About our Location/About our Website
About Maple Bay and Mount Tzouhalem
This charming community of Maple Bay is one of the finest little jewels in the Gulf Islands. A pretty seaside community located in a narrow inlet and surrounded by smooth, pebbled beaches, Maple Bay is one of the finest natural harbours on the West Coast, and bustles with marine activity all year round. The sheltered haven of Maple Bay is situated halfway up Sansum Narrows, and separates Vancouver Island from Saltspring Island, the largest and nearest of the southern Gulf Islands.
Maple Bay is located in the Cowichan Valley of southern Vancouver Island. Only 15 driving-minutes from Maple Bay is Duncan, the City of Totems, and home to the Quw'utsun' Cultural & Conference Centre.
South of Maple Bay toward the tiny village of Genoa Bay, the 536-metre Mount Tzouhalem has hiking and biking trails for all ages and levels of ability, including wonderful wildflowers and spectacular views.
Mount Tzouhalem, rising above the moorages of Maple Bay (at 502 meters or 1647 feet), used to be known on the marine charts as Mount Tzuhalem. But the name was changed in 2000, to reflect the preferred local spelling.
Mount Tzouhalem, north of Cowichan Bay, is named after the most legendary war chief of the Cowichan Coast Salish.
First Nation history
The Coast Salish First Nation people called this mountain "Cowichan" (various spellings meaning variations of "basking in the sun"). Legend tells that during the Big Flood the people of the valley took shelter here. When the waters began to subside they spied a frog basking in the sun on the side of the mountain. The frog rock formation was called "Pip'oom" (various spellings meaning "little swelled-up one"). It is said that people with good eyes can still spy "Pip'oom" on the side of the mountain.
In 1844 Chief Tzouhalem led a historically documented attack on Fort Victoria. Chief Tzouhalem was angry that the colonial authorities had tried to collect damages from him for some cows that had been killed by his people, on his lands.
The Coast Salish Indians were unacquainted with domestic animals, and Chief Tzouhalem refused to acknowledge that the white settlers cattle had any special status.
As one of the Chiefs of Cowichan, Chief Tzouhalem was very vocal with his belief that within Indian Land; Indian rights came first. His verbal response to the demands for him to pay compensation was:
"The Indian law is this: The animals which walk on our lands belong to those who have the skill to kill them." Chief Tzouhalem
Conflicts were frequent between the Salish Indians and the Colonists in the mid to late 1800’s; as the settlers began claiming, and fencing in the traditional hunting and gathering grounds for the use of their domesticated animals and crops.
Because of Chief Tzouhalem’s rebellious nature towards the white settlers who were continuously encroaching in the traditional Cowichan territory, and the amount of attention that he was generating with the occupants of Fort Victoria, for the protection of his village Chief Tzouhalem retreated to the isolation and refuge of a cave in the side of the Mountain that now bears his him.
Tzouhalem-Maple Bay Website Location
About the Tzouhalem-Maple Bay Website
Tzouhalem-Maple Bay is a private music station website created as both a development and experiment in music-related computing.
Although now called Tzouhalem-Maple Bay, the music station was started under the name Sunwood Lakes Music about four years ago, while we were living in Olympia, Washington, USA.
The music Web site was temporarily closed as we moved and got settled into our new-old home in "The Properties in Maple Bay", near Maple Bay on the east coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.
Originally, the music Web site was designed from templates created by Spacial Audio Solutions software. Eventually, those templates were re-designed and re-adapted for the canadian system.
And then, sometimes during the spring of 2008, something happened, new templates were discovered... And thus, the music station website was reborn as Tzouhalem-Maple Bay Weather!
The appearance of the Tzouhalem-Maple Bay Web pages is based on the AJAX weather template originally designed by CarterLake.org.
Many thanks to Kevin Reed at TNET Weather.
Special thanks go to Ken True for the AJAX scripts from Saratoga-Weather.org which were the basis for the "re-designed" Tzouhalem-Maple Bay Music Station Web pages.
