silva bay

Silva bay on the east side of Gabriola. There was another of the yellow public access cinder blocks and a trail between two properties. The one property was for sale only 7.2 my. Moonshine cove.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlfVBdDSHoE
Our first attempt to find the path took us to Pages Marina, an old Japanese Fish camp in the mid 1930's that after WWII, when the Canadian govt forcibly removed the Koyamas and Haminakas families it was then bought by the Page brothers. They in turn sold it to The Reeve's -a librarian and transplant physician from Vancouver- in 1987. They made it an arts centre and Marina. Today their kids are still operating it, it had a nice campground too.
There was also a shipyard, Witheys Silva Bay Shipyard. He moved there in 1945 just after wwII and built wooden boats. They didn't have electricity till 1955 when Gabriola finally got electrical power.
The entrance to Silva Bay is quite tricky. There is the Gabriola reef that extends out and 2 miles east of Silva bay in 1880 a sailing ship, the Thrasher, loaded with Dunsmuir coal from Naniamo was headed to San Francisco. It struck a sunken rock and they were unable to get her off the rock.
our visit was not as eventful, tide was out, there were some iron rings in the rocks we were sitting on and a couple of float planes took off down the narrow Chanel but just a beautiful spot to sit in the sun. It did look much windier out towards the open ocean where the sailboats were sailing, but nice and calm where we were sitting.Read more