Homeless B.C. Indigenous Nation buys land on Vancouver Island to build community
CAMPBELL RIVER, B.C. — Thomas Smith says his most vivid memory of living on British Columbia’s Turnour Island was watching families leave their homes.
Five decades later, images of the exodus from the Indigenous village of Kalagwees are just as clear, he said.
“I was pretty young at the time,” 60-year-old Smith said. “I was one year at the primary school there and then the family moved.”
Jobs were scarce in the village accessible only by boat or float plane, he said of his former home northeast of Vancouver Island in the Johnstone Strait.