DUNCAN

DUNCAN

Is a small-sized city, situated in the Cowichan Valley on the east side of Vancouver Island located approximately halfway between Nanaimo and Victoria.

William Chalmers Duncan, settled on 40 hectares of land near Cowichan Bay in 1864, with a gathering of several settlers. After participating in several gold rushes he settled near where most of where downtown Duncan presently sits. Ironically his son, Kenneth became Duncan’s first-ever mayor. It soon became a whistle-stop along the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway when it built a station here in 1887 and a post office opened in 1908. Formerly known as Alderlea, it was incorporated on March 4, 1912, when it separated from the nearby district of North Cowichan, its first population boom began between 1898 and 1908 when a flurry of mining activity near Mount Sicker drove several prospectors to the area.

Mining still continues in Mount Sicker to this day, but only intermittently. Today Duncan has rallied on tourism as its main economic mainstay because of 41 totem poles that have been erected all over the city. Due to this, Duncan is known as “the City of Totems”.

Not only home to the British Columbia Hockey League’s Cowichan Valley Capitals, Duncan is also home to the world’s largest hockey stick. Measured at 62 meters (205 feet long) and perched on a front entrance of the Island Savings Centre, 2040 seat multi-purpose facility which includes a movie theater, this stick was recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records in 2008 to be the world’s largest and was one of the main attractions of Expo ’86 in Vancouver.

In 2012, Duncan will celebrate 100 years of being an incorporated community. 

Duncan’s population: 4,583