Qualla: Mudge Island

Mudge Island: Introduction

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit gordon hunter from Nanaimo, BC, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0. On a big tide, boats queue up on both sides of Dodd Narrows and wait for the water to stop. The passage narrows to about sixty yards (55 metres) at its slimmest, roughly a nautical mile long, and the current running through it can hit nine knots - fast enough to turn the channel into standing whitewater and fast enough to hold a sailboat motionless at full throttle. There is a window of a few minutes at slack, and everyone knows it. Boats go through in a nose-to-tail procession, then the gate closes again. On the far side of that gate sits Mudge Island: four square kilometres of forest and dirt road with about 140 year-round residents, no bridge, no ferry, and no particular interest in acquiring either.

Read more: Mudge Island on Qualla

Image: gordon hunter from Nanaimo, BC, Canada | CC BY-SA 2.0

Mudge Island: The Gate and the Island

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Qyd assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. Mudge sits in the Strait of Georgia between Vancouver Island and Gabriola, at the southern end of the De Courcy group. Water defines it on every side, and each stretch of that water has a job. Dodd Narrows separates the island from Vancouver Island; False Narrows separates it fro...

Read more: Mudge Island on Qualla

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Qyd assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Mudge Island: The May Camps

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit gordon hunter from Nanaimo, BC, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0. Long before any of those boundaries existed, this was Snuneymuxw water, and the rhythm was seasonal. Families wintered in permanent villages at Departure Bay, Nanaimo Harbour, and False Narrows, then moved out in May to fishing camps at False Narrows and Dodd Narrows to work the ...

Read more: Mudge Island on Qualla

Image: gordon hunter from Nanaimo, BC, Canada | CC BY-SA 2.0

Mudge Island: Named in Passing

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit gordon hunter from Nanaimo, BC, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0. The island's current name arrived in 1859 with a survey ship. Captain George Henry Richards, commanding HMS Plumper, spent that season charting the coast and handing out names at a steady clip - a process that erased a great many older ones. Mudge Island honours William Fitzwilli...

Read more: Mudge Island on Qualla

Image: gordon hunter from Nanaimo, BC, Canada | CC BY-SA 2.0

Mudge Island: Dirt Roads and Fibre Optic

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit gordon hunter from Nanaimo, BC, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0. Mudge today is almost purely residential - about 140 people year-round, more than 200 in summer, a network of dirt roads, and a private marina called Moonshine Cove. There is no scheduled transport of any kind. Getting home means owning a boat and knowing the tide tables, which i...

Read more: Mudge Island on Qualla

Image: gordon hunter from Nanaimo, BC, Canada | CC BY-SA 2.0

Mudge Island: Living on Tidal Time

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit gordon hunter from Nanaimo, BC, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0. That combination - twenty-first-century bandwidth, eighteenth-century access - shapes daily life in ways that are easy to underestimate. A grocery run is planned around slack water. So is a medical appointment, a school pickup, a delivery. The tide does not negotiate and it does ...

Read more: Mudge Island on Qualla

Image: gordon hunter from Nanaimo, BC, Canada | CC BY-SA 2.0