Qualla: Hathayim Marine Provincial Park

Hathayim Marine Provincial Park: Introduction

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carport, CC BY-SA 3.0. The inlet cuts deep into the northwest corner of Cortes Island, a long finger of seawater draining toward Sutil Channel through forest so dense the shoreline seems to exhale green. In the Klahoose language, this place is called ha'thamin. For over a century, colonial maps labeled it Von Donop Inlet, after a young Royal Navy midshipman who never set foot here. In 1995, the provincial park surrounding the inlet was renamed Hathayim, and in 1997 it became Hathayim Marine Provincial Park, a quiet act of cartographic correction that restored a name the Klahoose had never stopped using.

Image: Carport | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hathayim Marine Provincial Park: A Name Written in Water

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carport, CC BY-SA 3.0. Victor von Donop was a midshipman aboard a twenty-one-gun vessel under Captain George Keane when it arrived at Esquimalt from China on March 23, 1862. The ship carried orders to protect British colonies in the region during mounting tensions between Great Britain and the United S...

Image: Carport | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hathayim Marine Provincial Park: The Klahoose Shoreline

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Isochrone, CC BY-SA 4.0. For the Klahoose people, this inlet was not a geographic feature waiting for a European name. It was ha'thamin, a place woven into the fabric of Coast Salish life on Cortes Island for millennia. The Klahoose are one of three groups comprising the Mainland Comox, with deep roots a...

Image: Isochrone | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hathayim Marine Provincial Park: Where the Tide Breathes

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carport, CC BY-SA 3.0. Hathayim Marine Provincial Park protects the inlet and the surrounding marine and terrestrial habitat on Cortes Island's northwest end. The inlet itself is the park's defining feature: a long, sheltered waterway that narrows and shallows as it penetrates inland, creating tidal fl...

Image: Carport | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hathayim Marine Provincial Park: Restoration in Small Acts

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carport, CC BY-SA 3.0. The renaming of Von Donop Marine Provincial Park to Hathayim was not a dramatic political event. There was no protest, no confrontation. It was an administrative decision, made in 1995 and refined in 1997, that recognized the Coast Salish First Nations name for the area. But smal...

Image: Carport | CC BY-SA 3.0