Historic Grant Bay provided recreation and respite

This article originally appeared in The North Island Gazette on September 6, 2012.

Grant Bay is located on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, just North of Quatsino Sound.  Today the area is within the territory of the Quatsino First Nation. In early contact times ethnographers report shifting tribal boundaries in the area.  Around the year 1750 Grant Bay was reportedly within the territory of the Giopino tribe, but by 1880 it was the territory of the Quatsino First Nation.  Previous to this it may be been inhabited by the Nuu-chah-nulth, who now live in the area South of Brooks Penninsula.
Oral history reports that there was a great deal of fighting within the area during this period, with entire tribes being killed as a result of inter-tribal warfare.
Few Giopino survived, which may be why so little information is available about this area in pre-contact times.
In the 1850s, charts and maps of Vancouver Island had not yet identified Quatsino Sound, although it is included on maps after the 1870s. It is not clear where Grant Bay got its name.  John Marshll Grant, a Royal Engineer, and Gordon Fraser Grant, Chief engineer on the CGS Quadra, were both in BC in the mid-1850s, and are two possibilities.
From pre-contact times, the peninsula between Browning Inlet and Grant Bay was passable via trails used first by First Nations, and later by early settlers.  The trail originally went to a small bay just south-west of Grant Bay called Tsegwas, or "place of the trail."
In the 1800s, shelter shacks were constructed at various points along the west coast of Vancouver Island, to provide food, supplies, and shelter for shipwrecked sailors.  One of these shacks was located at Lippy Point on the Southwest tip of Grant Bay.  The shack is referenced on navigational charts of the are produced in 1865 and again in 1919, but there is no longer any trace of a shack in that location.
In the early 1930s another shack was built on the eastern edge of the beach at Grant Bay, and this shack is also not longer in existence.
It has been reported that there are some unique rock formations to the west of the bay, including a rock arch and a large pillar of rock named "Nomas" or "old man in a dangerous place."
There have been no reported attempts to settle or pre-empt land at Grant Bay.
In the 1930s residents of Winter Harbour would come overland to picnic on the beach.  It was also reported that in the early 1930s a dead whale washed up on the beach and rotted there over the summer.
In the 1950s locals would line up glass balls on logs on the beach and shoot them for entertainment.
A freshwater river runs out of the North side of the bay.  It is filled with logs, which likely were deposited there by a tsunami or storm many years ago.
Until recently there were the remains of a small cabin on the Northwest corner of the bay.  The cabin was constructed in 1968 by ornithologist Frank Richardson from the University of Washington.  On a sabbatical, he and his wife lived at Grant Bay over the winter.  After the Richardsons left another young man squatted in the cabin for two summers.
Until about ten years ago Grant Bay was only accessible either by boat or via a three hour hike.  Now a short and well-marked forestry trail make is accessible.  On the drive in there are also a number of culturally modified trees in close proximity to the road.