Qualla: Active Pass

Active Pass: Introduction

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PianoGod, CC BY 3.0. Stand on the beach at Miners Bay on a summer afternoon and a ship the length of a city block will come around the corner at you. Active Pass is 5.5 kilometres long with a roughly right-angle bend at each end, which means a vehicle ferry running between Tsawwassen and Swartz Bay has to turn twice inside a channel with a river's narrowness, passing extremely close to rock on both sides. Passengers crowd the rail for it. People on shore stop what they are doing and watch. It is one of the few places on this coast where the working machinery of a province comes right up to the porch.

Read more: Active Pass on Qualla

Image: PianoGod | CC BY 3.0

Active Pass: SKTAK

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Keefer4~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 2.5. In the Saanich language the pass is SKTAK. It separates Galiano Island to the north from Mayne Island to the south, in the southern Gulf Islands, and it links Trincomali Channel in the west to the Strait of Georgia in the east - which is precisely why it matters. Without it, traf...

Read more: Active Pass on Qualla

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Keefer4~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 2.5

Active Pass: Named for a Steamer

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ericlee5 at English Wikipedia, Public domain. The name is a compliment paid to a ship. The USCS Active, a United States Navy survey vessel, became the first steamer to navigate the pass in 1855, and the name stuck to the water she proved. It has aged unusually well. Most nineteenth-century naval namings on this coast honour ...

Read more: Active Pass on Qualla

Image: Ericlee5 at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Active Pass: Forty-Four Years of Readings

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tawker, CC BY 2.5. From 1967 to 2011, the Active Pass light station formed part of the British Columbia Shore Station Oceanographic Program, taking coastal water temperature and salinity measurements for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Every day, for forty-four years. There is nothing drama...

Read more: Active Pass on Qualla

Image: Tawker | CC BY 2.5

Active Pass: Fast Water

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arrecifazo, CC BY-SA 3.0. Strong eddies and tide rips are always present in the pass, and for smaller vessels that makes the corridor genuinely hazardous - a kayak or a runabout can find itself in water moving in several directions at once, with a ferry due around the bend. The same turbulence brings life...

Read more: Active Pass on Qualla

Image: Arrecifazo | CC BY-SA 3.0

Active Pass: Three Bad Days

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrew Wallwork from Canada, CC BY 2.0. A channel this narrow and this busy accumulates a record. On 8 September 1968 HMCS Saskatchewan ran aground here while transiting in fog; her captain was court-martialled and found guilty of negligence. On 2 August 1970 the Russian freighter Sergey Yesenin struck the BC Ferry Que...

Read more: Active Pass on Qualla

Image: Andrew Wallwork from Canada | CC BY 2.0