Qualla: Strait of Georgia

Strait of Georgia: Introduction

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit gordon hunter from Nanaimo, BC, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0. For a short while, this water was called the Gran Canal de Nuestra Senora del Rosario la Marinera - the Great Channel of Our Lady of the Rosary the Mariner. Francisco de Eliza gave it that name in 1791, after Captain Jose Maria Narvaez and pilot Juan Carrasco became the first Europeans to probe it. A year later George Vancouver arrived, decided it was a gulf rather than a channel, and renamed it for his king. Neither man was naming an empty place. Coast Salish peoples had been living around this sea for thousands of years, and their word for it would take another two centuries to reach a map.

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

Strait of Georgia: Three Names on One Sea

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit gordon hunter from Nanaimo, BC, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0. Vancouver called it the Gulf of Georgia in 1792, for George III, and labelled the mainland behind it New Georgia, with New Hanover and New Bremen further north. The Georgian name stuck; the German ones did not. Then in March 2008 the Chemainus First Nation proposed something diff...

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

Strait of Georgia: The Shape of the Water

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit This image was taken by me and is released for public use., Public domain. The strait runs roughly 240 kilometres between Vancouver Island and the mainland of British Columbia and the far northwestern corner of Washington, narrowing to as little as 20 kilometres across. It covers about 6,800 square kilometres with a mean depth of 156 metres, and it is d...

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Image: This image was taken by me and is released for public use. | Public domain

Strait of Georgia: One River Does Almost All of It

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit gordon hunter from Nanaimo, BC, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0. About 80 per cent of the fresh water entering the Strait of Georgia comes down a single river. The Fraser drains an enormous interior watershed and dumps it here, and the consequences reach everywhere. Surface water across much of the strait runs brackish and silt-laden in freshe...

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

Strait of Georgia: The Busiest Crossings in Canada

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Hamilton, CC BY-SA 2.0. This is a working sea. The port of Vancouver sits at its eastern edge, and the strait forms the southern entrance to the Inside Passage, the sheltered inland route running north toward Alaska, which makes it one of the most heavily used navigation channels on the west coast of No...

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Image: Paul Hamilton | CC BY-SA 2.0

Strait of Georgia: A Shaking, and a Misspelling

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shawn from Airdrie, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0. On June 23, 1946, an earthquake centred on Vancouver Island shook the entire Strait of Georgia region hard enough to drop the floor of Deep Bay by at least three metres - a reminder that this basin sits in seismically active country and that the seabed here is not a fixed thing. ...

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Image: Shawn from Airdrie, Canada | CC BY-SA 2.0