Qualla: Tsawwassen

Tsawwassen: Introduction

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kalamazadkhan, CC BY-SA 4.0. The name comes from the Halkomelem word sc'ewathen, usually translated as land facing the sea. It is exact. The peninsula looks west across the Strait of Georgia toward Vancouver Island, and south across the 49th parallel, and east over the tideflats of Boundary Bay. What the name does not tell you is that the sea here is barely sea at all. Roberts Bank is a vast shallow shelf, and a ferry drawing any real water cannot get near the shore. So in 1959 British Columbia built a road three kilometres out into the strait, dumped rock until it had deep water at the end of it, and put a terminal there. Millions of people a year now drive out to sea to catch a boat.

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Image: Kalamazadkhan | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tsawwassen: Four Thousand Years Facing the Sea

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Canuckle, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Tsawwassen First Nation, a Coast Salish people, have been here for a very long time. The oldest archaeological site on English Bluff dates back about 4,200 years, and eight prehistoric villages have been unearthed on the peninsula. Through the nineteenth century, in the words...

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Image: Canuckle | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tsawwassen: The First Europeans, and the Salmon

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit TravelingOtter from Houston, Texas, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Spanish expedition of Jose Maria Narvaez came through in 1791 and charted the Point Roberts peninsula as Isla de Zepeda. What Narvaez chose to record about the place says as much about him as about it: an incredible quantity of rich salmon, and a large Indigenous population s...

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Image: TravelingOtter from Houston, Texas, USA | CC BY-SA 2.0

Tsawwassen: Two Things Opened in 1959

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shaundd, CC BY-SA 4.0. Nineteen fifty-nine changed Tsawwassen twice over. The ferry terminal arrived at the end of its new causeway, linking the Lower Mainland to southern Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands. Inland, the Massey Tunnel opened under the Fraser River, connecting Delta to Richmond and cu...

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Image: Shaundd | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tsawwassen: The Border in the Backyard

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yuet Man Lee, CC BY-SA 4.0. That 56th Street is the reason Tsawwassen matters to a few thousand Americans. It is the only road access to Point Roberts, Washington, the exclave stranded on the southern tip of this peninsula when the 49th parallel was drawn straight across it. Cross the line and the street be...

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Image: Yuet Man Lee | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tsawwassen: Sun, Birds, and One Public Staircase

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sunnytsawwassen, CC BY-SA 3.0. Tsawwassen is the sunny corner of Metro Vancouver, sheltered enough to hold a warm-summer Mediterranean climate with some of the mildest winters and smallest daily temperature swings in Canada -- a genuine rain shadow on a coast famous for the opposite. Boundary Bay, on the east ...

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Image: Sunnytsawwassen | CC BY-SA 3.0