The Kowesas River flows generally north for 22 miles (35 km), draining a 101,807-acre (41,200-ha) watershed in the Coast Mountains before emptying into the head of Chief Mathews Bay, about 112 miles (180 km) southeast of Prince Rupert and 17 miles (27 km) south-southwest of Kemano, British Columbia. The bay, on the southwest shore of Whidbey Reach at Courageux Point, extends roughly 3.5 miles (5.5 km) southwest from Gardner Canal; a tideflat about 0.5 miles (0.8 km) wide is exposed at low tide near its head. British Admiralty Charts labeled the bay Kowesas Bay before 1927. Gardner Canal, a 56-mile (90 km) fjord, is one of the principal inlets on the northern British Columbia coast; its entrance lies behind Hawkesbury Island and is reached via Devastation Sound or Varney Passage. Captain George Vancouver named the fjord in 1793 for his friend and former commander Alan Gardner, who had commanded HMS Courageux in 1792; Joseph Whidbey, sailing master of HMS Discovery, was the first to chart it during the Vancouver Expedition. The Coast Mountains comprise deformed igneous and metamorphic rocks built from several terranes of differing ages that originated in various parts of the proto-Pacific basin. Along the range’s southern edge, subduction of oceanic crust beneath the Pacific has produced a north-south line of volcanoes belonging to the Northern Cordilleran Volcanic Province, Canada’s most volcanically active region. The Coast Mountains batholith, a composite continental body intruded into the terranes of western British Columbia and southeastern Alaska, is exposed along Gardner Canal and Chief Mathews Bay, where it is known as the Chief Mathews pluton.

The northwest coast of British Columbia once had the most densely populated indigenous communities recorded in Canada. Its land and waters provided abundant natural resources, especially cedar and salmon, from which highly structured cultures evolved. Many distinct First Nations emerged in the region, each with its own history, culture, and society, though several shared common elements, such as the central importance of salmon. Before contact, and briefly after colonization, some groups regularly engaged in warfare, conducting raids and capturing people for slavery. The Haisla inhabited Douglas and Devastation Channels, while the Kitlope, who called themselves the Henaksiala, lived along Gardner Canal and the upper Princess Royal Channel. Haisla society is organized into eight matrilineal clans, Eagle, Beaver, Crow, Killer Whale, Wolf, Frog, Raven, and Salmon, each with its own chief, resource area, and winter village. The remoteness of villages deep in the northern inlets isolated the Haisla and Henaksiala until the 1890s, when a mission and residential school were established in the Haisla village of Kitamaat. Missionaries and government agents believed traditional culture hindered assimilation into European Canadian society and should be eliminated; they forced the abandonment of feasts and potlatch dancing, dismantled communal houses, and forbade children from speaking the Haisla language. A population decline during the same period fragmented clans and lineages, disrupting the orderly succession of titles and property. In 1947 the Haisla and Henaksiala merged to form the modern Haisla First Nation.

Chief Mathews Bay has a small estuary notable for its diverse plant communities, particularly its salt marsh meadows and abundant intertidal species. According to Henaksiala tradition, a settlement once stood at the head of the bay. Tla’mid, the boggy flatland on the north side of the river mouth, provided wild crab apples, blueberries, huckleberries, salmonberries, and edible roots. On the south side of the entrance, Ma’alinuxw Mountain was traditionally a Haisla hunting ground for mountain goats. All five Pacific salmon species, along with herring, spawn in the Kowesas River and several small creeks draining into the bay. Historically the river also hosted a run of eulachon, also known as oolichan or candlefish, an anadromous smelt that spawns in the lower reaches of coastal rivers and streams. Like most smelts, Pacific eulachon have a boreal distribution and are found only in the eastern Pacific, from northern California to the eastern Bering Sea, a range closely aligned with the coastal temperate rainforest. Eulachon populations have declined across much of their range, particularly over the past 20 years. The causes remain uncertain: climate change appears to be a factor, but local habitat alteration and bycatch in commercial trawl fisheries likely also contribute. The decline concerns many First Nations, for whom the fish hold major cultural significance, especially as the source of a traditional staple known as grease. Fisheries managers and the commercial fishing industry are equally alarmed, since eulachon are frequently caught as bycatch in shrimp trawls; measures to reduce eulachon bycatch may therefore also reduce shrimp catches in some regions. Read more here and here. Explore more of Kowesas River and Chief Mathews Bay here: