Qualla: Wallace Island Marine Provincial Park

Wallace Island Marine Provincial Park: Introduction

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrew Daviel, CC BY-SA 4.0. In late 1944 a young army photographer named David Conover walked into the Radioplane factory in Van Nuys, California, on orders to shoot morale pictures of women working the assembly lines. He photographed an eighteen-year-old named Norma Jeane Dougherty, and the world eventually came to know her as Marilyn Monroe. A few years later, Conover bought a narrow, uninhabited island in British Columbia's Gulf Islands, built a house and a handful of cabins in the trees, and spent the better part of two decades there. That island is Wallace Island, and it is now a provincial park.

Image: Andrew Daviel | CC BY-SA 4.0

Wallace Island Marine Provincial Park: The Resort in the Trees

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shannon LaBelle - User: (WT-shared) Minnow at wts wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 4.0. From 1947 into the mid-1960s, Wallace Island operated as a vacation resort - a modest one, a few guest cabins in a forest on an island with no road, no ferry, and no near neighbours. One cabin still stands, intact; the remains of several others are scattered through the second gr...

Image: Shannon LaBelle - User: (WT-shared) Minnow at wts wikivoyage | CC BY-SA 4.0

Wallace Island Marine Provincial Park: The Ship That Named the Reef

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arrecifazo, CC BY-SA 3.0. At the southern end of the island, Panther Point pushes rocky reefs well out into the channel, far enough that they have caught vessels which thought they had room. There is a custom on this coast of naming a hazard after the ship that found it, and Panther Point honours the Pant...

Image: Arrecifazo | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wallace Island Marine Provincial Park: Two Coves and No Ferry

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrew Daviel, CC BY-SA 4.0. The park takes in almost all of Wallace Island's 72 hectares, leaving private land on the northern side of Princess Cove and running north toward Chivers Point. The island lies in Trincomali Channel, southwest of Galiano Island and roughly two kilometres northeast of Saltspring, ...

Image: Andrew Daviel | CC BY-SA 4.0

Wallace Island Marine Provincial Park: Who Else Lives Here

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arrecifazo, CC BY-SA 3.0. The island is named for Captain Wallace Houston of HMS Trincomalee, who served in these waters in 1853 - the same naval survey era that scattered British officers' names across every channel and point in the Gulf Islands. A few hiking trails run the length of the island, and camp...

Image: Arrecifazo | CC BY-SA 3.0