Gorge Harbour… Late August, 2023

Gorge Harbor.  A special bay… a unique place located in the Southwest quadrant of Cortes Island.  We anchored in the harbor in the summer of 2019 when we first moved Great Northern up from Portland where we bought and provisioned her for cruising.  There is one narrow entrance, “The Gorge”, several islands, and though a deep harbor, there are many places to anchor.  It is a protected harbour to hole up in if it is blowing a gale in the Strait of Georgia or Johnson Strait.  It hosts a “full service” marina resort, a small general store, a swimming pool, RV parking and rooms for rent.  We have fond memories of dining on the terrace of the restaurant, the view of the marina, harbor, anchored boats, and the lush, well maintained park like grounds.

The restaurant delivered lovely meals and the view from the restaurant deck provided the most excellent eye candy.  The grounds of the resort epitomized the care taking of the most elegant city park.

In 2021 or early 2022 a First Nations Band bought the resort.   The marina is the same:  Excellent docks, a full serviced fuel dock, and water, a coveted commodity in Desolation Sound… is available.  The general store is very well stocked and maintains generous hours of operation, seven days a week during the summer season.  The pool is gone, due to lack of water.  Unnamed sources intimate that new wells are being planned for, so at some point the pool may be restored.  It depends on the veracity of the various reporters that we questioned… For now there is enough water for the store and marina.  More importantly, the restaurant is gone and there are several stories about why.  Waggner’s cruising guide editorial staff, who put out monthly cruising updates to their guide, state that the restaurant building was condemned, so the new owners took it down.  A local artist we talked to at the Saturday’s farmers market stated that the new owners couldn’t find wait staff… so they pulled it down.  No one we asked seems to know if it will be rebuilt at some point.  The resort grounds are not being maintained to the same park like standards.  Hard to do that with inadequate water….  All in all, our visit to Gorge engendered more nostalgia than new fond memories.  But… that is just the impression of a visiting cruiser…  That being stated, there is always a backstory.  One just has to have the good luck to stumble upon it.

Some of the nicer live-aboard vessels in Gorge Harbour:

After visiting Gorge for a few days we made our way to Carrington Bay:

Carrington is a very special place.  The anchorages are mostly rock bottomed, but we found a place deep in the bay that was rock, gravel and mud… a reasonable anchorage for settled weather, which we were experiencing. During a walk on one of the excellent trails within the Carrington Bay Park, we happened upon an older couple (our age) tramping up the trail.  We stopped and chatted for a bit.  We found that they were from Whaletown and had lived there for quite some time. Whaletown is just around the corner from Gorge. They made some recommendations about which trails might be interesting for us during our visit to Carrington Bay.  We walked a ways with them up to an old homestead, the Borden’s, just off the trail.  The Borden’s had lived there in the only two story house on the island at the time.  They vacated the homestead in 1932 when their “in the middle of nowhere” house burned to the ground.

We asked our walking buddies… being nosy Americans and all…  what they knew of what was going on with the Gorge Resort.  Understanding nods took place between the two of them.  They started with: “when the indigenous” bought the resort, they seemed to have great plans.  The first on their docket was to modernize the restaurant.  It had an inadequate layout and it was difficult for cook and wait staff to operate efficiently.  When the time came to start demolition work for the modernization remodel, they found that the entire electrical system was very outdated, poorly constructed, and had suffered inadequate maintenance.  The propane piping was dangerously insufficient, and… there was asbestos everywhere.  So… they had no choice but to demo the entire building and start over.  After that, the “indigenous” found that the wells were failing.  I sensed no glee in their portrayal… but I wonder…

There may be plans to rebuild the restaurant, and there may be plans to drill more wells.  But… from who we’ve talked too… and the information received from different sources… the timelines for such things have not been collectively shared with “non-indigenous” islanders.  So… what’s the real story?  I’m not a journalist, and I’ve never played one on TV.  But… I imagine that there may just might be some animosity between the First Nations tribe, The Klahouse, who purchased the resort and land… and the community of concerned neighbors that surrounds the resort.  The Klahouse lived in Gorge for millennia before it was occupied by white settlers.  Perhaps I’m just reading into this a bit, but it was in the older couples “voices” and choice of descriptive wording in how they relayed the story.  The islanders in general, were very fond of the previous owners who happened to be white. Now, they are not so sure about the new ones who are not.  Time will tell.  As for Les, Leo, and I… we don’t come up to Desolation Sound to visit marinas.  We only go to markets when we’ve run out of ships stores or wine, oh… and craft IPA beer.  As for Gorge… I hope it works out for the island.  More jobs would help.  More income for the people who live here would also help.  But there is more…

There are now more aquaculture operations scattered around the harbor than there were in 2019.  That means jobs and revenue.  But… there is a familiar problem:  Adequate, affordable housing.  Housing is very expensive on the island, and on most of the other islands.  Outside investors and outside money has drastically increased the price of houses and land.  An example:  We anchored, in Gorge, in front of a property that had an older cabin and a dock.  There was a for sale sign on the property, so we looked it up.  The property sat on 5 acres.  The asking price was $900,000.  What did one get for that?  The sale included half of the property, 2.5 acres.  We found on another source, that the cabin on the property had apparently been condemned.  Full access to the dock was included.  There was another house on the 5 acre property owned by the seller.  The seller would retain their house, their 2.5 acres and full access to the dock.  For the buyers… they got the cabin. It was decorated with 1970 vintage appliances.  The roof was covered in moss and it was easy to determine that the roof line was sagging in the middle. The exterior made the cabin look like it was closer to demolition than livability.  It is hard to imagine… affording such a property on the salary of a waiter with tips… at the only close restaurant to work at… that had just been torn down. Hmmm…

The other angle to consider… There are quite a few aquaculture businesses within Gorge: oysters, clams and mussels, all filter feeders… and no pump out facilities for sewage for the harbours live aboards. Where does the live aboard human shit go… Shared amongst the filter feeder aquaculture “crops” I assume…  Hmmm…

1.   Map credit to Jim Burgoyne and Lynne Picard of Salish Sea Pilot Guides