Vancouver Island

Vancouver Island is not really an island. It is the top of a mountain range that happens to be mostly underwater.

That is why the coast reads like this. The west side is cut through with fjords, glacial valleys that the sea followed inland once the ice went, and everything scattered offshore is a summit that did not quite drown. The island runs four hundred and sixty kilometres northwest to southeast, averages eighty across, and carries an interior of peaks above two thousand metres.

It had a longer name once. Britain and Spain came close to war here in 1790 over who controlled Nootka Sound. When George Vancouver and Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra met in 1792 to settle the matter, the negotiations went well enough that the island was named for both men. For a time it was Quadra and Vancouver's Island. Quadra's half did not survive the century.