Qualla: Entrance Island

Entrance Island: Introduction

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Construction was already behind schedule when the third worker died. The original contractor had abandoned the job, and the lighthouse being built on this bare rock 841 metres north of Gabriola Island was a year late when it finally began operating in 1876. The Entrance Island Lighthouse had come into the world the hard way, and the pattern held. Two of its early keepers -- M.G. Clark and W.E. Morrisey -- earned notoriety not for saving ships but for mistreating the assistants hired to tend the light. From the beginning, Entrance Island attracted the kind of people and problems that come with extreme isolation, a tradition that continues to this day on one of British Columbia's last staffed lighthouses.

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Entrance Island: The Gatekeeper's Rock

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Entrance Island sits at the mouth of Nanaimo Harbour, marking the passage from the open Strait of Georgia into the protected waters where coal ships, ferries, and fishing boats have docked for more than a century. The island is small, rocky, and low -- barely more than a reef wit...

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Entrance Island: The Fight to Keep the Light

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 2009, the Canadian Coast Guard announced that Entrance Island would be destaffed as part of a nationwide cost-cutting measure targeting manned lighthouses. The proposal triggered protests from mariners, coastal communities, and heritage advocates who argued that automated ligh...

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Entrance Island: 90 Years of Ocean Memory

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Every day since 1936, someone on Entrance Island has measured the temperature and salinity of the coastal water. The station is one of 12 lighthouses in the British Columbia Shore Station Oceanographic Program, a network that has produced one of the longest continuous records of ...

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