Qualla: Iona Island (British Columbia)

Iona Island (British Columbia): Introduction

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Grassbag, CC BY-SA 3.0. In the summer of 1978, a spoon-billed sandpiper stood in a sewage lagoon in Richmond, British Columbia, for five days while birders from across the continent came to look at it. The species breeds on the Russian Arctic coast and winters in Southeast Asia; it should never have been within four thousand kilometres of the Fraser River. It remains the only confirmed record anywhere on the west coast of North America south of Alaska. That is Iona Island in one anecdote: a working piece of municipal wastewater infrastructure, wedged between an international airport and the Strait of Georgia, that happens to be one of the best places in Canada to see birds.

Image: Grassbag | CC BY-SA 3.0

Iona Island (British Columbia): An Island That Stopped Being One

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wpcpey, CC BY-SA 4.0. Iona was genuinely an island once, one of the low sandy bodies deposited at the mouth of the Fraser as the river drops the mountains it has been carrying. A causeway and Ferguson Road now tie it to Sea Island, so it is a peninsula in fact and an island only in name and in the pap...

Image: Wpcpey | CC BY-SA 4.0

Iona Island (British Columbia): Why the Ponds Work

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thomas Quine, CC BY 2.0. The reason has to do with tide and timing. The Fraser delta is one of the most important shorebird staging grounds in the hemisphere -- a Ramsar wetland of international importance and a hemispheric reserve in the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network -- and hundreds of th...

Image: Thomas Quine | CC BY 2.0

Iona Island (British Columbia): Four Kilometres on Top of a Pipe

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit TimBray, CC BY-SA 4.0. Two jetties, both owned by the Government of Canada, run out from Iona into the Strait of Georgia. The south one, Iona Jetty, reaches nearly four kilometres offshore, and it is genuinely one of the strangest walks in the Lower Mainland. Twin gravel trails run along the top of and...

Image: TimBray | CC BY-SA 4.0

Iona Island (British Columbia): Under the Approach

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Scz1001, Public domain. The proximity to the airport gives the place its particular texture. Widebodies come over low and constant, landing gear down, and the noise arrives in waves that the sandpipers ignore entirely. Beyond the jetties the delta opens west into the strait, with the North Shore mountai...

Image: Scz1001 | Public domain