Solander Island

On the BC coast we have a small island that gets its name from a Swedish botanist, Solander Island. This island is situated just off the Brooks peninsula on the west coast of Vancouver Island and is now an ecological reserve.

Daniel Solander was born in Piteå in northern Sweden in 1733. He enrolled at Uppsala university in 1750 to study law but abandoned the law after becoming inspired by botany professor Carl von Linneaus, who is the father of taxonomy ( naming of plants). Daniel Solander mastered this new naming system and was sent to England in 1759 by Linneaus as an emissary. In England, Solander was appointed assistant librarian at the British Museum in 1762.

During this time he met a wealthy landowner, Joseph Banks, and through him was invited to join Captain James Cook’s ship the “HMS Endeavour” on its first voyage in 1768. It was a circumnavigation that went to South America around Cape Horn to the South Pacific, New Zealand and Australia and on through SouthEast Asia and South Africa to England, returning in 1771.

During this voyage Solander and Banks collected over 30,000 specimens. Solander was meticulous in his work, categorizing the specimens they collected. He wrote notes that are now bound together and kept at the Natural History Museum in London.

He also invented the “Solander box” to preserve his notes during the voyages. This protective case is sometimes still used today in libraries and archives. After his return to England Solander spent the rest of his life working at the British museum. He never returned to Sweden. Daniel Solander died in London in 1782.

However Captain James Cook went off on another expedition to find the Northwest Passage. This took him up the British Columbia coast and it was then that he named Solander Island after his friend Daniel Solander. Many in BC think that Solander was on Captain Cook’s expedition to our coast but that is not the case.

GP