Marja-Leena Rathje

Back to our visit and explorations a month ago (already!) on Gabriola Island. I previously featured a few images taken of some petroglyphs we found on one forest trail.

The next day we visited the Gabriola Museum. Though closed mid-week we enjoyed a stroll on the grounds, named Petroglyph Park with its numerous reproductions of many of the petroglyphs found on the Island, with the aim of preventing further erosion of the originals as well as showing less eroded images than those originals are now. Most are flat stones and some are upright, all placed in a natural setting with spreading moss and lichen.

The Museum’s pages have information about the history of the petroglyphs and about the background on the reproduction project.

Some years ago, when I became interested in learning more about BC’s own native petroglyphs and pictographs, one of the books I acquired is Gabriola: Petroglyph Island by Mary and Ted Bentley. The back cover states that the Bentleys have explored and recorded the rock carvings of Gabriola Island since 1969. They discovered a major site of over fifty carvings in 1976, then thirty more glyphs at four more sites. They are committed to the preservation and to promoting an understanding of the native culture that produced these and have been very involved in the reproduction project at the Museum.

I’m so thrilled to have at last seen even a small fraction of these works on Gabriola, both the original and the well done reproductions. Perhaps one day we’ll go back to see more.