Powell River, British Columbia


Powell River is a city on the northern Sunshine Coast of southwestern British Columbia, Canada. Most of its population lives near the eastern shores of Malaspina Strait, which is part of the larger Georgia Strait between Vancouver Island and the Mainland. With two intervening long, steep-sided fjords inhibiting the construction of a contiguous road connection with Vancouver to the south, geographical surroundings explain Powell River's remoteness as a community, despite relative proximity to Vancouver and other populous areas of the BC Coast. The city is the location of the head office of the qathet Regional District.

History

The Powell River was named for Israel Wood Powell. Powell was B.C.'s first superintendent for Indian Affairs and a chief architect of colonial policies, including the establishment of residential schools in British Columbia and the banning of the potlatch. He was traveling up the coast of BC in 1881 and the river and lake were named after him.
Powell was a supporter of B.C. being part of the union with Canada and brought the first Canadian flag to BC on June 17, 1871.
Construction of the pulp mill was started in 1908, with a corresponding townsite company town commenced in 1910: the first roll of paper was produced at Powell River Mill in 1912. Similarly, large logging companies had earlier moved in to take advantage of the huge timber. Brooks, Scanlon & Obrien; Bloedel, Stewart and Welch; and Theodosia Logging were but a few logging companies, with the Brooks brothers and M.J. Scanlon forming the Powell River Company, western Canada's first pulp and paper mill. The Historic Townsite District is an exceptionally well preserved early 20th Century planned community, and was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1995. The Townsite Heritage Society has suggested the neighbourhood was planned according to the principles of the Garden City Movement. However, this isn't corroborated by the district's listing in the Canadian Register of Historic Places, and recent work has been addressed misconceptions surrounding Ebenezer Howard's Garden City concept.
When the British Columbia Credit Unions Act was passed in 1939, a study club organized by local millworkers secured the first charter with a deposit of $48.30. The mill provided a small office space at very low rent in the early years. By 1955, when the Powell River Credit Union moved into a permanent office, it had over 3,000 members and $1 million in assets.
In March 1944, the former Canadian Steamships five-masted lumber schooner Malahat began taking on water while being towed in the Barkley Sound. She was then moved to Powell River where she was made part of the breakwater.
The mill in Powell River was at one time the largest pulp and paper mill in the world. In its prime, one in every 25 newspapers in the world was printed on paper from the Powell River mill. However, it later significantly cut back on production, in the 21st century producing newsprint and specialty papers for Catalyst Paper. In 2019, Paper Excellence Group acquired Catalyst Paper. In 2023, the mill was permanently curtailed. Most recently, the Tla'amin First Nation and Domtar reached an agreement in March 2025 to reclaim a large portion of the mill land.
The subsequent diversification of the local economy led to an increased focus on ecotourism and the arts, in addition to more traditional resources like mining, fishing, and general forestry. In recognition of its strong arts and cultural programs, Powell River was named a "Cultural Capital of Canada" in 2004.
The Powell River area is the current home to the Tla'amin Nation of the Mainland Comox branch of the Coast Salish peoples, who still reside there to this day. Their village is commonly referred to as Sliammon.

Name change

In May 2021, Tla'amin Nation submitted a request to Powell River city council to change the name of the city. The request comes because city namesake Israel Powell, B.C.’s superintendent of Indian affairs from 1872 to 1889, helped to ensure that the sale of Lot 450, land that included tiyskʷat village, went through, as well as overseeing the removal of children from their homes to be sent to residential schools, and the banning of potlatch, language and other Indigenous customs.

Sports teams

Powell River is host to the Powell River Kings, a member team of the British Columbia Hockey League, and the Powell River Regals, a Senior Men's hockey team, founded in 1955 and winner of 3 national and several provincial championships. The Powell River Villa play in the Vancouver Island Soccer League. Powell River also has many youth sports teams and associations.
PRMHA is the minor hockey associations with house & rep teams. Powell River's youth baseball league is called the PRMBA. It consists of divisions for are groups 5 and 18. Powell River's gymnastics association has produced many reputable gymnasts.

Attractions

In 2020, Powell River received a $10,000 grant from the government of British Columbia to support tourism in the town. Nearby, Texada Island with quiet beaches and lakes provides tourism opportunities and is a common weekend destination for the cities' residents. Both Texada Island and Powell River are popular for fishing, hunting, sailing, power boating camping and remote hiking.
The Spanish renaissance-style Patricia Theatre is Canada's oldest continuously operating theatre, first built in 1913 and then rebuilt in 1928. The qathet Museum and Archives depicts the interactions between the pioneers and First Nations as well as showing the tools and items that would have been used by those groups. The Townsite Heritage Society was formed in 1992 to maintain and promote the historical character of the traditional neighbourhood and business section of the Powell River Townsite.
Powell River hosts a number of festivals that highlight local interest and culture, including the Blackberry Festival, Pacific Region International Summer Music Academy Festival, Logger Sports, Townsite Jazz Festival, International Choral Kathaumixw, and the Sunshine Music Festival.
The City of Powell River and surrounding area are home to over 400 Km’s of cycling trails. Volunteer built and maintained, the two largest areas for cycling are Duck Lake and Mount Mahony. In 2023 after many years of work by the qathet Regional Cycling Association, the province of BC granted authority to the club to establish a new parking lot and professionally built climb and descent trails that continue to expand.
Powell River is home to the Sunshine Coast Trail, Canada's longest hut-to-hut hiking trail. The free-access 180 kilometre back-country trail meanders through a wide variety of landscapes, including coastal shorelines, old-growth forest, panoramic mountaintops, pristine creeks and lakes and salmon streams.

Transportation

While located on the mainland and not an island by definition, Powell River is a community isolated by ocean and mountains and is only accessible by water or by air. Powell River is located on Highway 101 but driving the length of the highway requires two ferries before arriving at Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver. The alternative access to the town is a ferry crossing from Comox on Vancouver Island. Since the Sunshine Coast is similarly isolated from the rest of the BC mainland, vehicles from Vancouver must take two ferries to reach Powell River. The surrounding inlets banked by mountainous terrain have made land based road connections to other areas of the BC mainland an expensive proposal. One land based route connecting Powell River to Highway 99 near Squamish has been studied, but would require two tunnels and cost around 5 billion dollars. All of the city's roads are two-lane residential roads, and Highway 101 merges with Marine Avenue to form the city's main street.
Powell River has two ferry terminals, both of which belong to BC Ferries. The Westview Ferry Terminal is located near the city's downtown and provides service to Comox and Vancouver Island on board the Salish Eagle, and to Texada Island on the Island Discovery. The Saltery Bay Ferry Terminal is located 23 km south on Highway 101 and provides access to the Sunshine Coast on the Malaspina Sky via route to Earl's Cove near Skookumchuck Narrows.
Powell River has a small airport with a single 1,200 meter long runway and indoor waiting terminal. It is serviced by Pacific Coastal Airlines, which offers 20- to 25-minute flights between Powell River Airport and the South Terminal of Vancouver's International Airport. Charter flights and private aircraft also make use the runway on a regular basis.
The City of Powell River also has a small network of public transportation bus routes, run by BC Transit with 6 routes.

City of Powell River

The City of Powell River includes the original Townsite, which became designated a National Historic District in 1995, one of only seven in Canada. There is also the more populous Westview, and the Cranberry and Wildwood areas. On October 15, 2005, coinciding with its 50th anniversary of incorporation, Powell River was officially designated a city.
Townsite and Cranberry are connected by three roads by the names of Lombardy Ave, Timberlane Ave, and Hemlock Street.

Demographics

In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Powell River had a population of 13,943 living in 6,402 of its 6,718 total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of 13,157. With a land area of, it had a population density of in 2021.
The median household income in 2005 for Powell River was $46,777, which is below the British Columbia provincial average of $52,709.

Ethnicity

Religion

According to the 2021 census, religious groups in Powell River included:
  • Irreligion
  • Christianity
  • Hinduism
  • Buddhism
  • Sikhism
  • Judaism
  • Indigenous Spirituality
  • Islam