In a move to better align with the Nuu-chah-nulth tradition of not naming a place after a chief, legislation has been tabled in Victoria to change the name of Maquinna Marine Park.
The proposed name change is part of a suite of amendments put forth for provincial parks. Pending changes to the Protected Areas of British Columbia Act also include adding a combined 143 hectares to three other provincial parks near Clearwater, Sicamous and in Haida Gwaii, as well as renaming Enderby Cliffs Park near Salmon Arm to Tplaqin/Enderby Cliffs Park. Tplaqin (pronounced ‘T-bla-qeen’) means cliff in Interior Salish. The legislation was introduced Feb. 20, but has yet to be fully passed into law.
If voted through, the amendments would change Maquinna into Nism̓aakqin Park. Provided by the Ahousaht First Nation and pronounced ‘nis-mock-kin’, this means ‘our land that we care for’.
Located in Clayoquot Sound north of Tofino and next to the Hesquiaht village of Hot Springs Cove, the Maquinna Marine Park was originally established in 1955 when Ivan Clarke donated 31 acres (or 12.5 hectares) of land to the province. Clarke had pre-empted the coastal land in 1933, setting up a general store that he continued to run until the early 1970s.
Maquinna park grew to 2,613 hectares, and includes hot springs that became a destination that attracted as many as 30,000 visitors annually up until the park was closed for two years during the COVID-19 pandemic. The park reopened in the fall of 2022, and in early 2024 a Visitor Use Management Strategy for the protected area and the hot springs was drafted by the province in partnership with the Ahousaht First Nation.
The strategy noted that “it is inappropriate as per Nuučaańuł (Nuu-chah-nulth) tradition to use a Hawił (Chief) name (e.g. Hawił Maquinna) for a place.”
“This new name is a beautiful recognition of what this sacred and important place means to so many and how we want to recognise Indigenous place names not only in Clayoquot Sound but across the Provincial Park system,” stated Mid Island-Pacific Rim MLA Josie Osborne in a recent press release. “This is an important piece of legislation and I’m thrilled for Nism̓aakqin to be included.”
In 2017 Ahousaht’s Maaqutusiis Hahoulthee Stewardship Society signed a 10-year agreement with the province to manage the park, which includes the First Nation collecting all visitor and moorage fees at the site. Maquinna Marine Park can only be reached by boat or float plane.
During the COVID shutdown extensive repairs were done to the boardwalk that leads through old growth forest to the hot springs. But the Visitor Use Management Strategy that followed in early 2024 referenced a desire to better control tourism at the site, with language indicating a desire to not return the hot springs to pre-COVID visitation levels, while encouraging people to stay on the boardwalk and not interfere with the surrounding old growth forest. Ahousaht has identified over 50 places of cultural significance near the hot springs.
“The Ahousaht have been pleased to be working collaboratively with BC Parks on efforts to re-open and manage the Maquinna Marine Provincial Park and are working together to develop a new visitor use management plan for the park that carefully considers ecological values, Indigenous cultural values and uses, visitor experiences, facilities, and infrastructure,” said the Maaqutusiis Hahoulthee Stewardship Society in a release from autumn 2022.
For Ahousaht the hot springs are known as Mux̣šiƛa, meaning ‘steaming from rock’. The geothermally heated water flows down rocks in a waterfall, filling half a dozen rocky pools. The water flows from one pool top another, gradually becoming cooler.
“ʕaḥuusʔatḥ (Ahousaht) knowledge and culture keepers consider the spring water in the pools to have healing properties,” stated the Visitor Use Management Strategy. “It was mostly women and men of lower rank who utilized the springs; whalers, specifically, were prohibited from bathing at Mux̣šiƛa, as doing so was thought to weaken them.”
Other parts of Maquinna Marine Park also hold a traditional importance to Manousaht, a coastal tribe that would be amalgamated into Ahousaht, including a rocky lookout on the coast north of the hot springs.
“Yakaachisht (‘something long on the water’), the traditional name of Barney Rocks, is where whale-watchmen would have kept a lookout for passing whales,” stated the management strategy. “While the watchmen were on the lookout, whalers in their canoes would wait nearby at Ihuʔaktlim, where they kept from drifting by holding onto kelp. Chaskwatkis (‘whale’s backbone or vertebrae’), located near the westernmost channel leading into Hot Springs Cove, is where the Maańuʔisʔahth (Manousaht) people would bring whales to be butchered.”