Qualla: John Dean Provincial Park

John Dean Provincial Park: Introduction

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ymblanter, CC BY-SA 4.0. In W̱SÁNEĆ tradition, this is the mountain that saved everyone. When the great flood came, the people took to their canoe and anchored it here, to a tall arbutus at the summit, with a rope braided from western red cedar. The mountain is ȽÁU,WELṈEW̱ -- best approximated in English as Tlay-will-nook -- and it appears on most maps as Mount Newton. It is not a large mountain. The Saanich Peninsula is only about eight kilometres wide where it stands, and from marked viewpoints on its flanks you can see Saanich Inlet on one side and Cordova Channel on the other. High ground does not have to be high to be the only ground left.

Image: Ymblanter | CC BY-SA 4.0

John Dean Provincial Park: The Bachelor Who Gave It Away

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hardo Müller from Bonn, Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0. John Dean was, by every surviving account, an eccentric. He had served as mayor of Rossland, in the Kootenays, and he lived his entire life unmarried. In the early 1900s he built a cabin near what is now the centre of the park, on the slopes of a mountain that was already old in ...

Image: Hardo Müller from Bonn, Germany | CC BY-SA 2.0

John Dean Provincial Park: One Percent of What There Was

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carport, CC BY-SA 3.0. What Dean protected turned out to be far rarer than he could have known. The park holds unlogged old-growth Douglas-fir and western red cedar in a coastal Douglas-fir ecosystem that has been almost entirely erased from southern Vancouver Island. The numbers are stark: 73 percent ...

Image: Carport | CC BY-SA 3.0

John Dean Provincial Park: A Forest That Crosses Jurisdictions

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thummel1, CC BY-SA 4.0. The park is a legal boundary drawn inside something larger. About a quarter of the old growth to the northwest lies not in the park at all but on the Cole Bay reserve of the Pauquachin First Nation -- meaning the continuity of this forest depends on two entirely different systems...

Image: Thummel1 | CC BY-SA 4.0

John Dean Provincial Park: The Big Soccer Ball

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jaden Crices, CC BY-SA 4.0. At the summit stands a white sphere visible from nearly every elevated point in Victoria. Locals call it the big soccer ball, and a great many of them believe it is weather radar. It is not. The dome shelters a Doppler radar owned and operated by Nav Canada for air traffic contro...

Image: Jaden Crices | CC BY-SA 4.0

John Dean Provincial Park: Six Kilometres of Trail

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Will Brown, CC BY 2.0. Roughly six kilometres of well-marked paths thread the park, maintained by a volunteer group called the Friends of John Dean Park. The terrain is hilly without being punishing, and in the dry months of late spring and summer it needs no particular equipment beyond decent shoes. L...

Image: Will Brown | CC BY 2.0