Qualla: Sandy Island Marine Provincial Park

Sandy Island Marine Provincial Park: Introduction

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carport, CC BY-SA 3.0. Getting to most islands requires a boat. Getting to this one requires a tide table. Off the north tip of Denman Island, in the stretch of the Strait of Georgia south of Comox, a low tide drains the flats at Longbeak Point and leaves behind a broad corridor of wet sand running out to a stand of trees. Walk it and you reach Jáji7em and Kw'uhl Marine Park, better known for most of its life as Sandy Island. Misjudge the turn of the tide and you are standing on an island again, watching your road fill in behind you.

Image: Carport | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sandy Island Marine Provincial Park: Thirty Hectares, Two Names Deep

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carport, CC BY-SA 3.0. The park is small by the standards of British Columbia's protected areas - thirty hectares, established on 7 June 1966 - and it is not one island but a scattering. Sandy Island itself, which everybody locally calls Tree Island, carries the forest. Around it lie the Seal Islets, l...

Image: Carport | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sandy Island Marine Provincial Park: The Road That Closes Behind You

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carport, CC BY-SA 3.0. The tidal flats between Longbeak Point and the park are the whole experience. At low water they are a landscape in their own right: ribbed sand, eelgrass lying flat and glossy, the small chaotic evidence of things that live buried. Herons work the margins with theatrical patience...

Image: Carport | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sandy Island Marine Provincial Park: Jáji7em and Kw'uhl

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carport, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 2012 the park was officially renamed Jáji7em and Kw'uhl Marine Park, restoring the K'ómoks names for the two parts of it. Jáji7em means "having trees" and belongs to Sandy Island - a plain, exact description that a thousand years of people arriving by canoe would have found im...

Image: Carport | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sandy Island Marine Provincial Park: The Island It Hangs Off

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carport, CC BY-SA 3.0. Denman Island, the 51-square-kilometre landmass whose northern tip points at the park, sits off Vancouver Island's east coast with Baynes Sound between them and Comox away to the northwest. Around 1,391 people live there year-round, reached by a cable ferry, the MV Baynes Sound C...

Image: Carport | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sandy Island Marine Provincial Park: Sand, Which Is Never Still

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carport, CC BY-SA 3.0. Nothing about this park is permanent, geologically speaking. Sand spits and tidal flats are among the most mobile landforms there are, rearranged by every big southeasterly that comes up the strait. The trees on Jáji7em hold their ground because roots hold sand better than sand h...

Image: Carport | CC BY-SA 3.0