Exploring the deeper significance of B.C.'s beaches and mountains beyond beauty and recreation - Action News
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British Columbia

Exploring the deeper significance of B.C.'s beaches and mountains beyond beauty and recreation

British Columbia is a popular tourist spot in large part because of its majestic mountains and beautiful beaches and as people flock to these places to play in the wake of pandemic lockdowns, it is respectful to be aware of the Indigenous significance of these recreation destinations.

Indigenous people describe the history and power of places where many choose to play today

Eliot White-Hill, whose Coast Salish name is Kwulasultun, walks the beaches of Newcastle Island, which is known as Saysutshun in the Hul'q'umi'num language. The island is a popular tourist destination and is also a place of deep historical and cultural significance to the Snuneymuxw people. (Rohit Joseph/CBC)

Beaches and Mountains is an audio series exclusive to CBC Listen's On Demand streaming platform hosted by scientistJohanna Wagstaffe and storyteller Rohit Joseph.

It explores the many connections between our favourite natural spaces to be in, why they matter to us as humans, and how we have to fight to preserve our beaches and mountains in the face of climate change.


"Like an act of prayer."

That's how artist Eliot White-Hill, whose Coast Salish name is Kwulasultun, describes the Snuneymuxw people'straditional approach to a swim in the Salish Sea where it kisses the shores of Newcastle Island, just off the eastern coast of Vancouver island.

The island is known as Saysutshunin the Hul'q'umi'num language of the Snuneymuxwand means "training for running," referringto special places where runners, paddlers and warriors would bathe and pray before a race or battle.

"You go to the water and you ask it to help cleanse you ... not just your body, but your spirit and your mind and your psyche," said Kwulasultun, speaking from the very island where his ancestors did just that for thousands of years.

Like so many of the beautiful beaches, mountains and other natural wondersthat make up what colonizers have called British Columbia, Saysutshun has now become a recreational destination for thousands of settlers and tourists. But as Indigenous peopleexplain, there's a much deeper significance to these places where many choose to play.

"When people come here, traditionally, you come with intent," said Kwulasultun.

Kwulasultun stands on the shores of Saysutshun. He said the island is a place of transformation for the Snuneymuxw people, who would traditionally go there to find healing in times of grief or hardship or to ask for guidance and protection through prayer and ocean bathing. (Rohit Joseph/CBC )

The three-square kilometre island has been significant to the Snuneymuxw since time immemorial. It'spresently a marine provincial park accessible by ferry from Nanaimo, B.C.

Not only was it once where Kwulasultun's warrior ancestors trained and prayed, it's also where people came to grieve, where elders shared knowledge with childrenand where canoers could ask for the Creator's protection before hitting the marine highway known today as the Salish Sea.

"When people were about to do serious work they'd come here and prepare themselves and ask for help with that," said Kwulasultun.

"I think there's a lot of that energy here still."

Saysutshun-Newcastle Island Marine Provincial Park is accessible only by foot passenger ferry from Nanaimo or boat. (Rohit Joseph/CBC)

Musician James McGuire says he, too, feels the energy of his ancestors at his home in Skidegate on Haida Gwaii, around 750 kilometres to the northwest.

"I live on the same beach that my people have lived on for thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of years," said McGuire, who also goes by his Haida name of SGaan Kwahagang.

Accessible only by sea or air, the isolated northern archipelago of Haida Gwaii is home to fewer than 5,000 residents but welcomed over 32,000 visitors between March 2019 and February 2020.

Not only are those visitors exploring beaches and forestswhere warriors walked, they are also "walking in the footsteps of the supernaturals,"McGuire says.

An aerial view of picturesque islands.
An aerial view of islands in the Haida Gwaii archipelago. (Keith Levit/Shutterstock)

Haida stories say it was Kalga Jaad, a supernatural ice woman, who guided the Haida people out of harm's wayasthe ice overtook theirterritory and then, when safe,guided them back home.

According to scientists, 21,000 years ago the area was completely covered in ice, which began receding about 16,000 years ago and took centuries to fully melt.

"Kalga Jaad was the one that guided us southwards and protected us from the ice age so she was around at least 14,000 to 10,000 years ago, and so [were] we.So there was some cross-over between us conversing with supernaturals and now to the world that we are today," said McGuire.

Legends of a great flood that could also be connected to the ice melt underpin the WSNEpeople's reverence for U,WELEW,also known as Mount Newton,which is now a popular provincial park for hikers on southern Vancouver Island.

The legend says the First Nations of the Saanich Peninsula survived a great flood thousands of years ago by lashing their canoes to an arbutus tree on the mountain's peak using cedar rope and riding the rising water levels.

The Indigenous name for Mount Newton means"place of refuge" in the SENOENlanguage.

MENEIYE Elliot, a SENOEN teacher from the WSNE Nation, stands on U,WELEW, also known as Mount Newton, on southern Vancouver Island. Legend has it the WSNE people anchored themselves in canoes to the mountain thousands of years ago to survive a great flood. (Rohit Joseph/CBC)

"This mountain is one of our most special places," said MENEIYE Elliot, a SENOEN teacher from the WSNENation.

"We don't have temples and we don't have churches we have our mountains and our beaches and our rivers."

It's those places of natural beauty that many people come to B.C.to see:places that were once covered or created by the ice age and maybe a little magic;places that, as McGuire says, visitors may get even more out of if they learn more about them.

"The understanding of the nature that you so crave when you understand it from the perspective of the people that have lived there for thousands of years, you're going to have a greater appreciation for it,"McGuire said.

Haida musician James McGuire says understanding places from the perspective of Indigenous people can help others have a greater appreciation for those sites as well. (Johanna Wagstaffe/CBC)

With files from Johanna Wagstaffe and Rohit Joseph