North of Vancouver Island, the British Columbia coast takes a turn to the north and gives up the protection offered by the island for the open coastal waters of Queen Charlotte Sound. The coast, including the often treacherous Cape Caution, becomes an exposed stretch of low-lying granite coastal hummocks capped by wind-worn dwarf pine.
Most boaters pass through here as quickly as possible. They dart from protected cove to protected cove, only when the conditions are ideal, glad to enter into the shelter of the northern section of the Inside Passage, where they’re protected by an almost unbroken line of islands. Only a handful of kayakers ever venture to the numerous beaches that lie along Queen Charlotte Sound. Some beaches, like the one at Burnett Bay, are sprawling stretches of sand; others are hidden between weather-battered rock headlands and vicious offshore rocks. On a good day, kayakers will find relatively sheltered landing spots; on a bad day, the surf will roar down the beaches cutting off access to shore and making landing impossible.
My first venture into the waters here was on one of the bad days. On my third day of a three-month trip up and down British Columbia’s coast, a southerly was whipping up sharp wind waves that pounded my kayak’s stern. Rebound waves from the shore slapped at my flank, and a huge swell rolled in from the northwest. I battled through the tumult and into the relative shelter of Smith Sound to look for a place to land.
I examined various potential camping beaches looking for a clearing above the high tide line-places where I expected to find campsites but found nothing. Each beach ended at an unbroken line of salal and thick scrub. I eventually pulled ashore at a gravel beach and made a tent area next to the tree line by stomping the rocks level over a drift log above where I calculated the night’s high tide would reach.
At about 2 A.M., a wave slammed into the drift log and sent me scrambling from the tent. I cast a flashlight through the blackness out onto crashing waves. The breakers had built up through the night, just in time for high tide. I spent the next hour watching the waves pound against the log under my tent, hoping the ground I was camped on would survive the night. The water eventually began to recede, and although the rain fly of my tent was soaked with the spray, the ground had held. Over the next three months, the struggle to find a suitable campsite became the norm. Beaches are rare on many stretches of the BC coast; and of the scant few, most are not well suited for camping. Every afternoon the question was the same: Where can I safely place my tent for the night?
I passed remarkably few other paddlers that summer, but for nearly 10,000 years, canoes were the main form of transit. Today’s kayakers traveling the area share one basic need with their aboriginal predecessors: access to safe, sheltered, all-weather beaches; fresh water and-preferably-a level shore on which to camp.
Waterways with History
It’s no small coincidence that most of the best beaches I found for kayak camping on the BC coast were once camps and villages for indigenous peoples. At some of these sites, middens and the half-hidden depressions where houses once stood are still visible. In most cases, though, the history is almost invisible. Where a village once stood, you may find nothing more than a copse of alders.
The native peoples, or First Nations, may make their presence known again, as the BC government prepares to finalize treaties with 42 native groups, resolving an issue that has sat dormant for over a century. The first coastal treaty, ratified by the Maa-nulth First Nations (“Maa-nulth” means “villages along the coast”) of west Vancouver Island in October 2007, came as a shock to many kayakers, as the agreement handed over 245 square kilometers of coast, much of it reclaimed heritage lands, with portions much-loved and much-used by kayakers. While recreational users of the land may grumble, it does correct a long-standing historic error. The Maa-nulth are being handed the tools for self-government, self-sufficiency and control of their cultural identity-elements that were missing because of the province’s neglect in finalizing treaties over the last 125 years.
One of the Maa-nulth bands, the Kyuquot-Checleset (or Ka:’yu:’k’t’h’/Che:k’tles7et’h’ as it is written in the local orthography) gained title to all the Mission Group Islands, one of the most popular kayaking destinations on northwest Vancouver Island. Other islands like Amos Island, peculiar for its fossil-bearing sedimentary rock, and the Thornton Islands, a remote cluster used as a breeding colony for cormorant, storm petrels and tufted puffins, are also part of the deal. More Maa-nulth parcels are scattered around Kyuquot Sound, including at Fair Harbour, the most popular launch location into the region. Only a small portion of the main island, Spring Island, remained out of First Nations control.
The Maa-nulth treaty gives the First Nations additional rights beyond traditional reserve lands, most notably fee-simple status, meaning it can be bought, sold and developed with the Maa-nulth given municipal-like control.
While this might seem like an impediment to free and open travel on the BC coast, especially for kayakers,
the Kyuquot-Checleset see it differently. Tess Smith, the elected chief councilor for the band, is viewing the treaty as an opportunity for them to provide new services, particularly cultural tourism. In the meantime, she said, visitors are still welcome. Smith simply asks that visitors don’t disturb the land, take no artifacts and have the courtesy to inform the band of their activities: “It’s nice to know when people are coming,” she said.
In the more congested Barkley Sound to the south, the Toquaht First Nation has gained title to many of the islands scattered to the north and west of the famous Broken Group Islands of Pacific Rim National Park. The band has also gained recreation tenures on the larger Stopper Islands for future cultural tourism opportunities. Again, their gains won’t necessarily restrict kayakers and other visitors. “We definitely don’t want to keep anybody out. We don’t want to make private those lands that used to be public,” said Anne Morgan, the cultural education coordinator with the Toquaht First Nation.
In fact, the treaty stipulates ensuring public access to the Stopper Islands. The band had originally sought the islands as part of the treaty package, as they are significant to the band’s heritage, Morgan said. But the large islands were too expensive: They were told if they wanted the Stoppers, it would be the only land that they’d get.
“We told them we were only going to sign off if we could see the islands protected through a park. We never want to see them logged. It’s our burial site. We’re working diligently to get them protected as heritage sites.”
The band also gets most of the shoreline around Toquart Bay, the main kayaking launch site for the Broken Group, but as part of the treaty agreement, the launch and campsite are protected for public use. Visitors may even see benefits from the treaty, as the bands plan to develop new tourism services in addition to opening cultural centers.
Morgan also doesn’t envision the coast being parceled off to private interests: “We’re working on some type of system so the land can never be sold to the outside beyond the band,” she said.
One change visitors can expect is a return to the traditional names in Barkley Sound. For instance, Maggie Lake near Barkley Sound, once incorrectly interpreted by Europeans, will go back to the proper native name, either Maikee or Maikii depending on how the phonetics are finally decided. The lake is named after Morgan’s grandfather; there never was a Maggie.
“History will be coming out with the names,” Morgan said. “The story of what’s there will be told just by the place names.”
Expect Toquart Bay to also revert to its correct name of Toquaht.
A Marine Trail
Kayakers have been fortunate in the past that the bulk of the BC coast has either been Crown land or parkland, not private-meaning the ability to camp almost anywhere. But it’s a freedom that has been taken for granted, as kayaking campsites outside parks have no formal standing, meaning they can be usurped by other interests such as fish farms, resorts, log booms and shellfish tenures.
A drive to protect the coast for kayakers began in about 1993 when Peter McGee took a kayaking trip down the BC coast. That year and again in 1996 he made a rough inventory of sites and initiated a process that ultimately led to the creation of the British Columbia Marine Trail Association. The vision for the marine trail involved a string of campsites every 10 to 12 miles from Washington State to British Columbia’s Alaskan border. At one time the association had 500 members. And then the association died and remained dormant for most of the next 10 years. The political will to see it through had evaporated. The BC Ministry of Forests, at the time in charge of recreation sites along the coast, went through cutbacks that curtailed their support of new sites, closed existing ones and divested operation and maintenance of most of those remaining to interested volunteer groups. The lack of government support left the BC Marine Trail Association in limbo.
The demise of the association came when McGee moved to Toronto in 1998. As the founder, executive director and the general driving force, the momentum floundered. Chris Ladner, a Vancouver-based outfitter, held the reins as best he could. “I held three annual general meetings, and I was the only one who showed, so I gave up,” he said. Paperwork lapsed and the association became dormant, even as competing demands for coastal areas rose.
When forestry company McMillan Bloedel threatened to log Blackberry Point on Valdes Island in the Gulf Islands, it became a pilot project for the BC Marine Trail Association. It was an early but sobering success. They struck an agreement with the forestry company, created a campsite and built a $20,000 composting toilet. Volunteers even helped maintain it-for the first few weeks, Ladner said. Then that too lapsed. “We realized how much work managing one site was, as opposed to 500,” he said. Ladner cites a lack of a sense of urgency among kayakers for the ultimate disintegration of the BC Marine Trail Association. “There were no real threats, so people were saying ‘why bother? I can camp here like I always have.’ I kept saying, ‘It’s not always going to be like this.'”
He’s being proven right. There is a short but undramatic history of conflict among kayakers and other users. The outcome always tends to be the same: The kayakers get squeezed out. The examples are usually small and minor, but together add up to a pattern. For instance, in Desolation Sound, shellfish farmers concerned with human waste in Okeover Inlet pressured BC Parks to follow a management path to quietly draw kayakers away from the inlet instead to the outer waters; camping is off-limits in some portions of the inlet. And in the congested killer-whale watching and kayaking area around Telegraph Cove, Hanson Island, a key camping island, was handed over to First Nations’ management, allowing the bands to sell commercial tenures that effectively close some areas to public access on what is otherwise public land.
Farther south, in the Gulf Islands, the creation of a new national park (aptly named Gulf Islands National Park Reserve) has made numerous islets off limits to the public, thereby removing about a half-dozen campsites from use in an area where access is already restricted by private property. In fairness to the motives of the park planners, the islets are being closed for the right reason-they support some of the best remaining examples of the rare coastal bluff ecology, best exemplified by springtime blooms of tiny plants that cling to life on the thin dirt cover. Finally, in late 2007, a new campsite was approved on Saturna Island at Narvaez Bay-the first added since the park’s inception in 2003.
The most popular commercial kayaking destination on the BC coast, Johnstone Strait, has become the focal point of concerns over conflicting use. Commercial tour operators want to guarantee clients a place to stay, while casual kayakers are finding public beaches commandeered by commercial operators. The conflict has made Johnstone Strait the subject of a pilot project called Limits of Acceptable Change. The purpose of the project is to determine how much an area can be changed for recreational use before the area’s attractiveness as a recreational destination is destroyed.
Renewed Interest Among Kayakers
Issues with parks, private land and the Maa-nulth treaty have spurred kayakers into renewed action to rejuvenate the marine trail concept. One group working behind the scenes is the Outdoor Recreation Council of British Columbia, which is carrying on the mandate from BC Marine Trail Association for a linear trail from border to border.
A consortium of kayak groups in BC is hoping to widen that scope by protecting kayaking campsites along the entire BC coast. In particular, the Nanaimo Paddlers Club has begun a drive to create a so-called West Coast Marine Trail from Port Hardy to Tofino by adding about 15 new campsites to the string of sites already protected within provincial parks along the north and west Vancouver Island coast. And with the mandate for recreation sites now in the hands of the Ministry of Tourism, political interest in the concept is also returning.
If BC does have one success story for kayakers, it is Sechelt Inlets Provincial Marine Park, a collection of about a half-dozen pocket parks along Sechelt Inlet and its two arms. The park protects a network of campsites used as one of BC’s most popular kayaking routes. It may serve as a model for how the entire coast might look for kayakers in the future.
Peter McLaren, the president of the Pacific International Kayak Association and one of the key players in the new marine trail initiative, sees spurring kayakers to action as the main hurdle. “Paddlers are by our nature independent, and we enjoy the recreation because it’s private and allows us to be by ourselves with the surrounding nature,” he said. “This need to be solo may be our downfall if we don’t heed the wake-up call to act.”