Qualla: Quatsino

Quatsino: Introduction

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mpeel, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1893, at the Chicago World Exposition, a Norwegian farmer from Fargo, North Dakota named Christian Nordstrom met a man called Jobe Leeson from Winter Harbour, British Columbia. Leeson described a place at the head of Quatsino Sound on northern Vancouver Island where the Canadian government was offering thirty free lots of 80 acres each through Crown Grants. Nordstrom went home and organized a group of fellow Norwegian settlers. The following year, they boarded a steamship to Victoria, then chartered a vessel called the Mischief and sailed north into waters none of them had seen. They spent their first winter in the abandoned cabins of a failed coal mine at Coal Harbour. When spring came, they scouted the land, chose their lots, and began clearing forest. The village they built still exists -- population 91, no roads in or out, accessible only by boat or floatplane.

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Image: Mpeel | CC BY-SA 4.0

Quatsino: The Chapel in the Woods

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mpeel, CC BY-SA 4.0. Two years after the settlers arrived, they built a small wooden building that served first as a schoolhouse. In 1897, it was consecrated as St. Olaf's Anglican Church -- a woodland chapel that remains the oldest building on northern Vancouver Island. Painted white and tucked amon...

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Image: Mpeel | CC BY-SA 4.0

Quatsino: Boom and Quiet

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mpeel, CC BY-SA 4.0. For its first half-century, Quatsino was far more than a hamlet. As resources in the surrounding area developed, the village grew into a thriving community with mines, canneries, general stores, rental cabins, a hotel, a saloon, a telegraph office, and an Imperial Oil fuel statio...

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Image: Mpeel | CC BY-SA 4.0

Quatsino: Wilderness Stage

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mpeel, CC BY-SA 4.0. Quatsino's remoteness made it famous in an unexpected way. The History Channel's survival series Alone filmed three of its seasons -- the first, second, and fourth, shot between 2015 and 2017 -- in Quatsino Territory. The show drops contestants into wilderness with minimal suppli...

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Image: Mpeel | CC BY-SA 4.0

Quatsino: Edge of the Map

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mpeel, CC BY-SA 4.0. Colony Lake, a short distance north of the village, remains a favorite for swimming, canoeing, and lake trout fishing. Since 2003, the broader Quatsino Sound area has attracted increasing numbers of visitors for sports fishing, kayaking, bird watching, and whale watching, and sev...

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Image: Mpeel | CC BY-SA 4.0