Fulford Harbour, Salt Spring Island

Fulford Harbour, Salt Spring Island

by | Oct 18, 2023

Fulford Harbour is an embayment and a small community on the southeast coast of Salt Spring Island, about 39 miles (63 km) southwest of Vancouver and 9 miles (14.5 km) north-northwest of Sidney, British Columbia. Fulford Harbour is a BC Ferries terminal with regular service to Swartz Bay on Vancouver Island. The harbour was named for Captain John Fulford of HMS Ganges which was the flagship of the Pacific Station at Esquimalt from 1857 to 1860.

Salt Spring Island is historically Coast Salish territory, although in 1877 a small 43 acre (17.4 ha) reserve was established on the eastern side and near the mouth of Fulford Harbour and the remainder of the island was made available to settlers. Many of the first settlers that came to the island were African Americans fleeing from racism in California in 1858. Other early settlers were Hawaiians or Kanakas that worked in the whaling industry and at fur trade posts. Japanese labourers settled on Salt Spring beginning in 1890. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Japanese living on the west coast were interned in the interior and were not allowed to return until 1949.

White settlers started arriving in 1859 when land in Victoria was too expensive and there was a large unemployed population. Salt Spring is geographically rugged and much of the land that was to be farmed had to be cleared of the huge Douglas Firs that populated the island. The island had no roads, wharves, regular transport to and from the island, stores, or regular ferry service to Vancouver Island or the mainland. Today, Fulford Harbour is connected to the island road network and has a regular ferry service to Swartz Bay on Vancouver Island. Read more here and here. Explore more of Fulford Harbour here:

About the background graphic

This ‘warming stripe’ graphic is a visual representation of the change in global temperature from 1850 (top) to 2022 (bottom). Each stripe represents the average global temperature for one year. The average temperature from 1971-2000 is set as the boundary between blue and red. The color scale goes from -0.7°C to +0.7°C. The data are from the UK Met Office HadCRUT4.6 dataset. 

Credit: Professor Ed Hawkins (University of Reading). Click here for more information about the #warmingstripes.

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