Driftwood Brewery's Naughty Hildegard ESB

Driftwood Brewing is a local Victoria brewery that's been around for a few years now. Their Blackstone Porter is excellent, and their Farmhand belgian-style ale is a favorite of the wife's. Mind you that might just be because she really likes the artwork.
Speaking of artwork, check out the label on this beer! Might be a bit embarrassing if you're in the liquor store lineup behind Grandma. This is an Extra Special Bitter, an English-style ale that uses plenty of hops as a bittering agent. Generally, North American style ESBs tend to go a bit overboard on the hops front with their ESBs. English-brewed ESBs like that brewed by Fuller's Brewery are generally softer tasting. This one is rather nice, extremely aromatic, but not too heavy on the bitter aftertaste hops normally produce. Don't be fooled by the ESB tag, this is still several steps below an IPA in strength.

While we're on the subject, lets talk about hops for a bit. Hops are the fourth ingredient in beer after barley water and yeast. They can be added while the wort is boiling (wet hopping) or after it has cooled (dry hopping). Generally speaking, wet hopping is used for flavouring and dry hopping for aroma.
Hops are a sort of climbing perennial and the part used is the cones, which tend to be packed with resin. There are several varieties, with four German styles being considered the Noble Hops, due to their high aromatic and low bitterness. Fuggles and some Kentish varieties are also considered "noble" by some brewers. Most of the hops in BC are grown either in the Fraser Valley, or are imported from the Willamette Valley.
The use of hops in beer stems back to the 11th century, when numerous botanicals were added to prevent beer from spoiling. Turns out, hops actually worked best.
At one point, the use of hops was actually banned in various places due to various powerful entities controlling the other sources of botanicals used in beer, most famously the Bishop of Shrewsbury (although this is possibly apocryphal), but hops are universally accepted nowadays.
The most aggressively hopped beers are of course the India Pale Ales (the Phillips IPA in the background here is quite nice). Keith's India Pale Ale is not actually a pale ale in anything other than name. I'm fond of telling anyone who'll listen that Keith's is like a white basketball player: no hops.

But you needn't have anything as face-melting as Central City's IPA or Dogfish Brewing's 90 or 120 Minute to enjoy a bit of hops. A nice introduction to a hoppy beer, and one that employs more aromatics and few bittering hops (which are an acquired taste) is Propellor Brewing's ESB, readily available at BCLDB.