Post #402761 by Tikiwahine on Wed, Aug 20, 2008 11:47 PM

I recently talked to a relative of one of the settlers that came from Hawaii, they lived on Russell Island. It's just off Vancouver Island. I mentioned to him the theory of other Polynesians coming to BC even earlier, but he wasn't too sure about anything earlier than the mid 1800s.

Here is a little bit of history:

During the fur trade, the Hudson’s Bay Company hired several hundred Hawaiians (Kanakas) as labourers. After their contracts expired, some Hawaiians decided not to return to their homeland. Many settled on southern Saltspring, Portland, Coal and Russell Islands. Russell Island features one of the last known Hawaiian homesteads. Maria Mahoi, born on Vancouver Island in the mid 1800s to a First Nations mother and Hawaiian father, inherited Russell Island from its first settler, William Haumea (a Hawaiian friend, and possibly her father). Maria and her second husband, George Fisher, brought their family to the island in 1902, and Maria lived on the island until her death in 1936.

Clues to a much longer human presence are scattered across Russell Island, including shoreline shell middens left by millennia of use by area First Nations. Near the trail on the western end of the island, rectangular scars on Douglas fir trees indicate where they may have removed bark for fire starter or other necessities.