Qualla: Haddington Island

Haddington Island: Introduction

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The British Columbia Parliament Buildings have stood in Victoria for more than a century, their ornamental facades exposed to salty coastal air, freeze-thaw cycles, and Pacific storms. After all that time, there is no noticeable deterioration of detail in the stonework. The secret is not in the craftsmanship alone -- it is in the rock itself, quarried from a tiny volcanic island in the Broughton Strait that most British Columbians have never heard of. Haddington Island, barely a speck on the map between Malcolm Island and the northern Vancouver Island coast, supplied the stone that built a province's most recognizable landmarks.

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Haddington Island: Born from Subduction

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Haddington Island belongs to the Alert Bay Volcanic Belt, a chain of eroded volcanoes stretching from Brooks Peninsula northeastward across Vancouver Island to Port McNeill. The island formed roughly 3.7 million years ago, when the Juan de Fuca and Explorer plates ground beneath ...

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Haddington Island: Rattenbury's Choice

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1893, the young English architect Francis Rattenbury won the commission to design British Columbia's new parliament buildings. He needed an exterior stone that could hold fine ornamental detail and endure the Victoria climate. He chose the light pearl-grey volcanic rock from H...

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Haddington Island: Silence and Revival

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Architectural tastes shifted after the Second World War. Concrete and glass replaced carved stone. The Haddington Island quarry fell quiet in 1966, and for nearly four decades the island sat deserted -- its wharf rotting, its quarry faces exposed to rain and moss. Then in 2004, H...

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Haddington Island: A Volcanic Speck with an Outsized Legacy

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Haddington Island is too small to appear on most maps and too remote for casual visitors. The closest community is Port McNeill on Vancouver Island. There are no ferries, no services, no population. What there is, is geology written into architecture hundreds of kilometers away -...

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