Irvines Landing was the first post-contact settlement in the

Pender Harbour Pender Harbour is a harbour community on British Columbia's Sunshine Coast, on the east side of Malaspina Strait. The harbour itself is an intricate amalgam of bays and coves that encroach inland for five kilometres and provide over 60 kilometres ...

area, and quickly became a hub for supplies and provisions. The first settler in Pender Harbour was an English immigrant named Charles Irvine, who established a small trading post in 1865. Steve Dames, a displaced seaman from

Riga Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Ba ...

Latvia Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...

, and Joe Perry of

Cape Verde , national_anthem = () , official_languages = Portuguese , national_languages = Cape Verdean Creole , capital = Praia , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , demonym ...

became familiar with Irvines Landing, and purchased it in 1898. Perry's father-in-law, Joseph Gonsalves of

Madeira Island Madeira is a Portuguese island, and is the largest and most populous of the Madeira Archipelago. It has an area of , including Ilhéu de Agostinho, Ilhéu de São Lourenço, Ilhéu Mole (northwest). As of 2011, Madeira had a total population of ...

, later moved up from

Brockton Point Brockton Point is a headland off the Downtown Peninsula of Vancouver, on the north side of Coal Harbour. Named after Francis Brockton, it is the most easterly part of Stanley Park and is home to Brockton Point Lighthouse, a 100-year-old lighthouse ...

(now

Stanley Park Stanley Park is a public park in British Columbia, Canada that makes up the northwestern half of Vancouver's Downtown Peninsula, surrounded by waters of Burrard Inlet and English Bay. The park borders the neighbourhoods of West End and Coal ...

in Vancouver). Under the name Gonsalves and Dames General Traders, they expanded their holdings and built the Irvines Landing Hotel and Store. An early Union Steamer stop for settlers and loggers, it grew into a fish-processing centre and later a yacht anchorage and vacation spot. Often referred to as Irvine's Landing, the official name has no apostrophe according to the

BC Geographical Names The BC Geographical Names (formerly BC Geographical Names Information System or BCGNIS) is a geographic name web service and database for the Canadian province of British Columbia run by the Base Mapping and Geomatic Services Branch of the Integra ...

service, Irvines Landing. This is in keeping with the convention established in the late 1800s of removing apostrophes from place names in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

References

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References

Further reading