Scattered across the Pacific off the north coast of British Columbia lies Haida Gwaii, an archipelago wrapped in mist and story. Its name comes from the Haida language and is usually rendered as "Islands of the People," a fitting label for a place shaped by one nation for thousands of years. Residents and visitors alike are drawn to it for its layered history, its living Indigenous culture, its wild shorelines, and the remarkable plants and animals found nowhere else. Two large islands, Graham to the north and Moresby to the south, make up most of its land and are divided only by a slender channel of water. Life here has always turned on the surrounding sea, and countless tales of that sea have been passed from one generation to the next.

Haida Gwaii holds a distinction shared by few places in the country: cut off from the mainland for so long, it has become a haven for creatures that exist in no other corner of the world. Because parts of the archipelago escaped the last great ice sheets, a number of plants and animals survived here that vanished elsewhere, and over the centuries several developed into forms unique to the islands, among them the largest black bears in Canada. Naturalists sometimes call the archipelago "the Galápagos of the North." Towering stands of old-growth spruce and cedar, fed by heavy Pacific rain, blanket much of the interior, and it is this ancient rainforest that shelters so much of the island life.