_fmt.jpeg)
Often referred to as Lismer Beach (after artist Arthur Lismer), this cove was the location of one of several First Nations villages on Long Beach.
3. On the Map
THE OBSERVATION deck of the national park’s interpretive centre is the perfect place to take in a panoramic view of Long Beach. Along the sandy sweep that stretches out to my right, long ridges of waves rise up momentarily before spilling over gracefully in a tangle of froth-tipped curls. To my left, the sea swirls in over foreshore rocks that are both slick with algae and crusty with barnacles. A pair of red-billed oystercatchers circle the nearby islets, their long bright beaks providing brief stitches of colour across the flat grey sky. Their squeaky-toy ratta-tatta-tat calls pierce the sea’s steady thrum.
This view would have been virtually the same for other people in other times—250, 500, and even 1,000 years ago—standing where I am now. That said, there is at least one key difference. In the past, massive beds of kelp swayed in the water just off the rocks below, their golden-brown fronds streaming out like silky tresses.
_fmt.jpeg)
Giant kelp and bull kelp create ecologically rich underwater forests that are home to myriad creatures, from fish to invertebrates and even marine mammals. The rope-like stalks, called stipes, can grow to thirty metres (ninety-eight feet) long.
Kelp is still visible along the shore today. However, this growth is like comparing a tiny woodlot to the expansive “forests” of kelp that flourished here and off rocky headlands all along the west coast before the Europeans arrived. The reason for kelp’s decline is closely tied to the near-total expunging of one of this shoreline’s most iconic and ecologically important inhabitants, the sea otter.
While the first Europeans may have come to the northwest coast of North America initially to claim lands for their country or to look for a shortcut to Asia, it was the sea otter that turned their heads and kept them coming back. This chance intersection of the west coast’s indigenous people, European explorers and traders, and the sea otter set off a series of events that would forever alter both the history of coastal peoples and the ecology of the ocean from which they lived.
The Europeans Arrive
Despite the flurry of traffic on the west coast in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, an area like Long Beach held little particular interest. The protected sounds bookending the beach were a much greater draw to mariners, providing safe anchorages, freshwater sources, and ready access to native people for trading business. Although the Spaniards under Juan Pérez first made contact and traded briefly with native people off the coast of Vancouver Island in July 1774, it was the voyage of British Captain James Cook four years later that lit the fuse of change in this corner of the world.
Cook sailed in with two ships, the Resolution and the Discovery, while searching for a northern route between Europe and Asia. He made landfall at a harbour he called King George’s Sound (later named Nootka Sound) where the native people (today known as the Mowachaht) guided Cook and his crews through the fog to an anchorage near their village, Yuquot. There, the visitors remained for most of April 1778, repairing their ships, surveying the area, and trading knives, chisels, nails, buttons, and other items with the Nuu-chah-nulth in exchange for fur and fresh food. While the trip was notable in that it was the first time the two cultures spent time together, it might have been of little consequence but for one trade item in particular: the three hundred or so sea otter pelts acquired by the British.
If nothing else, the crew surmised, the furs would keep them warm on the Arctic leg of their journey. Some sailors even used them as bedding. It was only when they got to China, where the furs fetched up to $120 apiece—a princely sum for the era—that the crew realized the astounding profit afforded by the pelts. Suddenly, the northeast Pacific was eyed with fresh interest. Wrote the Resolution’s acting captain, James King (for Cook had lost his life in Hawaii en route to China in 1779): “The rage with which our seamen were possessed to return... and, with another cargo of skins to make their fortunes, was not far short of mutiny.”
Although the crew did not get their wish when the ships were directed back to England, news of this lucrative new commercial enterprise quickly inspired plans for future journeys to this part of the world. Cook’s journals were published in 1784 and sold out in three days. Five more printings followed in rapid succession, and translated versions began to appear elsewhere in Europe. Within a few years, the west coast of Vancouver Island was teeming with merchant vessels engaged in trade for sea otter pelts.
Otter Pelt Bonanza
The first British ship to scoot back, the unapologetically named Sea Otter under the command of James Hanna, arrived at Nootka on August 18, 1785. In short order, the crew accumulated 560 sea otter pelts. The opening bell of the sea otter pelt trade had been rung. At least 170 ships eventually followed Hanna’s. The British, who the native people called the King George Men, kept Nootka Sound as their base of operations. The Americans, called the Boston Men, established theirs in Clayoquot Sound to the south.
This booming trade was amicable on both sides for the most part. There were notable and tragic exceptions, such as the American destruction of the village of Opitsat by cannon fire in 1792, which led to reprisals from the Nuu-chah-nulth. Generally, however, it was a reciprocal business arrangement in which native people hunted the sea otters in exchange for a variety of goods. Chief Maquinna at Nootka Sound, Chief Wickaninnish in Clayoquot Sound, and others were savvy traders and readily became key players in the exchange. Because they controlled trade in their respective territories, the chiefs were able to regulate supply and demand by acting as middlemen between their neighbours and the trading ships. Their power and authority in the region grew as a result.
This stretch of coastline, including Long Beach, stayed the focus of the international maritime fur trade until the 1820s. By that point, after just over 50 years, the sea otter population had been virtually wiped out. The otter hunt business finally ground to a halt. It’s estimated that before the era of the pelt trade, the population of sea otters on the Pacific coast between Japan and Baja California was about 300,000. Even by 1911, when legislation was first enacted to protect sea otters, fewer than 2,000 of the animals were thought to remain.
Island Settlement Spreads West
The years following the sea otter trade were ones of great transition, particularly for the First Nations. The Tla-o-qui-aht, Yuu-cluth-aht, and neighbouring nations were still living much as they had for generations, travelling throughout their territories as the seasons and resources dictated. However, their numbers were declining. The mamalhni (“those whose houses float on the water”) may have left temporarily, but the intense period of trade had profoundly changed the reality for the indigenous residents. The introduction of firearms radically altered the dynamics of warfare, and the spreading of previously unknown illnesses such as smallpox eroded populations. Groups began to merge in response. Today’s Yuu-cluth-aht First Nation, for example, is thought to be an amalgamation of seven distinct groups.
First Nations had their own systems of trade and commerce long before the mamalhni arrived, but the sea otter trade era had introduced a new model of commerce with access to novel goods and new sources of wealth. Chiefs began to factor in the harvest of resources for trade not only with other First Nations, but also with new foreign visitors to their territories. What no one had counted on was that the visitors would start unpacking their bags, intending to stay.
After years of jockeying with the Spanish and the Americans, the British finally gained control of the west coast. In 1843, the Hudson’s Bay Company began building a trading post at the southern tip of Vancouver Island, having been granted a twenty-one-year exclusive trading and hunting licence in the northwest by the British Crown.
After building a fort out of the Douglas fir forest in what is now the city of Victoria, foreign presence on Vancouver Island grew. Island lands had been granted to the Hudson’s Bay Company on condition that it would open up the region for settlement. With the signing of the Oregon Boundary Treaty on June 15, 1846, the border between the United States and British Canada was finally settled. For a decade or so, Victoria remained a small community of fewer than a thousand people, with activities centred on the Hudson’s Bay Company post. Then, with the discovery of gold on the Fraser River in 1858, hundreds of people, the vast majority being single men, flooded into Fort Victoria. Although many passed through en route to seeking their fortunes, some stayed on, looking for opportunity on the island.
William Banfield was one of the first of these early settlers to be curious as to what lay north of Victoria. He arrived in 1848 at Esquimalt Harbour, near Victoria, on the British man-of-war HMS Constance, the first ship to christen the colony’s naval port. After his discharge from the navy, Banfield switched to a sloop and ventured up the coast. As he travelled, he kept an eye open for opportunities for settlers. He was much impressed with the untapped potential he saw all around him.
In the summer of 1858, the Daily Victoria Gazette published eight front-page articles by Banfield in which he gave a first-hand account of an area that most people at the time imagined as being a forested void. Reporting on his travels between Sooke and Clayoquot Sound, he described the native people and their activities, possibilities for settlement, and the wealth of natural resources available: timber, salmon, seals, elk, bear, and whales.
On October 24, 1859, William Banfield wrote to the Colonial Secretary, “A chart, Sir, or tracing of a good chart, would be of infinite service.” His request was answered in 1861 when the colonial government assigned George H. Richards, a British naval officer, to lead an extensive coastal survey. With the paddle-sloop Hecate serving as the mother ship and up to seven small boats working from her at a time, the convoluted and multi-featured coastline was painstakingly plotted. The result was the first detailed charts of the west coast of Vancouver Island, including the Long Beach area.
As part of their survey work, Richards and his assistant, Daniel Pender, were also responsible for assigning place names. Having scant knowledge of local history, they typically applied names that were a nod to fellow officers on their or other British ships—names with little connection to the area. Gowlland Rocks, for instance, was named for John Gowlland, the surveyor with Captain Richards’s coastal survey.
Along with the charts, Richards and Pender compiled a two-volume Vancouver Island Pilot, for use by coastal mariners. It included instructions on how to approach the shoreline, observations about native people and other residents, and information on where supplies might be procured. Describing the island’s west coast in general, Richards is frank. He wrote, “It is fringed by rocks and hidden dangers, especially near the entrances to the sounds, and the exercise of great caution and vigilance will be necessary...”
Although Banfield did not write specifically about Long Beach, he did give some idea of the native presence, describing the settlement of about 450 “Youcloulyets” in a harbour (Ucluelet Inlet) “facing to the south but not at all exposed to the Pacific Ocean—equally sheltered and five times as large as the estuary at Victoria.” He was smitten with their home, writing that “nature in her most generous gifts, never formed a more splendid assemblage of harbors or inland waters, adapted for steam navigation in whose vicinity fine lumber land abounds.” Clearly, people were reading Banfield’s articles and listening to reports trickling into Victoria about the west coast. From the 1860s onward, enterprising men came searching for resources. Soon his reports mention American ships coming into Alberni to load wood spars or to trade potatoes and flour. The building of a few new trading posts and a second intense era of fur hunting and trading, this time in fur seal pelts, were some of the outcomes of this expanded exploration on the west coast.
A prevailing attitude of the era—that uncultivated land was not used or owned—certainly helped the colonial expansionist cause. In 1868, Gilbert Malcolm Sproat wrote of how he explained the forced acquisition of land at the end of Alberni Inlet for a sawmill to the Tseshaht people living there: “I sent a boat for the chief, and explained to him that his tribe must move their encampment, as we had bought all the surrounding land from the Queen of England, and wished to occupy the site of the village for a particular purpose. He replied that the land belonged to themselves, but that they were willing to sell it. The price not being excessive, I paid him what was asked—about twenty pounds’ worth of goods—for the sake of peace, on condition that the whole people and buildings should be removed the next day.”
The Soul Searchers
Wherever traders and explorers have pushed new pathways in the world, missionaries have followed. And so it happened on Vancouver Island’s west coast. In the fall of 1874, Father Augustin J. Brabant travelled to the Long Beach area along with Bishop Charles J. Seghers in search of a location for a west coast mission. They chose Hesquiat at the northern end of Clayoquot Sound, but on this trip the two missionaries also became among the first (and possibly the first) non-native people to walk the shores of Long Beach.
They had travelled to the native village of Ittatsoo, in what is now Ucluelet Harbour, by sealing schooner and then up the outside coast by canoe. On their way home, they stopped in at the Tla-o-qui-aht village of Opitsat, requesting transportation to Ucluelet. The chief agreed, but first wanted to take them up to his fishing camp on the Kennedy River. From there, he would walk them over to Long Beach, where they would launch a canoe and paddle to Ucluelet.
Once they reached Long Beach, however, they found the seas too high to get through the breakers and were forced to stay put. For two days, Father Brabant and Bishop Seghers camped and waited there. What they thought of the stunning stretch of sand we will never know, for they make little mention of the site, merely writing that it was “a beautiful sandy beach.”
Finally, when the sea conditions did not subside, the men decided to walk to Ucluelet. They had two guides from Kyuquot with them, but neither of those men was familiar with the area. Despite having received instructions on where to look for the trails connecting Florencia Bay to Ucluelet Harbour, the group got lost several times flailing about in the bush. Heavy rains ruined their campsites and a fire they made grew so large that it burned their shoes and clothing. Then hunger set in. At one point, “the Bishop took a fainting fit,” wrote Brabant. “He lay down on the rocks and asked if I had any food left. I took down the satchel which I had on my back and after careful examination I found a few grains of sugar and a little flour in the corner of an old flour sack. This I gathered in a spoon and presented to His Lordship.”
When they eventually thought to pay attention to what their native companions were eating, they regained some strength dining on raw mussels and salal berries. Eventually they made it to their destination.
Brabant remained a presence on the coast for years, overseeing the Hesquiat mission and other enterprises of the church in the area. It’s not clear if he ever returned to Long Beach, but he never wrote of it again.
The Complications of Reintroduction
Sea otters are the only species of marine mammal without blubber. Their luxurious 2-layered fur is their ticket to survival in the cold waters of the northern Pacific. On an adult male, the dense underfur can have up to 800 million fibres. (In contrast, the average human head has 100,000 hairs.) When fluffed with air, this layer provides insulation from the cold. Food helps keep the animals warm, too. Otters have a high metabolism. To keep their internal furnaces stoked, they must eat up to a third of their body weight every day. Their diet is like a seafood smorgasbord that includes clams, crabs, snails, and—key to this story—sea urchins.
Sea urchins are herbivores that graze on kelp and other algae. Before the maritime fur trade, sea otters kept the spiky marine mowers in check. When the otter population collapsed, however, the urchins lost their major predator. Soon, they had chewed their way through the kelp, reducing the once-huge underwater forests to small fragmented remnants. In turn, the loss of these kelp forests dramatically changed the near-shore marine ecology. The two main species in these forests, giant kelp and bull kelp, can grow to such heights that they create a three-dimensional habitat in the ocean close to the shoreline. Kelp forests provide shelter and breeding habitat for many species of fish, including salmon, perch, greenling, and lingcod, and for dozens of invertebrates, from worms and brittle stars that entangle themselves in the kelp’s root-like “holdfasts” to snails that rasp away on the tubular stalks (known as stipes).
Now, where sea otters are recolonizing and expanding their range, the sea urchin population is being controlled once again. Shorelines not far from Long Beach that are strewn with cracked urchin, clam, and other shells indicate that the otters are eating their way back into the local scene and, in the process, helping restore the kelp habitat that has been largely absent for generations. Meanwhile, many residents trying to make a living harvesting the same shellfish the sea otters devour have a different view of this success story. They see the increased otter population as unfair competition threatening their livelihoods.
Will the ecological benefits of a rejuvenated kelp forest outweigh these concerns? The debate will continue. Nevertheless, in time, the view from Long Beach’s interpretive centre may once again include an expanse of kelp forests, complete with the bobbing heads of otters visible among the glistening kelp fronds.
_fmt.jpeg)
The maritime fur trade resulted in the sea otter becoming extirpated (locally extinct) on Vancouver Island’s west coast. A population was reintroduced in 1969 to 1972, and the mammals are now sometimes seen in the waters off Long Beach.