Beaver Cove

Beaver Cove opens off the Queen Charlotte Strait on the northeast coast of Vancouver Island, a sheltered inlet below forested mountains near the mouth of the Kokish River. Strong tides run through the nearby straits, and cedar and hemlock grow down to the shore.

This is the country of the Kwakwaka'wakw, whose Kwak'wala-speaking villages lay along these channels and islands. Their cedar canoes carried families between salmon rivers, halibut banks and winter villages, and wealth and rank were displayed at the potlatch. In 1792 George Vancouver's ships passed through the strait, the first recorded contact between the Kwakwaka'wakw and Europeans.