Qualla: Hornby Island

Hornby Island: Introduction

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Seventy million years ago, the waters around what is now Hornby Island teemed with sharks. Not one or two species, but an "incredibly diverse" community whose teeth still wash up on the island's beaches and erode from the exposed Late Cretaceous Northumberland Formation along its northern and western shores. Fossil collectors have pulled ammonite and baculite shells from Boulder Point. A fossil found on a Hornby beach was initially identified as a pterosaur called Gwawinapterus before being reclassified as a saurodontid fish. An actual azhdarchoid pterosaur was later found in the same formation, along with Maaqwi, one of the earliest known aquatic birds. This is an island where deep time is not an abstraction but something you can hold in your hand.

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Hornby Island: The Outer Island

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Pentlatch, a Coast Salish First Nations people, called this place Ja-dai-aich, meaning "The Outer Island." In 1791, the Spanish ship Santa Saturnina, under Juan Carrasco and Jose Maria Narvaez, sailed past and named it Isla de Lerena after the Spanish Finance Minister Don Ped...

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Hornby Island: Forty Percent Wild

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Of Hornby's 29.92 square kilometers, a remarkable 40 percent is parkland. Tribune Bay Provincial Park draws crowds to its broad sandy beach, often called the "Hawaii of the North" by locals. Helliwell Provincial Park protects dramatic sandstone bluffs and Garry oak meadows at the...

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Hornby Island: A Forest Built on Sand

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Hornby Island is mostly covered by mixed forest dominated by Douglas-fir, with western red cedar, western hemlock, grand fir, and lodgepole pine filling the canopy. Pacific yew is scattered in the understory, and arbutus, the distinctive broadleaf evergreen with peeling red bark,...

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Hornby Island: An Island Shaped by Ice

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Hornby's very existence is a product of post-glacial rebound. As the immense weight of the last ice age's glaciers melted away, the land slowly rose from the sea, creating the island's distinctive geography of sandstone bluffs, sheltered bays, and gentle hills. The geological for...

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