Canada’s Galapagos

Who Could have imagined the richness of life on these distant islands, wrapped in curtains of rain and fog?

Isolated each winter by the violent seas of Hecate Strait, BC’s Queen Charlotte Islands remain almost mythical to outsiders. Few have ventured inside the Gwaii Haanas, to use the name given centuries ago by the Haida peoples, who still inhabit the area.

Gwaii Haanas means ‘place of beauty, place of wonder.’ Fitting, as each of Crabbers on Agate Beach, Tow Hill, Graham Island.
(Chris Cheadle / BritishColumbiaPhotos.com)these 139 islands is unique in its own way. For example, Moresby Island’s ecosystems range from alpine to marine, while Lyell Island is home to some of the world’s largest virgin stands of Sitka spruce. Anthony Island is a World Heritage Site with irreplaceable Haida totems. Copper and Rankin islands are ecological reserves, and Burnaby Island boasts “lakes” of moss. Kerouard is the `sea lion island,’ and Hotspring Island offers a soothing dip to kayakers.

For thousands of years, the Haida found refuge here from would-be invaders, and their civilization thrived. In the last Ice Age, life itself found refuge here. In fact, the stark remoteness has helped maintain the survival of so many unique and differentiated life forms that some have come to call these islands the “Canadian Galapagos.”

Scientists first began discovering unique life forms here 80 years ago. When the islands proved to contain more endemic plants and animals than anywhere else in Canada, biologists determined that some were in fact ancient varieties wiped out elsewhere in the world.

Some of the unique creatures living on these shores include Canada’s largest black bear, a Steller’s Jay with sky-blue plumage and the plaintive-looking Haida weasel, of which less than 25 remain. There are many others, such as the tiny sand-hopper and the playful river otter, the mole-like Dusky shrew and sub-species of the Northern Saw-whet Owl, Pine Grosbeak and Hairy Woodpecker. Unique plants, too, cover the landscape, including wildflowers such as the showy yellow Senecio newcombei.

Tow Hill on Graham Island. (Chris Cheadle / BritishColumbiaPhotos.com)

It’s likely that the world would have learned sooner of the secrets dwelling on these islands that edge the continent just below the Alaskan Panhandle, if author John Steinbeck hadn’t lost a close friend in 1948.

The Sea of Cortes, a groundbreaking ecological text, had been a collaboration between the Nobel-Prize-winning author and his biologist friend, Ed Ricketts. (Ricketts inspired "Doc" in Steinbeck’s novel, Cannery Row). The subject of their next book was to be the Queen Charlotte Islands. But Ricketts was killed in an accident.

Native wood carving of an eagle.
(Tourism BC)

“At the time of Ed’s death,” Steinbeck wrote in The Log from the Sea of Cortez, “our plans were completed, tickets bought, containers and collecting equipment ready for a long collecting trip to the Queen Charlotte Islands, which reach so deep into the Pacific Ocean….We thought we might observe some changes in animal forms due to a specialized life and a long period of isolation…” Saddened, he concluded, “Maybe someone else will study that little island sea. The light has gone out of it for me.”

As Steinbeck hoped, others did study it, finding many of the differentiated life forms he’d imagined. One of the most influential researchers has been Bristol Foster, a zoologist who once headed BC’s ecological reserves program. For him, the islands are “an evolutionary showcase.” Just as Darwin tracked variability through different finches on the Galapagos Islands, he points out, scientists here found stickleback fish that varied from lake to lake. Another evolutionary marvel here, he says, are disjunct plant species that show up only here and in one or two other distant places, such as the Himalayas or Borneo where, too, life found refuge from the Ice Age.

Uniqueness is just one aspect of the wildlife here. Another is their sheer numbers. Sprayed by waves as you scramble out of your kayak, you will barely hear the crunch of shells underfoot for the deafening cries of the thousands of birds encircling you. Or paddling between islands during a fog, you’ll feel surrounded by the relentless barking of hundreds of sea lions somewhere on the rocks of a grey horizon.

Sea Lions gather on the shores to breed.
(Tourism BC)

Marine mammals thrive here, alongside some of the world’s most plankton-rich ocean currents shaped by waves more than 10 metres high. There are 17 varieties of whales and dolphins, an abundance of seals, and the largest sea lion breeding colony on North America’s west coast.

The islands are a bird-lover’s paradise, with 100 species of birds and a quarter of Canada’s western seabirds, including two-thirds of BC’s populations of both the rare ancient murrelets and the colourful tufted puffins. This is the world’s stronghold for the rare Peale’s peregrine falcon and, in the words of an Ontario visitor, “There are tree-loads of bald eagles – they seem as abundant as robins are back home.”

Nature also has an amazing palette of ecosystems on these islands. Massive Sitka spruce and cedars grow near ‘blanket bog’ forests of dwarf, bonsai-like trees. There are sand dunes and `lakes’ of moss, tidal marshes and mountain lakes, sea cliffs, alpine meadows, limestone islands and more, each providing a home for different species.

Swamp Forest, Tow Hill Ecological Reserve. (David Nunuk / BritishColumbiaPhotos.com)

This diversity continues underwater, too, from kelp forests sparked with lacy red seaweeds to the clear waters of inlets such as Burnaby Narrows, with their starfish of red, purple and blue, orange cup corals, opalescent nudibranches, red rock crabs and multicoloured war-bonnet fish.

The transitions between each of these island facets can be startling. When you step from shore into a Sitka spruce forest, for example, the roars of surf and sea lions are quickly muffled, then forgotten. Salals and ferns surround you, their greens broken only by pink coral-root orchids. A few steps more and your feet sink into a mossy forest floor and you’re plunged into silence.

Here, rain smells of spruce and earth and cedar. Huge roots of ancient trees grip into the ground like claws. Their crowns soar beyond the forest canopy – too high to see. Their branches, draped with mosses and lichen, stretch upward. This is Emily Carr country, where twisted shapes of trees seem imbued with a dark mystery as sacred as cathedrals.

No wonder the Haida made this place their home. Everything they need is here. And just as these islands provided them and many inhabitants refuge during the last Ice Age, it may now do the same for birds and sea creatures losing their habitats elsewhere on our coast. In Canada’s Galapagos, some of them will find their safe haven, sheltered by the rain and the fog and the storm-tossed seas.

The abundant wildlife on the Queen Charlottes (Gwaii Haanas) owes much to the stewardship of many residents, whether Haida or newer settlers.

Natural habitats are disappearing elsewhere, but these islands are reclaiming their ancient role as a refuge. Once heavily logged, they’re now dotted with ecological reserves, provincial parks and a World Heritage archeological site (Anthony Island).

A special national park now protects most of the Moresby archipelago: Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site.

Last July, this unique park ranked #1 in a National Geographic survey of all 55 national parks in the US and Canada. Yet few know about Gwaii Haanas. Only 3,000 visitors come each year, by boat or seaplane, and you can join these fortunate few!