The Seasons

Information concerning Quadra Island's history is limited due to the fact there has only been one comprehensive archaeological dig on the Island as well as the partial skeleton found at the Cape Mudge Village. The skeletal remains were found when a waterline was installed in 1986 and were of an adult male. Carbon dating places the age of the remains at two thousand years old.

In 1966, Donald Mitchell led an excavation at Rebecca Spit. It was on a rise at the first treeless opening and gave a small view into what life was like for the last people who lived there int he seventeenth century.  It was a place of shelter during war times. There were three or four small houses protected by a trench - 1.3 metres or 4 feet deep - and a partial palisade.

The dig also gave the explorers a look at what the ancient people ate. Rockfish dominated the diet but they also ate salmon and dogfish along with mammals such as deer, harbour seal and raccoon. Stone tools such as spear points, ground slate knives and mortars were unearthed along with wedges, harpoon valves and awls made from bone and antler.  A large clamshell bowl was found and it still contained red ochre - powdered earth, which was combined with oily substances like salmon roe to create paint.

The people who left these tools behind lived within an economy and social structure that dates back eight thousand years or more. They had a deep understanding of the plants, animals and cycles of the coast and that is reflected in every aspect of their lives. 

As spring descended on the area, the large groups that congregated for the winter, divided into extended family groups. They fished for herring on northern Quadra Island and tended clam beds at Waiatt Bay. 

The first residents of this area harpooned seals off the Breton Islands and in late summer they prepared their fish weirs and traps on the streams at Quathiaski Cove, Hyacinthe Bay, Village Bay and Granite Bay. At Village Bay, with its chain of lakes, they harvested cedar trees to make canoes that were later floated down a creek to the ocean. 

In the late fall, after the harvest was complete, the canoes were tied together with housed planks between them to transport smoked salmon, dried berry and seaweed cakes, roots and clams to the winter villages. Winter was the time to mark deaths or other live events.

Thanks to the book, The Quadra Story, A History of Quadra Island by Jeanette Taylor for the above information.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Karen Magill

Middens and Charts

These photos are from my Mother's friend, Theoma. Thank you.

Entrance to Stanley Park.  The Lions Gate bridge was not yet built so there is no causeway through  the park. The Burrard Yacht Club building still stands  today.

Looking back  at English Bay beach  from a pier that existed then, the building where the Boathouse  restaurant  is still standing on Beach  Ave.

1925. Looking eastward towards the old Hotel Vancouver.

The site of the present day Cleveland Dam.

Prospect Point before the construction of the Lion's Gate Bridge. 

While at Menzies Bay, Archibald Menzies spent his time with a walk at Nymph Cove. "We visited two Huts in a small Cove," Menzies wrote, "close to our landing place, containing several Families to the Amount of about thirty people." Menzies asked the people to count their numerals. He found they spoke the same language as the people along the Strait of Georgia to the south.

The British later reached Johnstone Strait, which was well above Seymour Narrows, and Menzies noted the people spoke a different language. George Vancouver said they were "more variously painted than any of the natives our gentlemen had before seen. In those respects they evidently approached nearer to the character of the people of Nootka, than of any other we had yet seen..."

Vancouver was sure that his men were the first Europeans the Salish met but the people to the north were well armed with muskets and spoke "smatterings" of English.

Anthropologists suggest, based on these accounts, that the northern boundary of Salish territory ran from above Kelsey Bay in Johnstone Strait and across to Port Neville on the mainland, in 1792.

There were at least two distinct Salish groups. The Island Comox controlled Discovery Passage and north to Kelsey Bay and the Mainland Comox resided in villages from the Sunshine Coast to Bute Inlet. Residing north of them were the Laich-Kwil-Tach (Lekwiltok). Their language and customs were similar to the Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl) of northern Vancouver Island, the Broughton Archipelago and nearby mainland inlets.

Vancouver created charts on his voyage, which were remarkably accurate and were used for decades. However, they weren't perfect. He missed the narrow channels that separate Quadra, Sonora, Maurelle and Read Islands.

Because he missed the channels, Vancouver named what he thought was a large island, Valdes - in honour of the Spanish captain who also explored the coast in the summer of 1792. It wasn't until the 1860's that Read Island was discovered to be a separate land mass and it took another decade before the British surveyors identified three other separate islands.

The British only mentioned one village on Quadra Island but many archaeological sites on the island show evidence of widespread occupation. The depths of middens (refuse piles) in places such as Heriot Bay and Waiatt Bay show that these were sites of winter villages in use for thousands of years. There is a site in Kanish Bay - located at the northwestern entrance to Small inlet - which has a midden that is over ten feet (three metres) deep.

Thanks to Jeanette Taylor and her book The Quadra Story, A History of Quadra Island for the above information.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Karen Magill

Fabled Northwest Passage

Back in April, I spent four days at a hotel on the beautiful Quadra Island. This is the start of a series on the history of that gorgeous place. I hope you enjoy it.

Captain George Vancouver sailed through the Discovery Passage in 1792 and he probably didn't think much of the small, seemingly inhabitable island. Mountains soared on two skylines and trees stretched down to the water's edge. 

"An awful silence pervaded the gloomy forests," Vancouver wrote "whilst animated nature seemed to have deserted the neighbouring country."

These photos are of Quadra Island 

Vancouver and his men had a mission. They were to explore the coast of the Pacific Northwest in search of the fabled Northwest Passage, which would provide an easier route to travel to Asia for the silk and spice trade. What we now call Vancouver Island was of particular interest because it was uncharted territory and maybe, just maybe they would find this passage.

Captain Vancouver also had another task. He was to negotiate a resolution to a dispute with the Spanish over the possession of the northwest coast. 

Cayetano Valdes y Flores and Dionisio Alcala Galiano were sent by Spain on a similar mission in 1792 and the Spaniards met up with British near what is now Vancouver. The parties agreed to work together and traveled together to Desolation Sound. There they realized that the land mass to the west of Quadra Island was a large island so they split up. Vancouver headed towards the larger channels along the shores of Vancouver Island.

The 100-foot, thirty-meter Discovery, captained by George Vancouver, set sail on a clear July day. She crossed the top end of the Strait of Georgia and entered Discovery Passage. The consort ship, the Chatham, followed a short time later.

Numberless whales enjoying the season were playing about the ship in every direction, as were also several seals. The scene now before us was more congenial to our minds, not only from the different aspect of the shores, but from the attention of the friendly Indians, who, as we were crossing the gulf, visited us in several canoes, with young birds, mostly sea fowl, fish and some berries, to barter for our trinkets and other commodities. 

Thanks to the book, The Quadra Story, A History of Quadra Island by Jeanette Taylor for the above information.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Karen Magill