Qualla: Stave Lake

Stave Lake: Introduction

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SydneyVISA110, CC BY-SA 3.0. For decades after the water rose, the trees were still standing in it. Stave Lake's cedars had not been cut before the valley was flooded; they were simply submerged where they grew, and they stayed upright beneath the surface for the better part of a century, a drowned forest with a reservoir on top of it. In the 1980s and 1990s crews went in after that timber, working through prolonged drawdowns when BC Hydro lowered the lake far enough to reach it. Red cedar does not rot quickly. What came out of the water had been dead for sixty years and was still worth milling.

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Image: SydneyVISA110 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Stave Lake: The People of the River

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Hermans, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Stave was a productive salmon river, and the territory belonged to the Sxa'yaks - the Skayuks - a Halqemeylem-speaking Coast Salish people related to today's Stó:lo. They are not here any longer. Smallpox arrived with Europeans, the population collapsed, and the Kwantlen Firs...

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Image: Paul Hermans | CC BY-SA 3.0

Stave Lake: Cedar Worth Drowning

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carport, CC BY-SA 3.0. What drew industry here was the timber. The lower Stave grew red cedar at a size that brought lumber companies up from the coast, chief among them Stave Lake Cedar, whose mill stood a mile above the damsite. Then a second industry arrived with a different use for the same valley....

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Image: Carport | CC BY-SA 3.0

Stave Lake: A Lake Made Three Times Bigger

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit YokoNikki, CC BY-SA 4.0. Stave Lake today covers about 55 square kilometres. Its main arm runs roughly 20 kilometres north to south, with a southwest arm about 9.5 kilometres long ending at Stave Falls Dam. Before the dam, the lake was around a third the size of that main arm alone - which is to say the ...

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Image: YokoNikki | CC BY-SA 4.0

Stave Lake: A Cathedral on Pilings

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kyle Lawrence, CC BY-SA 3.0. Film crews found the Stave Dam complex and built something remarkable there for the movie We're No Angels: an entire fake town, and with it a timber cathedral - a real one, actually constructed, driven into Stave Lake on pilings. Everything came down when shooting finished, with ...

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Image: Kyle Lawrence | CC BY-SA 3.0

Stave Lake: Mud Flats and Cabins

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kyle Lawrence, CC BY-SA 3.0. BC Hydro controls most of the shoreline, which has kept Stave Lake from acquiring the ring of cottages that would otherwise surround a body of water an hour from Vancouver. A handful of private cabins sit along the east shore, reached by Sylvester Road. Zajac Ranch, a summer camp...

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Image: Kyle Lawrence | CC BY-SA 3.0