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Small Island

Today was spent exploring Cormorant Island which is about three miles long by half a mile wide. The island used to be the main fishing port in the 50’s and 60’s but it is now a rather run down place with lots of derelict jetties. It is however in a stunning setting and one wonders why it is not a trendy destination like Telegraph Cove, with a bit of money spent on painting the houses and tidying up the port it could be a great place to have a holiday home. Most of the bars and restaurants are closed, in fact tonight there is nowhere to eat. I had a bit of a heated discussion with the manager of the lodge where we are staying about this and he has now arranged some food. At first he just shrugged his shoulders and said “it’s your problem, most Canadians bring a cool box and eat in their rooms!” I was not impressed and told him so.

Quite a lot of Government money is being spent on the island's First Nation community and at first this seemed a bit over the top. Then we came across the site of a school set up by the Catholic Church to “re-educate” First Nation children. It ran from 1929 to 1975 with over 200 pupils, some as young as four, who were removed from their families and effectively imprisoned.

The school was ceremoniously knocked down in 2015 in front of many of the victims. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada determined that the residential schools were a system of "cultural genocide". It concluded that at least 4,100 students died while attending the schools, many of them due to abuse, negligence, disease, and accidents. Last year at a similar school in Kamloops the remains of 215 children were discovered. There are lots of placards, tee shirts and signs around saying “Every Child Matters”. It will take years to heal the wounds of this episode which whilst instigated over 100 years ago was still being pursued in living memory.

Perhaps as a result of this there has been a bit of a cultural First Nation renaissance there are lots of totem poles on the island many of which we photographed this morning including the tallest totem pole in the world. It was tall but only because they have plonked a long pole on the top to extend it, we were a little underwhelmed after walking up a hill to view it.

Despite the island being small and only having a population of 1000 it has a set of traffic lights which until this afternoon always seemed to be green but just as I drove up they turned red. I was tempted to jump them as there was no one around but I decided it might be a trap, there are a couple of policemen stationed on the island and it might be their little game to up the conviction rate and maintain their funding.

Tomorrow we catch the ferry to return to the main Vancouver Island and start our journey back to Victoria.