The Salish Sea And Its Islands

The history of the San Juan (American) and Gulf (Canadian) islands is an interesting footnote to the story of the North American settlement and its ultimate design as defined by the US - Canadian border which was believed to be settled in 1846 with The Oregon Treaty.  In this treaty the 49th Parallel defines the US and Canadian border across the North American continent, but a reference to the “channel which separates the continent from Vancouver Island left things up in the air for the collection of islands just to the west of the continent and ultimately led to … THE PIG WAR!

You see, the word channel was a reference to what we refer to today as a strait, and the collection of islands between Vancouver Island and the mainland is bisected by two; the Haro Strait and the Rosario Strait.  This ambiguity, which was caused by poorly defined maps of the area in the 1700s and 1800s, left open an opportunity for the British owned Hudson Bay Trading Company and American interests to gain ground while the opportunity presented itself.

Matters came to a head in 1859 when one of the American settlers, who had staked his claim on San Juan Island, shot and killed a trespassing pig (to be fair, the pig was a repeat offender) which was owned by an Irishman employed by the Hudson Bay Trading Company to run their sheep ranch on the island.  The result was a reopening of hostilities between the two great nations (at least on San Juan Island that is). 

The Americans sent a fleet of ships with their marines and the British sent a fleet of ships with their marines, with orders to advance their respective nation’s claim and to ensure the enemy failed to gain a greater foothold.  So the British set up camp on the northwest corner of the Island and the Americans set up camp on the southeast corner of the island (next to the sheep farm) and they faced off, and called each other names, and insulted each other’s families. But luckily the two opposing fleet commanders were level headed enough to understand that this was a matter for diplomats and legal scholars, and their real mission was to keep the peace until the matter was resolved properly.

So they waited … and they waited … and they waited … until 1866 when treaty terms were finally decided by German Emperor Wilhelm I who acted as arbitrator.  And during this time, the two major aggressing parties came to friendly terms and routinely paid visit to the camp of the other to celebrate holidays and the national celebrations of the inviting camp.

And as far as the border question went, it was decided that Vancouver Island was to be given to the British Colony of British Columbia and in 1871 the remaining islands agreed to in the Treaty Of Washington were to go to what became the Dominion of Canada with the exception of the San Juan Islands as defined by the treaty, which used the Haro Strait (America’s original preference) as “the channel”.  Those belonging to Canada were thereafter referred to as the Gulf Islands.

In 2010 the waterways surrounding the entire area from the Discovery Islands north of the Strait of Georgia to Budd Inlet at the south end of Puget Sound were officially named the Salish Sea as first proposed in 1988 by a marine biologist out of Bellingham, WA to recognize the indigenous peoples, the Coast Salish, who lived in the southwest British Columbia and northwest Washington State area.  As a matter of note, neither their pigs, nor their possible claim to the area ever appears to have come up during Wilhelm’s contemplations (just sayin). The Coast Salish represent a major branch of a larger group known as Salishan or Salish peoples.