between Tofino and Hornby. During the season I'm living in a tiny off-grid home on a farm with a wonderful local woman named Helen. She raised her family here, grows much of her own food, and has this quiet self-sufficiency that I really admire. I'm learning from her, getting used to life with an outhouse, and slowly finding a different rhythm. It's simple in a way my life rarely is.

People sometimes ask why I call Stillwater a Nature Spa instead of simply a spa.

I think it's because nature has always helped me make sense of my own life.

The ocean reminds me that nothing stays the same. Forests regenerate after fire. Seasons ask us to let go before something new can grow.

Maybe that's why I've always trusted nature with healing.

Whether you visit us in Tofino or Hornby, my hope is the same. I hope you leave feeling a little softer than when you arrived. I hope the sound of the ocean, the smell of cedar, and an hour without needing to be anywhere else reminds you that healing doesn't always happen in one big moment.

Sometimes it begins quietly.

Sometimes it begins with a tiny seed.

And sometimes you don't understand why that seed was planted until years later.

—Helena