Bowen Island was originally inhabited by the Squamish First Nations who used it as their hunting and fishing grounds.
Early settlers discovered shake dwellings and a smoke house in Snug Cove. Bowen also served as a neutral meeting ground for the Squamish and other First Nations, as well as a stopping place on the way up or down the coast. The first preemption of land by a white settler was in 1874, by William Eaton, who claimed 160 acres south of Killarney Lake.
Bowen Island was named in 1860 after Rear-Admiral James Bowen (1751-1835), master of the HMS Queen Charlotte, the flagship of Lord Howe. While on an exploration of the Strait of Georgia back in 1791, the Spanish explorer Narvaez had already named this island and the one to the west 'the isles of Apodaca,' after Spanish naval official Sebastian Ruiz de Apodaca.
Although now primarily a residential area, Bowen Island's beauty was not wasted on the picnickers and weekend explorers who first developed Bowen Island as a recreation spot early last century. And a hundred years later, this enchanted island attracts even more visitors from around the globe to its verdant coniferous forests and mountainous vistas. Dubbed Happy Isle in the 1950s, this tiny port has been revitalized with an array of attractions, historic old turn-of-the-century buildings, quaint boutiques, and boardwalks.
The magic of Bowen Island is the peace and tranquility of country living that the island offers, while being so accessible to the amenities of Vancouver. Lakes, beaches, crown forest lands, beautiful hiking trails, and absolute serenity await those residents and visitors who choose to leave the hustle of city life behind them.
Bowen Island, British Columbia, is an island municipality in Howe Sound, and within Metro Vancouver. Approximately 6km wide by 12km long, the island at its closest point is about 2km west of the mainland. There is regular ferry service from Horseshoe Bay, as well as three water taxi services. There were 3,551 permanent residents as of the 2007 BC Stats Estimate, a number that is supplemented in the summer by roughly 1,500 visitors, as Bowen Island is a popular vacation home location for British Columbians. About 500 workers and over 200 students commute to offices and schools on the mainland each day. The island has a land area of 49.94 km² (19.28 sq mi).
The Museum & Archives is open from 10:00am to 3:00pm Tuesdays and Thursdays, or by appointment.
Contact for appoimtment: 604-947-9526
Photo from page 110 of Bowen Island - Reflections
Click here to browse our online photographic database
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April 19, 2009 | Historians' photo collection now online
Want to stroll down memory lane? Want to look for photographs of your family? Want to see what things looked like way back then? Now you can. Our photographic database, a picture chronicle of Bowen Island history from 1872 to the present, is now online. The entire text database and over 3000 of the photographs are accessible at this time for your pleasure and as a resource for learning about the island on which you live.
You can browse or search for specific pictures. Not all of our 7000 images are posted as yet, so keep coming back; new ones will be posted at regular intervals. In the meantime, if there is the description of a picture you are interested in, but whose image is not yet available, contact us.
This new addition to our services is due to a generous grant from the Irving Barber Learning Centre at UBC allowing us to contribute our bit to the BC History Digitization Program. The focus of the program is to promote increased access to British Columbia’s historical resources within the Learning Centre’s wider mandate to demonstrate the fundamental relationships between the heritage of the past, the current and the future.
This is your family photo album. So we would be grateful for your help. Many wonderful photographs have come to us with not as much information as we would like. If you can identify people or places and especially dates, even approximate ones please contact us. There may be inaccuracies and mistypes; these too we would be grateful to you for pointing out.
Many of the photographs are available for purchase. Contact us.
To view the photos online go to http://bih.andornot.com
To Contact us: Attention Archivist
Mail: Box 97, Bowen Island, B.C. V0N 1G0
E-mail: bihistorians@telus.net
Phone: 604-947-2655 or 604-947-9526
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