Tag Archives: Charles Strange

History, Indigenous Nations History

June 6-8, 1911: A point in time look at Cortes Island

Unlike most local histories, which often celebrate the accomplishments of prominent settlers, Canadian census records give us a quick peek into communities as a whole. 

The 1911 census is especially interesting for Cortes Island because, for the first time, all of the island’s 135 ‘settler’ entries are grouped together. Similarly, there is a segment for the 60 Klahoose First Nation residents in Squirrel Cove. There was also a second First Nation with a reserve on Cortes, but any relevant Tla’amin entries appear to be included with those from their main village to the south in what is now qathet Regional District. 

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History

Birth of Whaletown as a community abt. 1885-1914

Whaletown may get its name from an old whaling station, but Europeans really did not settle in the area for another 15 years or so. In today’s program Lynne Jordan, former President of the Cortes Island Museum, traces the modern community back to a logger named Moses Ireland.

First Nations people were using Whaletown Bay before that and a fish trap is believed to have once stretched across the entrance of the lagoon.

The whalers came for 18 months, in 1869 and 70.

“It wasn’t very many years after the whaling station left, in the mid 1880s,  that Moses Ireland moved into the area as a logger and set up camp where the whale station had been,” explained Jordan.

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