Popular Pages
Accommodation & Activity Features June, 2013 |
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Spring Whale Packages |
Beachfront rooms + Zodiac tours! |  |
Specials at Pacific Sands |
Current Specials at the Beach Resort |  |
Marina West Motel |
Best Room Rates in Tofino |  |
Cox Bay Beach Resort |
1 bedroom suites starting at $179 per night! |  |
Chesterman Beach Days |
$40/night off at Wickaninnish Inn |  |
Middle Beach Lodge |
Rooms on the Beach: $109 per night! |  |
About Tofino Guide
The intent of this website is to offer Tofino, BC visitors and residents an in-depth and accurate reference for accommodation and restaurant listings and to showcase popular activities like whale watching, sea kayaking and surfing. We also strive to provide pertinent information about directions, the region's weather, tides and surfing conditions.
Over the past 15 years, this website has tried to offer objective and accurate information to our visitors. Last year we published the print version of Tofino Guide to add valuable information about hiking and sightseeing to our list of accommodation and activity providers. We update the print version of the guide every year and attempt to keep the information on this website as current as possible.
We hope that by using the information provided here before or during your visit, we will enable you to see, to appreciate and to respect Tofino and Clayoquot Sound. We would like to stress that the opinions and reviews expressed within these pages are ours and may differ with your personal discoveries. Please let us know if you feel we should take another, perhaps more closer look at any of the information we have provided.
If you are looking for transportation services to Tofino, please be aware that Tofino Bus offers exceptional scheduled bus and charter bus services from Vancouver, Victoria, Nanaimo, Port Alberni and the Comox Valley. For more infomration about Tofino Bus, visit their website.
A portion of the proceeds from this business go directly to local preservation-minded organizations to ensure the protection and future sustainability of this environmental treasure we call home. 2013 marks our 16th year online. We now see over 35,000 visitors to our website every month. Thanks for bringing us along!
-Your Tofino Guides; June, 2013
A Brief History of Tofino, Canada
Tofino is located in a geographical region called Clayoquot Sound, comprising about 400,000 hectares of land and marine inlets, all draining into a central marine catchment area. The Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations have made Clayoquot Sound their home for several thousand years. The Tla-o-qui-aht Village of Opitsaht (across the water from Tofino on Meares Island) is thought to have been continuously inhabited for at least the past 5,000 years, according to carbon dating of a long-buried stash of discarded clamshells. The word Clayoquot comes from Tla-o-qui-aht.
The earliest recorded European contact with Vancouver Island’s First Nations residents occurred just north of Clayoquot Sound, between Estevan Point and the Escalante River. In 1774 Captain Juan Pérez was sent north by the viceroy of New Spain to reassert the long standing Spanish claim on the west coast of North America. Pérez reached the Queen Charlotte Islands in July, 1774. After some trading with the Haida people from aboard the Santiago, Pérez turned south and made contact with Hesquiaht people near what are now called Perez Rocks, approximately 40 km north of Tofino. Curiously, Pérez and his crew did not go ashore.
History buffs will appreciate that Pérez preceded the more celebrated Captain James Cook, who arrived three years later at Nootka Island, in the spring of 1778. Cook claimed the region for Britain, giving rise to heated interactions between the British and the Spanish. War was averted through various agreements outlined in the three Nootka Conventions signed between 1790 and 1794.
During the 1792 exploration of Vancouver Island by Captains Galiano and Valdez, Clayoquot Sound’s southernmost inlet gained the name Tofino Inlet. The name honoured Vincente Tofiño, a Spanish hydrographer who taught Galiano cartography during the expedition.
The current townsite of Tofino was officially established in 1909 on the Esowista peninsula, taking its name from Tofino Inlet. Until this time, the outpost called Clayoquot was the main European settlement in the area. Located on Stubbs Island, about 1.5 km across the water from the current site of Tofino, Clayoquot had been a fur trading post on and off since the late 1850s. By the turn of the century it boasted a store, post office, hotel, saloon, dock, and a small resident population.
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