Our Story

Welcome to Tofino Beach Collective, our boutique management company.

We are proud Vancouver Islanders. Bruce and his brothers grew up in Tofino in the 1960s; their Dad Howard was the local GP and their Mom Lynn was a RN, both working at the newly-established Tofino General Hospital. At the southern end of the island, I spent my childhood years in Sooke, where my family emigrated from Holland, England and Sweden respectively. Victoria was home to Bruce and I, where we met, lived and worked before moving to Tofino in 1996.

The McDiarmid family opened the iconic Wickaninnish Inn in August 1996. The opening was the culmination of Howard and family’s dream of one day establishing a world-class hotel on the most stunning point of Chesterman Beach. The Wick, as it is fondly known, is managed by Bruce’s brother Charles, hotelier and connoisseur of hotel service par excellence. Bruce was the opening restaurant manager at the Wick’s acclaimed Pointe Restaurant, and I worked alongside him in the early days of the hotel’s opening.

With Bruce’s background in commercial real estate in Victoria and his Managing Broker’s license, we established Chesterman Beach Realty & Management Co. in 1998. While Bruce focused on the development of Chesterman Beach Estates, I obtained my realtor’s license and focused more on the management side of things. From this, Tofino Vacation Rentals came to be in 2000 when we started  managing three condos at Fred Tibbs, Tofino’s first commercial/residential development with zoned short-term rentals.

We lived, worked and raised our sons Conor and Tyler, along with our yellow lab Charlie, at 1216 Howard Drive, in what we fondly called ‘the hardest working house in Tofino’. Our house served as the home office for CBR and TVR until moving operations into the Campbell House in Tofino which, thanks to Bruce’s foresight, we had the opportunity to develop in 2006. Today, our home is known as Steller’s Jay Retreat, one of three vacation homes offered by Tofino Beach Collective.

We sold TVR in 2015, and it continues to be successfully and thoughtfully operated by the new ownership, one that values the business ethics and customer service upon which it was built. Since selling, I took time out to complete a degree in Art History and Visual Studies, which served as a great reference for our extensive travels in Europe.

Fast forward to January 2021. Bruce and I are once again in Tofino at the helm of our new venture, Tofino Beach Collective. Offering three unique, family-owned vacation homes at Chesterman Beach, we continue the McDiarmid tradition of quality, service and attention to detail.