Colonial Despatches

Cowichan Bay is located on southern Vancouver Island. It is the outflow point for Cowichan River, which flows east from Cowichan Lake.

Cowichan Bay was named by HBC officers, and is home to, along with the surrounding Cowichan region, the Quw'utsun Nation, the largest Coast Salish Nation in British Columbia.1 The name Cowichan, likely derived from one of the many forms of Quw'utsun, is an anglicization of the Island's Halkomelem term for warming the back.2

• 1. Andrew Scott, The Encyclopedia of Raincoast Place Names (Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2009), 137.
• 2. Ibid., 138.