Small boat at dusk

by Jeff Swan

Title

Small boat at dusk

Artist

Jeff Swan

Medium

Photograph - Photography

Description

Sail boat foreground sunset near Naniamo British Columbia


Nanaimo /nəˈnaɪmoʊ/ (Canada 2011 Census population 83,810) is a city on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. It is known as "The Harbour City." The City was previously known as the "Hub City" which has been attributed to its original layout design where the streets radiated out from the shoreline like the spokes of a wagon wheel [3] as well as its generally centralized location on Vancouver Island.[4] Nanaimo is also the headquarters of the Regional District of Nanaimo.

Contents [hide]
1 History
1.1 Chinatowns
2 Location and geography
2.1 Climate
3 Transportation
4 Demographics
5 Economy
6 Media outlets
7 Politics
7.1 Federal
7.2 Provincial
7.3 Civic
7.4 Open government
8 Education
9 Arts
10 Culture
11 Sports
12 Notable residents
13 Sister cities
14 References
15 External links
History[edit]
See also: List of Coal Mines and Landmarks in Nanaimo area
The Native people of the area that is now known as Nanaimo are the Snuneymuxw.

The first Europeans to find Nanaimo Bay were those of the 1791 Spanish voyage of Juan Carrasco, under the command of Francisco de Eliza. They gave it the name Bocas de Winthuysen.[citation needed]

Nanaimo began as a trading post in the early 19th century. In 1849 the Snuneymuxw chief Ki-et-sa-kun ("Coal Tyee") informed the Hudson's Bay Company of coal in the area. Exploration proved there was plenty of it in the area and Nanaimo became chiefly known for the export of coal. In 1853 the company built a Nanaimo Bastion, which has been preserved and is a popular tourist destination in the downtown area.


Indigenous Nanaimo people
Hudson's Bay Company employee Robert Dunsmuir helped establish coal mines in the Nanaimo harbour area and later mined in Nanaimo as one of the first independent miners. In 1869 Dunsmuir discovered coal several miles North of Nanaimo at Wellington, and subsequently created the company Dunsmuir and Diggle Ltd so he could acquire crown land and finance the startup of what became the Wellington Colliery. With the success of Dunsmuir and Diggle and the Wellington Colliery, Dunsmuir expanded his operations to include steam railways. Dunsmuir sold Wellington Coal through its Departure Bay docks, while competing Nanaimo coal was sold by the London-based Vancouver Coal Company through the Nanaimo docks.[citation needed]

The gassy qualities of the coal which made it valuable also made it dangerous. The 1887 Nanaimo Mine Explosion killed 150 miners and was described as the largest man-made explosion[citation needed] until the Halifax Explosion. Another 100 men died in another explosion the next year.

An Internment camp for Ukrainian detainees, many of them local, was set up at a Provincial jail in Nanaimo from September 1914 to September 1915.[5]

In the 1940s, lumber supplanted coal as the main business although Minetown Days are still celebrated in the neighbouring community of Lantzville.[6]

Chinatowns[edit]
Main article: Historical Chinatowns in Nanaimo
Nanaimo has had a succession of four distinct Chinatowns. The first, founded during the gold rush years of the 1860s, was the third largest in British Columbia.[7] In 1884, because of mounting racial tensions related to the Dunsmuir coal company's hiring of Chinese strikebreakers, the company helped move Chinatown to a location outside city limits.[8] In 1908, when two Chinese entrepreneurs bought the site and tried to raise rents, in response, and with the help of 4,000 shareholders from across Canada, the community combined forces and bought the site for the third Chinatown at a new location, focused on Pine Street. That third Chinatown, by then mostly derelict, burned down on 30 September 1960. A fourth Chinatown, also called Lower Chinatown or "new town", boomed for a while in the 1920s on Machleary Street.[7]

Location and geography[edit]

Aerial photo of downtown and central Nanaimo and adjacent islands.
Located on Vancouver Island, Nanaimo is about 110 km northwest of Victoria, and 55 km west of Vancouver, separated by the Strait of Georgia, and linked to Vancouver via the Horseshoe Bay BC Ferries terminal in West Vancouver. As the site of the main ferry terminal, Nanaimo is the gateway to many other destinations both on the northern part of the island � Tofino, Comox Valley, Parksville, Campbell River, Port Alberni, Rathtrevor Beach Provincial Park � and off its coast � Newcastle Island, Protection Island, Gabriola Island, Valdes Island, and many other of the Gulf Islands.

Buttertubs Marsh is a bird sanctuary located in the middle of the city. The marsh covers approximately 100 acres (40 hectares). Within this is the 46 acre (18.7 hectare) "Buttertubs Marsh Conservation Area", owned by the Nature Trust of British Columbia.

Climate[edit]
Like much of the coastal Pacific Northwest, Nanaimo experiences a temperate climate with mild, rainy winters and cool, dry summers. Due to its relatively dry summers, the K�ppen climate classification places it at the northernmost limits of the Csb or cool-summer Mediterranean zone.[9] Other climate classification systems, such as Trewartha, place it firmly in the Oceanic zone (Do).[10]

Nanaimo is usually shielded from the Aleutian Low�s influence by the mountains of central Vancouver Island, so that summers are unusually dry for its latitude and location � though summer drying as a trend is found in the immediate lee of the coastal ranges as far north as Skagway, Alaska.

Heavy snowfall does occasionally occur during winter, with a record daily total of 0.74 metres (29.13 in) on 12 February 1975, but the mean maximum cover is only 0.2 metres (7.9 in).

The highest temperature ever recorded in Nanaimo was 40.6 �C (105 �F) on 16 July 1941.[11] The coldest temperature ever recorded was −20.0 �C (−4 �F) on 30 December 1968.[12]

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August 8th, 2016

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