The Comox Valley has recorded a continuous human population for over 4,000 years. Our settlement prehistory was strongly influenced by a gentle local climate, abundant seafood resources, and ease of movement along important waterway trade routes.

This waterway trade included a variety of materials and foodstuffs. Eulachon oils, shells, cedar products, and fish were commonly exchanged with other coastal peoples. The Salish word, Comox (originally spelled KOMOUX) means "plenty" - thereby resulting in the Valley being known as the "Land of Plenty".

Contact between European and First Nations peoples in the Comox Valley was long thought to have occurred in 1792 with Captain George Vancouver, aboard the HMS Discovery, anchored in what is now known as Comox Harbour.

Recent surprising evidence has been uncovered by British Columbia researcher Samuel Bawlf - pointing to an earlier visit to our area by Sir Francis Drake in 1579. This famous member of the Court of Elizabeth I noted arriving in what we now know as Comox Harbour sailing aboard the Golden Hinde.

The voyage, coming only 87 years after Christopher Columbus found the New World, was a secret exploration to the coasts of British Columbia, southeast Alaska, Washington and Oregon -with Vancouver Island selected as the site for England's first overseas colony.

Because Sir Francis Drake believed he had discovered the Pacific entrance to the strategically vital Northwest Passage, the details of his astonishing journey were kept hidden by order of Queen Elizabeth I - and were then forgotten for over 400 years.