The Queen Charlotte Islands are at the western edge of the continental shelf and form part of Wrangellia, an exotic terrane of former island arcs, which also includes Vancouver Island, parts of western mainland British Columbia and southern Alaska. While we’ll see that there are two competing schools of thought on Wrangellia’s more recent history, both sides agree that many of the rocks, and the fossils they contain, were laid down somewhere near the equator.

They had a long, arduous journey, first being pushed by advancing plates, then being uplifted, intruded, folded, and finally thrust up again. It’s reminiscent of how pastry is balled up, kneaded over and over, finally rolled out, then the process is repeated again.

Have you watched salmon leaping and jumping seemingly impossible hurtles to return to the place of their birth? Many times I've watched the ritual with wonder.

While we think of this migration as having gone on "forever" from sea to river to stream. It seems it is a relatively recent phenomenon.

Salmon have permeated First Nations mythology and have been prized as an important food source for thousands of years.