Vancouver Isle Expedition

A B-C couple is setting off on a month-long West Coast hiking and kayaking expedition that retraces the passage Spanish explorers took in the late 1700s. Jacqueline Windh, a fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, says the journey will take her and her husband to what are now virtually uninhabited outer coastal areas of Vancouver Island. She says most Canadians know about Canada’s British and French colonial history, but the Spanish connections aren’t as well-known even though many West Coast islands, communities and waterways bear Spanish names. She points to Cortez, Galiano, Gabriola islands, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and even Port Alberni, where she lives, as places on Vancouver Island named after Spanish explorers and dignitaries. Windh says Spanish ships arrived on Vancouver Island’s outer coastal areas before the British. She says the expedition starts Sunday at Rugged Point near the remote Island community of Zeballos and will travel southward before arriving at Tofino on July 8th.