Gabriola Island is one of the Gulf Islands in the Strait of Georgia in British Columbia (BC), Canada. It is about east of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, to which it is linked by a 20-minute ferry service. It has a land area of about and a resident population of 4,500. Gabriola has public beaches and forests, shopping centres, restaurants, a library, an elementary school and a museum. It is known as the Isle of the Arts due to its high percentage of working artists, and its many cultural events include annual festivals related to art, poetry, gardens, music, boating and fishing. The Gabriola Arts Council produces three large annual events: the Isle of the Arts Festival (April), Gabriola Theatre Festival (now defunct) and Thanksgiving Studio Tour (October). History Pre-contact Gabriola is part of the traditional territory of the Snunéymux (of whose name the nearby city of Nanaimo was given an anglicized form). The earliest archeological record on Gabriola is a cave burial dated to about 1500 BC. The pre-contact population of Gabriola is difficult to estimate, but in mid-Marpole times—between about AD 1 and 1000—several thousand people lived in the village at Senewélets or more commonly known as, False Narrows, the site of today's El Verano Drive. Archaeologists have found that infant mortality at that time was surprisingly low and that the population was well adapted to its environment. Other smaller villages on Gabriola were scattered around the coast. After contact, and perhaps as early as AD 1500, the population of the Snunéymux declined drastically from smallpox and other diseases brought to North America by Europeans. Overall, there are over 200 archaeological sites on Gabriola and the isles near it. The island is famous for its petroglyphs, which, while commonly believed to be thousands of years old, are almost impossible to date. Because they are carved in relatively soft sandstone, they are eroding rapidly. Post-contact The first European visit to Gabriola was by the Spanish schooner Santa Saturnina under José María Narváez in 1791. Narváez is said to have given the name Punta de Gaviola to the southeastern end of the island. It may also have been Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, rather than Narváez, who bestowed the name. Over time, "Gaviola" may have been corrupted into "Gabriola" and applied to the whole island. Gaviola is sometimes said to be a misspelling of gaviota ("seagull"), but it may