Genealogical Records for Klahoose, European and Asian Cortes Island Families

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The Cortes Island Museum has a genealogical database. It was compiled by Bernice McGowan, whose interest in genealogy was sparked by her mother’s research of their family roots. Coming to Cortes Island some 50 odd years ago, she was intrigued by the fact that so many of the island’s older European families seemed to be related. She has also dug up some census records for Klahoose, Japanese and Chinese residents.  

Bernice McGowan: "I was always  interested in questions like,  'how are you related to so and so." When I started putting my family into a database, I thought  it would be interesting to do that for Cortes if nobody has done that before for the museum. So,  I just started doing it and when I retired, I went, 'okay, now I have some time to do that.'" 

"I started with June Cameron's book, 'Destination Cortez island: A Sailor's Life Along The BC Coast'. She talks about going around Cortes  by water,  talks about the various places  and  has lots of stories of the different families that she knows. So I just took names out of there." 

Bernice went on to incorporate the data from census returns, birth, marriage and death records, newspaper articles, interviews and all the other sources normally used by genealogists.  

Bernice McGowan: "I tend to limit myself to people who've actually lived here.  So say with one family, I might have gone like  'so and so lived here and these were his siblings' if I happened to find it, and they were born in such and such a place and their parents were such and such, but I wouldn't go any further back than that. I'm really interested in the people who lived here, the interconnections between the families that are here and then maybe where they dispersed to."