Desolation Sound is located off of the northeast end of Strait of Georgia, its entrance just east of Cortes Island. In the early summer of 1792, Vancouver anchored near the Sound while he sent smaller boats to survey the surrounding waters.1
With the exception of visits with Spanish explorers Alcalá-Galiano and Valdés, Vancouver had a miserable time of his stay, mostly due to what he saw as the gloomy and forlorn surroundings of both land and sea, and so he named it according to his mood, which
was presumably one of desolation by the time he weighed anchor.2
1. Andrew Scott, The Encyclopedia of Raincoast Place Names (Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2009), 159.