Puffin Cove by Neil Carey

I learn a lot about Haida Gwaii by reading Carolyn's blog Living on the Edge. One recent post was about the ceremony giving back the name Queen Charlotte Islands. In 1887 Captain Dixon named the island archipelago after one of his ships, the Queen Charlotte, named after the Queen of the United Kingdom. On June 17, 2010, the Haida returned the colonial name to the Queen's representative in BC, Premier Gordon Campbell. The official name is now Haida Gwaii (Xaadaa Gwaayaay), the name given to the lands by their original inhabitants, the Haida. Carolyn tells the story (with pictures) much better than I, so please read her post.

The book I just finished reading was Puffin Cove: Escape to the Wilderness of the Queen Charlotte Islands (Hancock House, 1982). Neil Carey and his wife Betty (an adventurer in her own right) went looking for a remote place to live and build a wilderness cabin. They first found their paradise on Moresby Island in Haida Gwaii in 1955 while on a boat trip. They sold their home in California (sounds familiar to me) and built a cabin in 1964 on property they purchased in Sandspit. They started as "Summer Settlers" (also a familiar ring) until they immigrated to Canada to live there full time in 1965. Next came the building of their remote cabin at Puffin Cove on leased land on the southwestern tip of Moresby Island.

Neil recounts life on Haida Gwaii in a different time. Logging and mining were bigger industries, but already starting to decline. No regular ferry service to the mainland made life more isolated and simple in many ways. Neil takes you gyppo logging, hunting, fishing and boating in fair weather and hurricane force storms. You get to meet the people that made their homes on the islands to live a good, but hard life. It must have been something to see wild storms raging on the open ocean from their snug cabin on the protected cove. Today, it is part of the Gwaii Haanas National Park.

Here's some more about Puffin Cove:

Puffin Cove at InsidePassageNews.com
Nearing the End of the World by Lyn Fox
Visited in 26 Feet to the Charlottes by June Cameron
Log of Baidarka 2001 Part V: Moresby Island's Uncharted West Coast
About Neil and Betty Carey on Northword

It's all interesting reading. -- Margy