Cormorant Point is a headland between Cordova Bay and Margaret Bay in Saanich’s Gordon Head neighborhood, about 11 miles (18 km) south-southeast of Sidney and 5.5 miles (8.9 km) north-northeast of Victoria, British Columbia. Gordon Head honors Admiral John Gordon, commander of HMS America in the North Pacific in 1845, while Dr John Ash named Margaret Bay for local resident Margaret Pollock. The point takes its name from the diving bird that lands on rocky outcrops to dry its wings. Its exposed bedrock—part of the Wrangellia terrane underlying much of Vancouver Island—comprises Devonian volcanic arc–related basalt and sedimentary rocks that accreted to North America in the Late Jurassic or Early Cretaceous. Wrangellia also appears on the Gulf Islands and along the mainland coast. At Cormorant Point, mid-Paleozoic volcanic arc rocks of the Sicker Group—quartz diorite and quartz–feldspar that formed about 365 million years ago—dominate the geology. This reflects a history of tectonic collision and volcanic activity. Glacial till deposited after the retreat of the Cordilleran ice sheet during the Fraser Glaciation of the Pleistocene blankets the surrounding land. In some areas, these deposits exceed 33 feet (10 m) and reach over 100 feet (30 m) along eroded bluffs and sea cliffs. For more than 4,000 years, the Lekwungen people inhabited the area. Although European settlers called them ‘Songish’ or ‘Songhees’, they were not a single tribe but a collection of semi-autonomous household groups. They built sprawling plank houses in winter villages and moved seasonally for hunting and foraging. Speaking dialects of Coast Salish (Lekwungaynung), they identified collectively as Lekwungen. The Chekonein, the group residing at present-day Gordon Head, claimed territory from Point Gonzales and Mount Douglas and the adjacent shoreline—a legacy that underscores a deep cultural connection to the land.

The Hudson’s Bay Company fort in Victoria was six years old when, in 1849, the company was granted Vancouver Island’s lands on the condition they be opened for settlement as a Crown colony. Before settlers could receive titles, indigenous peoples’ proprietary rights had to be forfeited. James Douglas, the company’s chief factor, oversaw this process, and by 1852 a series of agreements—the Douglas Treaties—were signed between some indigenous groups and the British Colony. That same year, James Todd became the first pioneer in Gordon Head, establishing Spring Farm and earning a living selling cordwood. By the summer of 1860, no unregistered land remained in Gordon Head, and roughly 2,200 acres (890 ha) were owned by thirteen men, including Charles Dodd and John Work. Charles Dodd—a ship’s captain and fur trader from New Buckenham, England—married 14-year-old Grace McTavish in 1840 while serving as a junior officer on Hudson’s Bay Company ships. In 1845, he commanded the steamship Beaver, which played a key role in collecting furs from northern British Columbia and Southeast Alaska. By 1859, Dodd was a respected captain, and his family of seven resided in a mansion on Government Street in Victoria. Unhappy with urban life, Grace preferred a quieter, rural setting. Dodd purchased Section 84—about 200 acres (81 ha) at Gordon Head between present-day Torquay and Pomona Way, extending north from Kenmore Road to the sea—and built a house at the corner of Kenmore and Torquay. A trail led northeast to Cormorant Point. In 1860, Dodd fell gravely ill with a kidney infection and, before his death, requested that fellow officers William F. Tolmie and Roderick Finlayson manage the property for his widow and children. In 1883, Tolmie and Finlayson released their responsibility when the tract was divided among Dodd’s children.

By the time the Dodd family had departed, the Pollock family had moved into the original Dodd house. In 1884, a Dodd son sold his share of roughly 20 acres (8 ha) overlooking Cormorant Point to Dr. John Ash. While taking a group of children—including a young Pollock daughter—for a beach outing, Ash reportedly named the bay after Margaret Pollock as a birthday gift. These early transactions marked a new chapter in the area’s evolving heritage. In 1890, William C. Grant planted the first strawberries at Gordon Head, quickly establishing a thriving crop. First Nations workers—primarily Songhees and some Koksilah from up-island—picked the fruit, and each June a dozen canoes would line the beach at Margaret Bay. Grant, later a Saanich councilor in 1906–07, built a house overlooking Cormorant Point called ‘Craigellachie’ (‘hill of rock’), its location chosen for reliable freshwater springs. That house burned in 1918 and was rebuilt in 1924 by Colonel S.L. McMullen and his wife Lois as ‘Strangewood,’ named for petrified wood imported from Drumheller, Alberta. The McMullens constructed a blockhouse on the rocks at Cormorant Point in 1928, where Lois ascended a spiral staircase to write. Despite winter waves crashing below, a pot-bellied stove kept the blockhouse comfortable. In 1891, Gordon Head School was established on land donated by William Dean near Cormorant Point. William Grant served as an early school trustee for 13 years. Meanwhile, William Travelick Edwards became the area’s first commercial daffodil grower and taught swimming at Margaret Bay, possibly for schoolchildren. Local lore attributes the construction of a saltwater swimming pool at Cormorant Point to this time. The pool was created by a concrete dam with holes near the bottom that allowed saltwater to flush the enclosure with every tide. A trail still exists from the historical location of the school, past Strangewood house, to Cormorant Point. Although the blockhouse is gone, reputedly burned by vandals in 1978, the pool remains, albeit in disrepair. Read more here and here. Explore more of Cormorant Point and Gordon Head here: