The first Hawaiian to reach British Columbia was Winee, the personal servant of 18-year-old Frances Barkley, usually credited as the first European woman to see the West Coast of Canada. Winee and Frances Barkley arrived at Nootka Sound in 1787 on the Imperial Eagle under the command of Captain Charles Barkley.

The Kanaka Bar Tunnel in the Fraser Canyon attests to the existence of Hawaiian workers who settled at Kanaka Creek, behind Fort Langley. Newcastle Island off Nanaimo has a Kanaka Bay. The Empress Hotel in Victoria is situated on the ruins of a shantytown that was called Kanaka Row. A few Hawaiian families lived at the "Kanaka Ranch"; at the foot of Denman Street in Vancouver, site of the Bayshore Inn. Sawmill workers in North Vancouver lived at Moodyville's Kanaka Row, the second-largest Hawaiian settlement in B.C. after Salt Spring Island. Ganges on Salt Spring has a Kanaka Road.

In 1995, Salt Spring Islander Tom Koppel published Kanaka: The Untold Story of Hawaiian Pioneers in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest (Whitecap). B.C.'s most active historian, Jean Barman, has now prepared a family portrait of the half-Hawaiian matron Maria Mahoi, born outside of Victoria, around 1857, probably in Esquimalt. She had an Hawaiian father and an unknown mother who is thought to have died in childbirth.

Maria (pronounced Mariah) had 13 children by various 'newcomer men' while living mainly on Salt Spring and nearby Russell Island (off Fulford Harbour). She died in the late 1930s. Mahoi's turn-of-the-century home is a pivot point for a new Gulf Islands National Park. Parks Canada sponsored a reunion of her descendants last August. Barman talked to Mahoi's kin and produced a manuscript for New Star Books that will soon appear within its Transmontanus series, edited by Terry Glavin.

[SUMMER 2003 BCBW]