Kyuquot Elementary/Secondary School Profile 

Kyuquot Elementary/Secondary School is located in the isolated village of Kyuquot. This picture is a view from the cement float, looking west. The village is surrounded by mountains on the east and the vast Pacific ocean to the west.

Kyuquot can be reached by driving north of Campbell River on the highway for about an hour and a half.  A few minutes beyond the Woss turnoff, you need to turn left onto the Zeballos road. This road takes you past the town of Zeballos to Fair Harbour, where the water taxis come to pick you up.  This doesn’t sound like much, especially as it is only 72 kilometers – however, it takes an hour and a half to two hours to drive that 72 km, depending on your vehicle and how crazy a driver you are!

After reaching Fair Harbour, you meet your water taxi.  A few of the people in Kyuquot have home businesses that involve taking folk back and forth from the village to Fair Harbour.  It costs $70 to $150 to get a taxi ride, depending on who you call and how big the boat is that he or she uses to come and get you! 

Kyuquot itself consists of Walters Island, Houpsitas Reserve and the inhabitants of some small islands in the area.  The population is mostly located on the Houpsitas Reserve of the Kyuquot-Checleset First Nation. In the winter, the population is around 250, but in the summer, the fishing resorts and summer homes fill up and bring the population to around 500. 

There is a store and post office on Walters Island, plus a couple of small in-home stores on the reserve. There is an RCMP officer in residence about half of the time.  In addition, the reserve has a bylaws enforcement officer.  Power is provided to the community by a community generator that now operates 24 hours a day. There is a project currently underway to bring hydro power to the community.  Most of the inhabitants do most of their business and purchasing in Campbell River. 

Kyuquot is visited every week by the coastal freighter, Uchuck III, which sails out of Gold River. It brings groceries for the store, building supplies and other freight for the inhabitants. In the warmer months, it also brings tourists and kayakers. 

The outpost hospital on Hospital Island is staffed by a nurse. Until recently, it was operated by the Red Cross, and the nursing services are invaluable.  In emergencies, a helicopter ambulance can come to pick up an injured or ill person. 

Air Nootka has three scheduled flights by floatplane every week into Kyuquot.  They bring the mail and ferry people in and out of the community.

Recreational activities in the community take place mainly at the school gymnasium which is often open 6 or 7 nights a week. Community dinners and meetings take place in the community centre on the reserve.

The school has an enrollment of about 50 students in grades 1 to 12.  There are five teachers and a teaching principal, plus a number of support staff, including some who are actually band employees.  The band and the school work together to provide a number of programs and services. 

As a school, we have little access to many facilities that in-town schools take for granted.  We have no museum, no heritage sites, no science-oriented facilities other than what the school itself can provide. When our students do go out, it is usually with their families who have a certain number of specific things they need to do.  The students don’t tend to get to go to recreation centers, the movies, live theatre or other activities that students who live in towns can do. 

By taking field trips out, we can help our students to broaden their awareness of the mainstream of Canadian society and defuse their discomfort with unfamiliar places and crowds of unknown people. Field trips help prepare students for future college and allow them to see people in careers that they cannot observe in isolated Kyuquot. 

However, field trips cost large amounts of money for us.  Travel times require that field trips be overnight. Our physical location makes transportation expensive – not only do we have to pay for bus costs, but we also have to pay for multiple water taxi trips to get everyone out to the bus!