West Ballenas Island is about 100 acres (40 ha) in the Gulf Islands and the site of a historic lighthouse in the Ballenas-Winchelsea Archipelago, an area proposed for a marine park of 12,108 acres (4900 ha), about 15 miles (24 km) northwest of Nanaimo and 7 miles (11 km) northeast of Parksville, British Columbia. The geology of the island has been described generally as part of the Wrangellia terrane that forms the westernmost portion of the Canadian Cordillera and much of Vancouver Island. The Wrangellia terrane is composed of Paleozoic to Jurassic volcanic, sedimentary, and plutonic rocks. West Ballenas Island is composed of limestone of the Quatsino Formation and based on fusulinids, an extinct single-celled organism with calcareous shells, the rock has been dated to the Middle Pennsylvanian period of the Paleozoic era, or about 310 million years ago. The last Cordilleran ice sheet covered British Columbia and streamed down fjords and valleys in the coastal mountains. Some lobes at the western margin of the ice sheet extended to the continental shelf edge, where they calved into deep water. Glaciers issuing from the southern Coast Mountains and Vancouver Island Ranges coalesced over the Strait of Georgia to produce a great outlet glacier that flowed far into Puget Lowland in Washington State, shaping much of the present-day landscape.

Evidence suggests that the earliest humans arrived in the Strait of Georgia soon after glaciers receded enough to allow movement from the interior. The Marpole Midden site at the mouth of the Fraser River was inhabited beginning at least 4,000 years ago. The present-day Coast Salish First Nations are descended from the people that first inhabited the Marpole site. Ballenas Islands are the traditional lands of the Nanoose First Nation, also known the Snaw-naw-as First Nation. The first European contact with Coast Salish peoples was in 1791 during the exploration by Francisco de Eliza of the Strait of Georgia. During that voyage, Ballenas Island was named by José María Narváez on the schooner Santa Saturnina who sighted a pod of whales surrounded the islands. In 1808, Simon Fraser of the North West Company entered Coast Salish territories via the Fraser Canyon. Fort Vancouver was established in 1824, Fort Victoria in 1843, and a trading post was built in Nanaimo in 1852 by the Hudson’s Bay Company. In 1898, Captain Morris Smythe on the HMS Egeria recommended that a light and fog alarm be established on Ballenas Islands to serve the growing number of vessels using the Inside Passage.

Funds for a light signal were approved in 1900 and a construction crew was sent to East Ballenas Island to build a square, pyramidal tower of wood, about 100 feet (30 m) tall and topped by a lantern. In 1907, various shipping interests petitioned for an improved signal and construction began on a fog horn at the northern tip of West Ballenas Island, and by the end of the following year, a wood-frame dwelling along with a rectangular wooden structure housing a diaphone horn supplied by the Canadian Fog Signal Company of Toronto was completed. In 1912, the lighthouse on the eastern island was removed and reassembled near the fog horn. That same year a boathouse, slip, and windlass were added, and the following year, a new dwelling was completed along with the installation of a duplicate fog alarm. The lighthouse was de-staffed and automated in 1996. A long term conservation goal for the islands has been a marine park within the Mount Arrowsmith Biosphere Reserve. The Ballenas-Winchelsea Archipelago is home to abundant bird populations, rare plants, threatened species, and abundant marine life. The area proposed for a marine park already has a provincial park on Gerald Island, a private park on South Winchelsea Island, a regional park on Vancouver Island, and four small community parks along the Vancouver Island waterfront associated with the Lantzville community. Read more here and here. Explore more of West Ballenas Island and Gulf Islands here: