Twenty years ago, as a young guide on Canada’s west coast, I had the idea to explore the end of a long inlet on a remote island in the Great Bear Rainforest. I was leading my guests on a weeklong expedition in this globally significant region and they trusted me to show them natural wonders. Maybe we’d see a pack of coastal wolves on the estuary that morning. But when we stepped out of the shore boats, instead of beauty, we were literally knee-deep in washed up plastic. I felt shocked. Heartbroken. Little did I know then that the moment would lodge deep inside my soul, and would one day save everything I’d worked for. This is the story of how five ecotourism businesses threw aside competition to collaborate and pull off one of the biggest marine debris cleanup in history.

As a writer, I’ve been covering Canada’s travel landscape for more than a dozen years. And while most of my adventures have been meaningful in one way or another, a handful of trips have been game changers. One of these more notable travel experiences involves a luxury tugboat cruise along Canada’s wildlife-rich northwest coast with Maple Leaf Adventures. It’s been years since, and I’m still raving about this tugboat tour to remember at cocktail parties.

When the spirit bear appeared, I'd been tracking a black bear through the woods, so my heart was already racing. Cream-colored, with a russet wash on her nape and a prominent scar etched deeply above her snout, she began a languorous stroll along a fallen, moss-shrouded hemlock not far from where our small group was gathered. She stepped into the creek and grabbed a salmon, audibly crunching its bones, taking sustenance from what I'd soon come to understand is the basic unit of energy in this uniquely North American ecosystem. I had dreamed for decades of seeing a spirit bear—also known as a Kermode bear, a subspecies of black bear whose white fur is the result of a double-recessive gene—in the wild. I thought of what Marven Robinson, a Raven Clan member of the Gitga'at First Nation and owner of Gitga'at Spirit Tours, had told us. “Remember how you felt when you first saw a black bear, and remember how you feel when you see a white bear. Black bears intimidate, but white bears provide company.” I was traveling with 11 fellow guests on Maple Leaf Adventures' eight-day Great Bear Rainforest expedition, which explores the straits, bays, and coves of British Columbia's Inside Passage. We were being ferried aboard the six-cabin MV Swell, a converted 88-foot wood tugboat built in 1912. The Gitga'at First Nation has occupied this land for millennia, and each year Maple Leaf Adventures agrees to certain protocols in order to explore Gitga'at and other unceded tribal territory here in search of whales, grizzlies, and other wildlife.