Hornby Island of

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

, is one of the two northernmost

Gulf Islands The Gulf Islands is a group of islands in the Salish Sea between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia Coast, mainland coast of British Columbia. Etymology The name "Gulf Islands" comes from "Gulf of Georgia", the original term used by Geor ...

, the other being

Denman Island Denman Island, (also known by Sla-dai-aich or Taystayic, in the Comox language), is one of the Northern Gulf Islands and part of the Comox Valley Regional District of British Columbia, Canada. It is a member of the Islands Trust group of ...

. It is located near Vancouver Island's

Comox Valley The Comox Valley is a region on the east coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, that includes the city of Courtenay, the town of Comox, the village of Cumberland, and the unincorporated settlements of Royston, Union Bay, Fann ...

, A small community of 1,225 residents (as of the 2021 census), Hornby is home to many artists, retired professionals, small business owners, remote workers, and young families who share a love of rural island life. Over the past 30 years, the island has become a coveted destination and its population easily quadruples in size during the summer months. The shoulder seasons are a preferred time for hiking, mountain biking, marine activities, weddings, and retreats. Most people reach the island by ferries from

Buckley Bay Buckley Bay is a geographical location on the east coast of Vancouver Island, located between Union Bay to the north and Fanny Bay to the south. It is the departure point for the BC Ferries crossing of Baynes Sound to Denman Island and on ...

, Vancouver Island. A growing number of private boats also visit through mooring at the Ford Cove Marina or anchoring at Tribune Bay. The closest airport is Comox Valley Airport in Comox, which provides regional, national, and international service. Popular destinations on Hornby include Tribune Bay Provincial Park, Helliwell Provincial Park, Ford's Cove, and Whaling Station Bay. The island is also a popular mountain biking destination, with a variety of designated trails in Mount Geoffrey Regional Nature Park, Mount Geoffrey Escarpment Provincial Park and Crown Land. The total land area is , of which 40% is parkland.

Island geology and history

The island is geographically distinctive as it was formed by

post-glacial rebound Post-glacial rebound (also called isostatic rebound or crustal rebound) is the rise of land masses after the removal of the huge weight of ice sheets during the last glacial period, which had caused isostatic depression. Post-glacial rebound an ...

with the retreat of the last ice age. Before the arrival of European settlers, the island was inhabited by the Pentlatch, a

Coast Salish The Coast Salish peoples are a group of ethnically and linguistically related Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, living in the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon. They speak on ...

First Nations First nations are indigenous settlers or bands. First Nations, first nations, or first peoples may also refer to: Indigenous groups *List of Indigenous peoples *First Nations in Canada, Indigenous peoples of Canada who are neither Inuit nor Mé ...

band who called the Island Ja-dai-aich, meaning The Outer Island. The island was found and named Isla de Lerena during the 1791 voyage of the Spanish ship ''

Santa Saturnina ''North West America'' was a British merchant ship that sailed on maritime fur trading ventures in the late 1780s. It was the first non-indigenous vessel built in the Pacific Northwest. In 1789 it was captured at Nootka Sound by Esteban Jos ...

'', under Juan Carrasco and

José María Narváez José María Narváez (1768 – August 4, 1840) was a Spanish naval officer, explorer, and navigator notable for his work in the Gulf Islands and Lower Mainland of present-day British Columbia. In 1791, as commander of the schooner '' Santa ...

. The name honors the Spanish Finance Minister, Don Pedro López de Lerena, Count of Lerena, who supported the movement of Spanish Ships over there. In 1850 the British renamed it after Rear Admiral Phipps Hornby, then Commander of the

Pacific Station The Pacific Station was created in 1837 as one of the geographical military formations into which the Royal Navy divided its worldwide responsibilities. The South America Station was split into the Pacific Station and the South East Coast o ...

Vegetation and soils

Hornby Island is mostly covered by mixed forest dominated by

Douglas-fir The Douglas fir (''Pseudotsuga menziesii'') is an evergreen conifer species in the pine family, Pinaceae. It is the tallest tree in the Pinaceae family. It is native to western North America and is also known as Douglas-fir, Douglas spruce, Or ...

Western red cedar ''Thuja plicata'' is a large evergreen coniferous tree in the family Cupressaceae, native to the Pacific Northwest of North America. Its common name is western redcedar in the U.S. or western red cedar in the UK, and it is also called pacific re ...

western hemlock ''Tsuga heterophylla'', the western hemlock or western hemlock-spruce, is a species of hemlock native to the northwest coast of North America, with its northwestern limit on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, and its southeastern limit in northern ...

grand fir ''Abies grandis'' (grand fir, giant fir, lowland white fir, great silver fir, western white fir, Vancouver fir, or Oregon fir) is a fir native to northwestern North America, occurring at altitudes of sea level to . It is a major constituent of t ...

and

lodgepole pine ''Pinus contorta'', with the common names lodgepole pine and shore pine, and also known as twisted pine, and contorta pine, is a common tree in western North America. It is common near the ocean shore and in dry montane forests to the subalpin ...

are the other large conifers present. The smaller

Pacific yew ''Taxus brevifolia'', the Pacific yew or western yew, is a species of tree in the yew family Taxaceae native to the Pacific Northwest of North America. It is a small evergreen conifer, thriving in moisture and otherwise tending to take the form o ...

is scattered in the understorey. The

arbutus ''Arbutus'' is a genus of 12 accepted speciesAct. Bot. Mex no.99 Pátzcuaro abr. 2012.''Arbutus bicolor''/ref> of flowering plants in the family Ericaceae, native to temperate regions of the Mediterranean, western Europe, the Canary Islands a ...

, a broadleaf evergreen species, is plentiful. Broadleaf deciduous trees include

bigleaf maple ''Acer macrophyllum'', the bigleaf maple or Oregon maple, is a large deciduous tree in the genus '' Acer''. It is native to western North America. In addition to uses by animals, it is of some culinary and woodworking interest. Description Big ...

red alder ''Alnus rubra'', the red alder, is a deciduous broadleaf tree native to western North America (Alaska, Yukon, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho and Montana). Description ''Alnus rubra'' is the largest species of alder in ...

black cottonwood ''Populus trichocarpa'', the black cottonwood, western balsam-poplar or California poplar, is a deciduous broadleaf tree species native to western North America. It is used for timber, and is notable as a model organism in plant biology. The t ...

, Pacific flowering dogwood, cascara and several species of

willow Willows, also called sallows and osiers, of the genus ''Salix'', comprise around 350 species (plus numerous hybrids) of typically deciduous trees and shrubs, found primarily on moist soils in cold and temperate regions. Most species are known ...

. Populations of

Garry oak ''Quercus garryana'' is an oak tree species named for Nicholas Garry, deputy governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. It is commonly known as the Garry oak, Oregon white oak or Oregon oak. The species is found in the Pacific Northwest, with a ran ...

occur on the southern end of the island and at Helliwell Provincial Park. Only about of undisturbed stands for older forest have been identified on Hornby Island, which amount to roughly 3.5% of the island's area. There are roughly of older second-growth stands on the island, which amount to 19% of the island. The island's soils have developed from marine deposits of variable texture, except for the higher elevations and steeper slopes where weathered

clastic Clastic rocks are composed of fragments, or clasts, of pre-existing minerals and rock. A clast is a fragment of geological detritus,Essentials of Geology, 3rd Ed, Stephen Marshak, p. G-3 chunks, and smaller grains of rock broken off other rocks by ...

sedimentary Sedimentary rocks are types of rock formed by the cementation of sediments—i.e. particles made of minerals (geological detritus) or organic matter (biological detritus)—that have been accumulated or deposited at Earth's surface. Sedime ...

rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wale ...

provides the parent material. Most of Hornby's soils are sandy or gravelly, but some deep black loams occur in the northwestern part and many of the sands at the southern end have loam-textured

topsoil Topsoil is the upper layer of soil. It has the highest concentration of organic matter and microorganisms and is where most of the Earth's biological soil activity occurs. Description Topsoil is composed of mineral particles and organic mat ...

Podzol Podzols, also known as podosols, spodosols, or espodossolos, are the typical soils of coniferous or boreal forests and also the typical soils of eucalypt forests and heathlands in southern Australia. In Western Europe, podzols develop on heathlan ...

s are common and the bleached sand grains associated with their eluvial (A₂, Ae or E) horizons lend a salt-and-pepper appearance to many forest trails. In most cases, though, the E is not very thick and may be discontinuous. On this account, the soils were mostly classified as

Brown Podzolic Brown podzolic soils are a subdivision of the Podzolic soils in the British soil classification. Although classed with podzols because they have an iron-rich, or spodic horizon, they are, in fact intermediate between podzols and Brown earths. ...

in a soil survey published in 1959. All of the island's soils are strongly acidic in their natural state except for those which have developed on shoreline shell middens.

Fossils

The

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the more recent of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''cre ...

Northumberland Formation The Northumberland Formation is a Late Cretaceous (?Campanian-?Maastrichtian)-aged geologic Formation (geology), formation in Canada. It belongs to the larger Nanaimo Group. Indeterminate bird and pterosaur fossils have been recovered from the for ...

is exposed in the northern and western part of the island. Fossil collectors have found

ammonite Ammonoids are extinct, (typically) coiled-shelled cephalopods comprising the subclass Ammonoidea. They are more closely related to living octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish (which comprise the clade Coleoidea) than they are to nautiluses (family N ...

and

baculite ''Baculites'' is an extinct genus of heteromorph ammonite cephalopods with almost straight shells. The genus, which lived worldwide throughout most of the Late Cretaceous, and which briefly survived the K-Pg mass extinction event, was named by ...

fossils at Boulder Point on Hornby Island. A species of saurodontid fish (previously considered a

pterosaur Pterosaurs are an extinct clade of flying reptiles in the order Pterosauria. They existed during most of the Mesozoic: from the Late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous (228 million to 66 million years ago). Pterosaurs are the earli ...

) called ''

Gwawinapterus ''Gwawinapterus beardi'' is a species of saurodontid ray-finned fish from the Late Cretaceous period of British Columbia, Canada. While initially described as a very late-surviving member of the pterosaur family Istiodactylidae, further examinat ...

'' was identified based on a fossil found on a beach on Hornby Island. An actual

azhdarchoid Azhdarchoidea (International Phonetic Alphabet, , meaning "azhdarchid-like forms") is a group of pterosaurs within the suborder Pterodactyloidea. Pterosaurs belonging to this group lived throughout the Early Cretaceous, Early and Late Cretaceous ...

pterosaur was later identified from the formation, as well as ''

Maaqwi ''Maaqwi'' is an extinct genus of large marine diving bird from the Late Cretaceous (Northumberland Formation, latest Campanian) of Hornby Island, British Columbia, Canada. The genus name ''Maaqwi'' comes from the Coast Salish "ma'aqwi" meaning ...

'', an early aquatic

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a fou ...

. An incredibly diverse

shark Sharks are a group of elasmobranch cartilaginous fish characterized by a ribless endoskeleton, dermal denticles, five to seven gill slits on each side, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. Modern sharks are classified within the ...

community is recorded in shark teeth fossils from the area.

References

External links

Hornby Island Bus

Hornby Island Commerce Website

Hornby Island Co-op Store

Hornby Island Residents' & Ratepayers' Association

2006 census data

2016 census data

2021 census data

{{authority control Populated places in the Comox Valley Regional District Islands of the Gulf Islands