I HADN'T HEARD of Thetis Island, B.C., until last year. This tiny piece of land off the east coast of Vancouver Island is one of the lesser-known Gulf Islands. Its scenery, lovely though it is in that typical West Coast way, is no more remarkable than that of any of its sister islands. And there is no particularly special cultural or heritage site on the island. It's simply the place where I spent a wonderful family weekend last fall.

It was my aunt's 70th birthday, and she decided that she wanted to celebrate it by gathering her family together on the West Coast, where she lives.

From across the country and from Germany we assembled at the small Vancouver Island town of Chemainus, where the 22 of us (my aunt and her sister, my aunt's four children, this niece and our families) boarded the ferry for the short trip to Thetis.

It's hard to imagine a more exquisite journey. Behind us, cloaked in a soft, late-afternoon mist, the mountains of Vancouver Island rose, and scattered about us were several of the Gulf Islands – Saltspring, Kuper and, of course, Thetis. The sky was clear, the sea gentle. As the ferry made its way across the water, we older members of the group watched the shyness of our respective children – ages seven to 18 – evaporate as they crowded together near the bow of the boat to watch some seals playing on a rocky outcrop. They were embarking on a communal adventure, and their unadulterated excitement was evident.

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THETIS ISLAND WAS FIRST mapped in the 1850s after Captain Augustus Kuper of the British frigate HMS Thetis happened upon it while patrolling the east coast of Vancouver Island. Settlers began arriving at the island in the 1870s, but none of these early settlers made permanent homes on Thetis and a number died, defeated by the harsh conditions of the day. One, so the tale goes, died of exposure on the beach after swimming several kilometres to the island from his overturned boat and then being dragged unconscious to shore by his faithful dog.

Towards the end of the 1800s, another wave of settlers came to Thetis, establishing farms on the island. Passed from one generation to another, several of these remain in the same families today.

It was at one of these farms that we stayed, in four cottages nestled together in a grove overlooking the sea. In the evening, the children would gravitate to one cottage, where they played games (spoons and poker), the older ones looking after the younger ones, while the adults gathered around the woodstove in another, catching up, remembering and laughing as we looked out of the picture window across the sea to the twinkling lights of Vancouver Island. Before bedding down for the night, we would all make our way down to the beach to watch the multitude of tiny lights (phosphorescence) dancing in the water.

During the day, we made meals to-gether, explored the island and went for rejuvenating walks along the beach. We saw otters playing on a dock at a nearby marina, seals hunting for their midday meal a little way from shore, and bald eagles soaring majestically across the clear sky. The children fed apples to the farm pony, played hide-and-seek among the rocks and trees along the beach, climbed along arbutus boughs that hung out over the sea – and fell into the water. It was idyllic. This band of cousins, some virtually strangers to one another before the weekend, came together as a family.

On the evening of my aunt's birthday, we dined in the gracious old farmhouse nearby and afterwards gathered in its elegant living room to watch a video we'd pieced together from various old home movies and video clips: my aunt at 21; my cousins as young children living in the Bahamas; childhood get-togethers in England and later Canada, where we all came to live; weddings; our children as babies, growing up and now and then coming together with one part of the family or another. It was wonderful to watch the children watching the video, seeing themselves together on the screen and realizing that they had a shared history.

At the end of the evening, after we'd had cake and toasted my aunt with champagne, she rose to say a few words. "Let's not wait till I'm 80 to do this again," she said. "Let's start planning now and get together in three or four years." It need not be on the West Coast, she suggested. Next time we could gather closer to someone else's home – perhaps on Prince Edward Island or the Magdalene Islands.

This prospect made our parting at the end of the weekend more palatable. It was as if my aunt had set a new course for us all, reminding us that we were part of a larger family unit and that we always would be. – Sarah Lawley