HORNBY ISLAND EXPLORERS AND THE QUEST FOR IMMORTALITY

Ja-dai-aich, the outer island

There is an old saying that history is written by the victors. In paleontology, it is often written by whoever got to publish first.

Villains, tyrants, heroes, eccentrics and the occasional delightful oddball all find a measure of immortality in the scientific literature. 

Every newly described species is gifted a scientific name, and for centuries many of the people doing the naming also rechristened landscapes through a distinctly colonial, settler lens. 

Indigenous names—rich with thousands of years of history and meaning—were too often brushed aside in favour of commemorating European explorers, patrons and rivals.

Spend enough time wandering through old scientific papers and expedition journals and it begins to read like a who's who of wealthy European adventurers busily naming everything after themselves—or, just as often, ensuring it wasn't named after someone they disliked. 

Scientific rivalries could be every bit as dramatic—and, if we're being honest, astonishingly childish—as any soap opera, complete with bruised egos, bitter feuds and spectacular acts of professional revenge.

That story unfolds across British Columbia's coast and Gulf Islands, and nowhere do I feel it more keenly than on beautiful Hornby Island.

Arbutus Tree, qaanlhp

Hornby lies within the traditional territory of the Pentlatch and K'ómoks First Nations, who know the island as Ja-dai-aich, meaning the outer island—a perfect description of its position beyond Denman Island along the east coast of Vancouver Island.

It is a place I never tire of exploring.

The island is a beautiful tapestry of beaches, meadows, forests and winding streams. I often wander the lower shoreline, searching for fossils, but the higher ground holds equally wonderful treasures. 

Quiet forest trails weave beneath towering evergreens, inviting you to slow your pace and simply listen.

Venture off the beaten path and you'll find magnificent stands of Western Hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla), Grand Fir (Abies grandis) and Lodgepole Pine (Pinus contorta). 

Amongst them stands the true monarch of these forests: the Western Red Cedar, Thuja plicata.

For many First Nations along the Northwest Coast, cedar is rightly known as the Tree of Life. It provides the raw materials for homes, canoes, clothing, baskets, rope, hats, bentwood boxes, monumental poles and breathtaking works of art. Generations have and continue to flourish alongside this remarkable tree.

Look a little closer and another quiet treasure reveals itself.

The Pacific yew (Taxus brevifolia) is a much smaller evergreen, easy to overlook if you're rushing. Yet it has long been treasured by Indigenous carvers, whose skill transformed its remarkably strong, resilient wood into elegant bows, canoe paddles and finely crafted tools.

Camus in flower

Along the shoreline grows perhaps my favourite tree on the island—the Pacific Arbutus (Arbutus menziesii), or qaanlhp in Hul'q'umi'num'. If Hornby had a signature tree, this would surely be it. 

It adorns much of Vancouver Island and I received a lovely photograph just this morning of a colleague's view of Maple Bay with a beautiful Arbutus front and centre. 

Its rich cinnamon-orange bark peels away in delicate curls, revealing smooth green and silvery trunks that almost seem polished by hand. In the evening light they glow with a satiny warmth unlike any other tree in British Columbia.

Hornby also supports an impressive collection of broadleaf species. Bigleaf maple, red alder, black cottonwood, Pacific flowering dogwood, cascara and several willow species all thrive here, each adding another layer to this remarkably diverse coastal forest.

At the island's southern end and within Helliwell Provincial Park, ancient Garry oak (Quercus garryana) woodlands cling to rocky headlands overlooking the Salish Sea.

These landscapes did not arise by accident.

For thousands of years, local First Nations carefully managed these ecosystems through the thoughtful use of cultural burning. Regular low-intensity fires reduced shrubs and competing woody vegetation while allowing the thick-barked Garry oaks and nutrient-rich plants such as great camas (Camassia leichtlinii) to flourish. These carefully tended meadows provided abundant food and sustained rich ecological communities long before Europeans arrived.

Hornby Island, British Columbia

Ethnobotanist Dr. Nancy Turner (who is a love) estimates that a single Coast Salish family on Vancouver Island could harvest around 10,000 camus bulbs in a single season, with millions of camas bulbs and up to 10,000,000 collected annually across the island.

Today, only about 260 acres (1.1 km²) of undisturbed old forest remain on Hornby Island—roughly 3.5% of its total land area. Another 1,330 acres (540 hectares) survive as older second-growth forest, representing about 19% of the island.

The tree you'll notice most often, however, is the Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), an evergreen conifer that dominates much of Hornby's landscape.

My Uncle Doug never needed a field guide to identify one.

"The bark looks just like bacon," he'd announce with absolute certainty. It was, admittedly, a wonderfully effective identification trick—and given his enthusiasm for bacon, entirely on brand.

Hornby Island Fossils

The common name honours Scottish botanist David Douglas, who collected and described the species during his explorations of western North America.

But scientific names tell a different story.

The species name, menziesii, honours Archibald Menzies—the Scottish physician, botanist and naturalist who happened to be Douglas's fierce scientific rival. If that feels a little unfair to poor David Douglas... well... science has always had a flair for office politics.

Menzies is also remembered every time we admire an arbutus, Arbutus menziesii. His opportunity came aboard Captain George Vancouver's famous expedition between 1791 and 1795, a remarkable four-and-a-half-year voyage commissioned by the British Royal Navy to chart the Pacific Coast.

Their expedition built directly upon the earlier work of Captain James Cook.

Archibald Menzies

Cook deserves considerable credit for revolutionizing life at sea. He dramatically reduced deaths from scurvy by insisting upon fresh foods rich in what we now know as Vitamin C, alongside rigorous standards of shipboard cleanliness.

Yet history, like people, is rarely simple.

Cook also embodied the ambitions of British colonial expansion, and his treatment of Indigenous peoples is deeply troubling. During his third Pacific voyage, he attempted to kidnap Hawaiʻi's ruling chief, Kalaniʻōpuʻu, hoping to secure the return of a stolen boat.

It proved a catastrophic miscalculation.

On 14 February 1779, Cook was killed during the confrontation. Not exactly the Valentine's Day anyone hopes for.

Meanwhile, Vancouver's own expedition spent four and a half extraordinary years circumnavigating the globe, reaching five continents while surveying vast stretches of coastline that had never before appeared on European maps.

The greatest hazards aboard ship were not always storms or reefs. Sometimes they were one another. Officers quarreled relentlessly. Rivalries simmered. Tempers flared.

When the expedition finally returned to Britain, public interest had shifted toward ongoing wars rather than distant Pacific discoveries. Vancouver himself soon found his reputation under attack, including criticism from the politically influential Archibald Menzies. Matters deteriorated further when Thomas Pitt, the 2nd Baron Camelford, challenged Vancouver to a duel.

By then, years of relentless work had taken their toll.

With failing health and frayed nerves, George Vancouver never completed the monumental charts and publications that had consumed so much of his life. He died in 1798 at only forty years of age.

Much of his unfinished work was ultimately completed by Peter Puget, whose own name now lives on in Puget Sound.

Even the city we call Vancouver carries older names and older histories.

It stands within the traditional territories of three Coast Salish Nations: the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) peoples. The name Musqueam derives from xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, referring to an edible grass that once grew abundantly along the river's edge.

Long before maps bore European names, these places already had names. They still do.

As fossil hunters, geologists and lovers of natural history, we spend much of our lives reading stories written in stone. Yet the landscapes themselves carry stories every bit as ancient in the languages and knowledge of the people who have called them home for millennia.

Perhaps the richest history is found where those stories meet.

If eponymous names and the colourful personalities behind them pique your curiosity, Stephen B. Heard's wonderful book Charles Darwin's Barnacle and David Bowie's Spider is well worth adding to your reading pile. It explores the wonderfully strange world of scientific naming through an entertaining blend of history, science and pop culture—and reminds us that behind every Latin name lies an equally fascinating human story.

References

The City of Vancouver Archives preserves several important documents relating to George Vancouver, including:

The Commission dated 10 July 1783 appointing him Fourth Lieutenant of HMS Fame, confirming the field commission originally granted on 7 May 1782.

A letter written to naval agent James Sykes aboard HMS Discovery from Nootka Sound on 2 October 1794, in which Vancouver reports that the long-sought Northwest Passage does not exist—one of the principal objectives of the expedition.

A final letter to James Sykes written from Vancouver's home in Petersham, England, dated 26 October 1797, following his return from the Pacific.

Image: Archibald Menzies (1754–1842), Scottish physician and naturalist