Mayne Island has been inhabited for at least 5,000 years, according to archeological finds.
Artifacts dating back to the island's first settlers are housed in the local museum across from the Agricultural Hall on Fernhill Road. The quaint one-room clapboard building was built in the late 1800s as a jail and is open on summer and holiday weekends.
The rich fishing waters at the mouth of Active Pass made Helen Point an ideal spot for seasonal villages utilized by the Cowichan and Coast Salish peoples of the region. The Tsartlip First Nations of the Saanich Peninsula now have territorial rights to the Helen Point reserve.
European Exploration and Settlement
Spanish explorers first etched the island onto survey maps in 1792. Much more accurate charts were drawn up in 1858-59 by the British survey team aboard the HMS Plumper. Its captain, George Richards, named Mayne Island after Richard Charles Mayne, his lieutenant aboard the Plumper and author of the classic 1862 memoir Four Years in British Columbia and Vancouver Island. (Curiously enough, his namesake island isn't mentioned in the book.)
When the Plumper's crew determined that Active Pass was the shortest route from the BC mainland to Victoria, Mayne quickly became an overnight stopover for miners headed (often by rowboat) for the Fraser River and onwards to the Cariboo gold fields.
The first homesteaders arrived in 1861, calling their new home New Brighton. A decade later the island was slowly filling with disappointed gold rush pioneers seeking a more reliable future in farming. Glenwood Farms, established in 1872 and run for much of the 20th century by Gordon "Punch" Robinson, is one such spread on the island.
Miners Bay
As the mid point for steamships plying the waters between Victoria and the mainland, Miners Bay was a logical spot for the government wharf built in 1878. Leading farmers Jacob Heck and Fred Robson regularly shipped cattle, chickens, wheat, oats, peas and root vegetables to urban markets.
A school, post office, jail, hotel and community hall (aka The Agricultural Hall, which hosts social events and exhibits to this day) had been erected in Miners Bay by the turn of the century. Also still standing from that era is the Springwater Lodge, a waterfront pub that began life as a boarding house in 1892, and the lovely St. Mary Magdalene Anglican Church (constructed in 1897 on land donated by Arctic explorer Warburton Pike).
Japanese History
Beginning with settler Goan Kadonga in 1903, an influx of Japanese-Canadians launched successful greenhouse operations specializing in tomatoes and cucumbers. These cooperative businesses ended abruptly in April 1942 when the Canadian government shipped some 50 Mayne Islanders of Japanese descent to internment camps. The strikingly beautiful Japanese Garden at Dinner Bay Park commemorates this lost heritage.
Modern Times
Trips off-island required time and patience until BC Ferries instituted regular, reservation-based service in 1963. The Islands Trust was established as a regional planning authority in the mid-1970s and has helped preserve the island's idyllic rural character.
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