1995 Vancouver Island Trip

Friday, July 28

Day 8: Port McNeil, Malcom Island, & Vernon Lake

Not exactly a volkswagon Island Copper MineToday we left Winter Harbor and headed back down the island. There were two routes heading east that we could take to Coal Harbor. We decided to take the more northerly one even though we had just taken it, because we thought the cut-off to Coal Harbor would be paved. We drove past Holdberg and would follow the Holdberg inlet. This was much longer than we expected and there were lots of logging trucks on the roads. We arrived in Coal Harbor, a small fishing community located on the Holberg Inlet around 10:00 am. Coal was discovered here in 1883, but it was poor quality and the effort failed. There was a whaling station here from the end of WW II until 1969. We stayed just long enough to walk along the shore and then continued on. Many of the people in this community also worked at theIsland Copper Mine which would be our next stop. The mine is located on the Rupert Inlet and mainly produced copper and gold and a small amount of silver. The mine is (see picture) quite an impressive hole, being Canada's largest open-pit mine. They were still working on it when we were there. We found out that about a year later they shut it down after twenty years and filled the hole with saltwater from the Rupert Inlet making a man-made saltwater lake. A chanel was dug to let salt water come into the pit and form the lake.

We took gravel roads back to Port McNeill where we found a large gift shop in town and bought a book on smoking fish. We took a ferry from Port McNeill to Sointula on Malcolm Island. The village of Sointola is mainly old houses with some new ones starting to be built. You will also find many saunas on teh side of houses as it was the Finnis people who invented the sauna. This island has a lot of interesting history, having been settled by a group of Finnish miners hoping to establish a utopian colony in 1901. The Sointula Museum is located in an old school, near the ferry dock. On display were a lot of old artifacts donated by descendants of the orignial settlers. There is also a Co-op store near the ferry landing and eight campsites at the Bere Point Regional Park. We drove to the very end of the island and came to Mitchell Bay where there is a wharf and beach to walk along. A large portion of the land have been logged between Sointula and Mitchell Bay. We were disappointed with this island, as most of it has been logged. We would have liked to have gone to the neighboring island of Cormorant Island, known for it's totem poles, but we didn't have time. We took the ferry back to Port McNeill and took highway 19 south to Woss. From there we took a gravel road south towards Gold River. We spent the night at Vernon Lake, where we found a nice, quiet campground even though it did rain all night.

We drove 200 miles today. 1450 total

  • Day 9

  • Introduction