Tyee Ha’wilth Mike Maquinna welcomed guests to Yuquot (Friendly Cove) Aug. 3 and invited them to share a meal of salmon and potato salad to cap this year’s Summerfest camp out, the theme of which was Youth.
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The young people had collapsed their tents, packed up their belongings and were heading back to Gold River on the Uchuck freighter, a two-hour boat ride from the remote place they had called home for the last week or so, free from their technology, free to live with nature.
Margarita James of The Land of Maquinna Cultural Society described the history of the event. It was back in 1992 when it all began with Ambrose Maquinna hoping to re-vitalize the connection with the Mowachaht territory on Nootka Island. The community had been moved away from the area in the mid-1960s. There is only one family that lives there now year-round.
It was also Ambrose’s dream to create a place where his nation could welcome the world once again. He saw Yuquot as an economic development opportunity, where the youth could be ambassadors, could provide guided tours and tell the history of the place from the Mowachaht perspective. Yuquot is steeped in history. This was Ambrose’s day, said an emotional Margarita.
Friendly Cove is known as the birthplace of British Columbia; it’s the place where Captain James Cook first came ashore on the West Coast of Canada, and before Cook, the Spanish traded with the people there. It’s the only place in Canada where Spain had a settlement.
It’s all this history and the history since time immemorial of the Mowachaht people that gives Yuquot that special appeal. As Margarita told the visitors to the luncheon, it’s more than a place, it’s a feeling.
She described how the people were once known as the Nootka, when European ships were told to go around the island, a phrase that sounded like the word Nootka. The people are known the world over now as the Nootka people, and Margarita embraces it, saying Yuquot is filled with the Nootka spirit.
She provided two special guests from Parks Canada with books that told about the area. It was Melissa Banovich’s first time to Yuquot and her husband and two young children collected pebbles from the beach as she toured the six cabins now located at the site.
John McCormick has been lucky enough to visit Yuquot many times, he told the crowd. The Mohawk from Kahnawake, in fact, had made a promise to Maquinna during one visit and he fulfilled that promise on this trip.
McCormick presented Maquinna with a Mohawk warrior flag, saying the meaning of the flag is often misrepresented, but it represented a belief in something. Maquinna told McCormick that he would treat the flag with respect and would fly it with good intentions.
The luncheon was held in the church among amazing carving and totems, stained glass and brass plaques that reminded guests that the area was once almost the site of a huge European war over the resources there and that peace was negotiated by another chief named Maquinna more than 200 years ago.
