History buffs are welcome to visit the Pender Island Museum, located in a heritage cottage at waterfront Roesland, a pretty corner of the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve on North Pender. It's open on weekends.
Or get a one-stop history lesson weekdays at the Pender Islands Community Hall. The three "Bear Mother" welcoming poles by carver Victor Reece at its entrance salute the island's First Nations legacy. And inside this warm, wooden concert space is a set of murals that document the fast pace of change as settlers arrived, cleared the land, raised sheep and set about creating modern Pender.
First Nations
The Coast Salish have fished the rich waters of the Salish Sea for millennia. The shell middens at Beaumont Park are proof of the island's use on a seasonal basis. Artifacts found during archeological digs in the 1970s at the Pender Canal date back more than 5,000 years.
The Salish called the Penders "S'DAYES," which means "a happy place to wind and sun dry the salmon." The Tsawout, Tsartlip, Pauquachin and Tseycum First Nations (aka "the salt water people" or Sencot'en) have land and harvesting rights to Pender under the 1852 Douglas Treaty.
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European Settlers
Pender Island was named after Daniel Pender, second master aboard the British naval ship HMS Plumper when it surveyed the Gulf Islands in the late 1850s. Other island features (i.e. Bedwell Harbour and Wallace Point) are named after other crew aboard the Plumper and its sister ships, the Beaver, Hecate, and Satellite.
Pioneer Life
North Pender's first residents lived at Hope Bay (after pioneer David Hope) and Port Washington (Washington Grimmer, the island's first postmaster). Orchards were planted and the logged valleys soon echoed with the sounds of sheep and cattle. The hard life is told through the journals of English pioneer Winifred Grey (available at Talisman Books).
As newcomers from Britain, Australia, Japan, and Eastern Canada arrived, the community established a farmer's institute (1899) and built a schoolhouse (1902) that is now home to the popular thrift shop Nu-To-Yu (next to the library on Bedwell Harbour Road).
The Pender Canal
In 1903, islanders petitioned the government to dredge the narrow sandy isthmus of land (aka "The Pender Island Portage") between what is now North and South Pender Islands. The canal shaved hours off shipping times between Hope Bay and Vancouver Island. The two pieces of land remained separate until a wooden bridge relinked them in 1955.
Slow Growth and Planned Developments
Agriculture was the leading economic activity on the Penders. Fish plants at Shingle Bay and Hyashi Cove, and a brick plant at Brickley Bay also provided jobs in the first half of the 20th century.
BC Ferries built its dock at Otter Bay in 1965 to handle increased traffic to and from the island. Later that decade, the first homes were erected in Gulf Garden (now Magic Lake) Estates. At the time it was the largest-ever subdivision in Canada and concerns over such developments triggered the formation of the Islands Trust in 1974. The Trust continues to "preserve and protect" the natural character of the Gulf Islands to this day.
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