Bowen Island - Post-colonization

Post-colonization

When Spanish explorers arrived on the west coast of Canada, they named many of the features of what is now the Strait of Georgia. Bowen Island was called Isla de Apodaca (after the Mexican town of Apodaca, in north-east Nuevo León province - itself named after a benevolent bishop, Salvador de Apodaca y Loreto) by the Spanish Captain José María Narváez in July, 1791. In 1860 Cpt. George Henry Richards renamed the island after Rear Admiral James Bowen master of the HMS Queen Charlotte.

Bowen remained a wilderness until 1871 when homesteaders built houses and started a brickworks, which supplied bricks to the expanding city of Vancouver. Over the years, local industry has included an explosives factory, logging, mining, and milling, although there is no heavy industry on the island at present.

In the first half of the 20th century, life on Bowen was dominated by the Union Steamship Company that operated a very busy resort at Snug Cove. The resort closed in the 1960s and the island returned to a quiet period of slow growth. In the '40s and '50s, the artists' colony called Lieben was a retreat for many famous Canadian authors, artists, and intellectuals including Earle Birney, Alice Munro, Dorothy Livesay, Margaret Laurence, A.J.M. Smith, Jack Shadbolt, Eric Nicol and Malcolm Lowry, who finished his last book, October Ferry to Gabriola, there. It is now a National Historic Site of Canada. In the 1980s, real estate pressures in Vancouver accelerated growth on Bowen and currently the local economy is largely dependent on commuters who work on the mainland in Greater Vancouver. Prior to becoming a municipality, Bowen Island was part of the Sunshine Coast Regional District, made up of small communities and municipalities. However, in the 1980s the island transferred to the Greater Vancouver Regional District after a campaign organized by developers and realtors. A campaign to make the island an autonomous municipality was successful after two referendum attempts.

In 1999 the Bowen Island Municipality was incorporated, becoming the second 'island municipality' in BC. The first was Saltspring Island which was incorporated in 1873 and dissolved by the BC legislature 10 years later.