Miners Bay is located on Mayne Island, on the southeast side of Active Pass, which separates Galiano and Mayne Islands, about 14.5 miles (23 km) north-northeast of Sidney, British Columbia. Mayne Island is part of the southern Gulf Islands, situated midway between British Columbia’s Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island. The bay was named after the gold miners who, during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush from 1858 to 1860, gathered on Mayne Island. They would row across the Georgia Strait to the mainland in search of fortune.

Mayne Island was historically inhabited by the Tsartlip First Nation before European colonization. In 1794, Captain George Vancouver camped at Georgina Point, where his crew left a coin and a knife, later discovered over a century later by settlers. In 1857, Captain George Richards of the Royal Navy, aboard HMS Plumper, surveyed the island and named it after Lieutenant Richard Charles Mayne. By 1858, Miners Bay had become a convenient stopover for fortune seekers heading to the Fraser River and Barkerville during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush.

The earliest homesteaders registered land claims in the Miners Bay area in 1859. Working farms began in the 1890s, and in 1887, Canon Paddon founded the Church of St. Mary Magdalene. Apple orchards flourished on the island in the early 1900s, with the Mayne Island King Apple being among the first planted in British Columbia. Richard Hall, known as the Tomato King, built a greenhouse so large that horse-drawn cultivators could be driven through it. Japanese settlers followed his example, and the greenhouse tomato business thrived until World War II, when they were sent to internment camps. In the late 19th century, Mayne Island was the commercial and social center of the Gulf Islands. The port at Miners Bay was busy due to the steady stream of marine traffic through Active Pass. Today, this narrow, curving strait remains the main ferry route between the British Columbia mainland and Vancouver Island. Read more here and here. Explore more of Miners Bay and Mayne Island here: