Keeping the inlet wild
Canadian Geographic|September/October 2020
How donors from around the world raised $3 million in just three months to protect a significant portion of B.C.’s Princess Louisa Inlet
DIANE SELKIRK
Keeping the inlet wild

BRITISH COLUMBIA’S PRINCESS Louisa Inlet is a misty rainforest work of art. Traditionally named swi-welát for its sunny warmth, the deep fiord in the ancestral territory of the shíshálh (Sechelt) Nation on the Sunshine Coast, about 100 kilo­ metres northwest of Vancouver, is a place of mossy forests, granite cliffs and more than 60 tumbling waterfalls — home to seals, grizzly bears, mountain goats, eagles and northern goshawks.

For the estimated 10,000 visitors who pass through the inlet each year, it was a stroke of luck that in 1953 for­mer miner James MacDonald rejected an offer of $400,000 for his cabin and 18.2 hectares of land at the head of the inlet (reportedly from someone who wanted to build a hotel). Instead, a non­profit society was created to manage the property for the people of the Pacific Northwest.

“It is Yosemite Valley, the fjords of Norway and many other places all wrought into the background of our conifer forests,” he wrote at the time. “It should never have belonged to one individual.”

This story is from the September/October 2020 edition of Canadian Geographic.

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This story is from the September/October 2020 edition of Canadian Geographic.

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