In 1992 my wife and I decided to conduct a personal commemoration of the bicentennial of Captain George Vancouver’s monumental survey of the British Columbia coastline. I had expected the province to be awash with celebrations that summer, but it turned out that the bicentenary slipped by almost unnoticed. Not by the Francis family though. Loading our two children into the car, we took the ferry to Nanaimo, drove across Vancouver Island to Gold River, then boarded a coastal freighter for the trip down Muchalat Inlet to our destination, the village site of Yuquot.
Known to the early explorers as Friendly Cove, Yuquot is located in a protected harbour at the southeastern end of Nootka Island. It was once a principal village of the Mowachaht people, who are a branch of the Nuu-chah-nulth nation on Vancouver Island’s west coast. In the mid 1960s, the Mowachaht moved from the site up toward Gold River to be closer to schooling, health care and jobs at the local pulp...
Daniel Francis is a writer and historian who lives in North Vancouver. He is author of two dozen books, most recently Selling Canada: Three Propaganda Campaigns that Shaped the Nation (Stanton, Atkins & Dosil, 2011), and a columnist for Geist magazine.
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