Colonial Despatches

This famously blustery strait flows between Haida Gwaii and mainland British Columbia. It was named after HMS Hecate, a paddle-wheeled survey sloop that plied West Coast waters, including the strait, in the early 1860s; the Haida Nation refer to Hecate Strait as Siigaay.1

• 1. Andrew Scott, The Encyclopedia of Raincoast Placenames (Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2009), 256.