Qualla: Cameron Lake

Cameron Lake: Introduction

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Something moves in Cameron Lake. Or so the locals say. Since at least 2009, reports have surfaced of a large, unidentified creature in the deep waters between Mount Arrowsmith and Mount Wesley -- something that might be a giant sturgeon, a massive eel, or an oversized salamander, depending on who you ask. The B.C. Cryptozoology Club investigated and came away unable to explain what earlier witnesses had seen. Researcher John Kirk detected something substantial on sonar in 2016, though his underwater camera detached before capturing an image. The locals have given the creature a name: Cammie. Whether Cammie exists or not, the legend has given this 477-hectare lake on Highway 4 a personality that its quiet, forested shores might not otherwise suggest.

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Cameron Lake: A Judge's Lake

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The lake's official name is more prosaic than its monster. In 1860, Royal Navy Captain George Henry Richards named it for David Cameron, the first Chief Justice of Vancouver Island -- a man whose judicial career was marked more by colonial administration than by drama. The lake s...

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Cameron Lake: Old Growth on the Southern Shore

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The entire southern shore of Cameron Lake falls within Little Qualicum Falls Provincial Park, which protects a stretch of old-growth forest that is among the most accessible on Vancouver Island. Cathedral-like Douglas firs and western red cedars tower above the highway, their tru...

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Cameron Lake: The Monster in the Deep

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Lake monster legends are common in British Columbia -- Ogopogo in Okanagan Lake is the most famous -- but Cammie is a more recent addition to the provincial bestiary. The sightings began drawing attention around 2009, when the B.C. Cryptozoology Club investigated reports of somet...

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Cameron Lake: Highway 4 and the Phantom Train

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Cameron Lake also harbors a more terrestrial legend: the story that a train once came crashing down the mountainside from the Island Rail Corridor into the lake below. It is a vivid image -- a locomotive plunging through old-growth forest into cold water -- but it is false, a pop...

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