Duncan, a compact city in the heart of British Columbia’s Cowichan Valley, offers far more than a convenient stop between Victoria and Nanaimo. Known as the City of Totems and surrounded by the traditional territory of the Quw2utsun2 (Cowichan) people, Duncan condenses layers of Coast Salish heritage, railway history, forestry, and small-town reinvention into just a few walkable blocks.
These 12 cultural and historical highlights provide a clear lens on how this modest place became one of Vancouver Islands most revealing destinations.
The Quw’utsun’ People and the Land Beneath Duncan
Long before there was a railway, a townsite, or a city hall, the fertile Cowichan Valley was and remains the traditional territory of the Quw’utsun’ people. Any honest explanation of Duncan begins with their relationship to this place, the Cowichan River, and the surrounding mountains that still define the city’s horizon today.
The Quw’utsun’ Name and the “Sun Warming the Back”
The name Quw’utsun’ in the local Hul’q’umi’num language is often translated as “the warm land” or “the land warmed by the sun,” a nod to the valley’s notably mild climate and generous growing season. That warmth shaped settlement patterns, seasonal food gathering, and the enduring reputation of the Cowichan as one of coastal British Columbia’s most hospitable environments.
For visitors, understanding this name invites a different way of seeing the landscape. The low mountains, river estuary, and patchwork of farms and forests around Duncan are not just scenic backdrops but the setting for a living culture whose oral histories, stories, and ceremonial traditions remain closely tied to specific sites on the land.
Living Culture: Language, Ceremony, and Community Today
Cowichan Tribes, headquartered immediately adjacent to Duncan’s commercial core, is the largest First Nation band in British Columbia. Community members continue to speak and revitalize Hul’q’umi’num, host longhouse gatherings, and transmit ceremonial knowledge in ways that may not always be visible to the casual visitor but profoundly influence the character of the area.
Initiatives such as traditional canoe journeys, school language programs, and community celebrations help ensure that Quw’utsun’ identity is not an artifact of the past but a framework for the present. When travelers see local signage acknowledging the traditional territory or encounter dancers at public events, they are glimpsing just a small portion of a much deeper cultural continuum.
Shared Boundaries, Shared Responsibilities
Duncan’s municipal boundary literally meets Cowichan Tribes lands in the centre of town. This close physical proximity has required ongoing collaboration between the city and the First Nation on services, cultural recognition, and planning. That shared geography is visible in everyday ways, such as public artworks, joint events, and cross-community projects focused on youth, housing, and environmental stewardship.
For anyone trying to understand Duncan, this partnership matters. The city’s identity as the “City of Totems” and as a visitor destination has been shaped not only by municipal decisions but also by long-standing Coast Salish presence, artistic leadership, and cultural protocols.
From Alderlea to City of Duncan: A Railway Town Emerges
Duncan’s emergence as a distinct settlement traces directly to the arrival of the railway in the late nineteenth century. What began as a modest stop at a farm crossing grew into a townsite, then a transportation hub that anchored development throughout the Cowichan Valley.
Duncan’s Crossing and the Influence of William Chalmers Duncan
The city takes its name from William Chalmers Duncan, a settler who farmed in the area and whose land became the foundation of the town. Before there was a grid of streets or a formal municipality, trains on the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway stopped at “Duncan’s Crossing,” a simple reference that later evolved into the town’s name.
As traffic increased, the crossing attracted merchants, services, and new residents, capitalizing on the strategic position between the interior of the Cowichan Valley and the coastal shipping routes to the south and north. The railway effectively stitched Duncan into the economic life of Vancouver Island.
Incorporation and Early Commercial Growth
Duncan was incorporated as a city in 1912, a fairly bold step for a small settlement. Incorporation signaled confidence that the town would remain an enduring service centre, supported by agriculture, resource industries, and regional trade. That year also saw the construction of a substantial new railway station, anticipating continued growth in both freight and passenger travel.
The compact grid of downtown streets that visitors walk today still parallels those early plans. Two and three-storey commercial buildings, many dating from the first decades of the twentieth century, line the core and speak to a period when rail, roads, and shipping intersected here, making Duncan a busy crossroads for farmers, loggers, and traveling salesmen.
Adapting After the Trains Fell Silent
Passenger rail service through Duncan was suspended in 2011 due to deteriorating track conditions, bringing an end to an era that had defined the city’s orientation. Yet the community’s response underscores a consistent theme in Duncan’s history: adaptation.
Rather than allowing the station and rail corridor to become relics, residents and local organizations have repurposed them. Today, the former station houses the local museum, and the surrounding area functions as an accessible community gathering point. This pattern of reinvention, from rail town to heritage destination, is a key thread in Duncan’s story.
The City of Totems: Outdoor Gallery in the Downtown Core
No symbol is more closely tied to Duncan’s public identity than its totem collection. Branded as the City of Totems since the mid-1980s, downtown Duncan functions as an open-air gallery of carved poles that both attract visitors and acknowledge the deep artistic traditions of the region’s Indigenous peoples.
How Duncan Became the City of Totems
Duncan’s totem project began in the 1980s, initiated by civic leaders who hoped to draw travelers off the highway and into the historic core. The effort quickly grew into a collaborative undertaking involving Coast Salish and other Northwest Coast carvers, local businesses, and Cowichan Tribes.
By the mid-1980s Duncan had officially adopted the title “City of Totems,” and the number of poles steadily expanded. Today there are more than forty totems arrayed through the core, most within easy walking distance, turning an ordinary small city into a visually distinctive cultural landscape.
Stories in Cedar: Carvers, Crests, and Oral History
Each pole in Duncan’s collection embodies a specific story, often rooted in the carver’s family histories, cultural teachings, or community events. Figures such as the Thunderbird, Killer Whale, Bear, Frog, and Salmon appear in combinations that carry meanings about power, protection, transformation, and the responsibilities between humans, animals, and the land.
In recent years, the city worked with artists and families to record these narratives and install interpretive signage. For visitors, this means the totems can be read not just as art objects but as texts in cedar, giving insight into Coast Salish values and the personal journeys of the carvers themselves.
Walking the Totem Tour
The self-guided Totem Tour winds through downtown, often marked by painted footprints and supported by printed or digital guides. Starting near the railway station and museum, the route leads past civic buildings, small parks, and commercial streets where totems stand at intersections, in courtyards, and beside gardens.
Because the city is so compact, travelers can complete the walk in an hour or two, yet linger at particular poles that resonate with them. In summer, guided tours help unpack cultural protocols, explain individual designs, and highlight contributions from specific carvers, deepening appreciation beyond surface-level photography.
Respect, Protocols, and Image Use
Duncan treats its totem collection as both a civic asset and a shared trust. The city maintains policies around image use, particularly for commercial purposes, in order to credit carvers properly and respect the cultural significance of the designs. Informal photography for personal memories is welcomed, but visitors are encouraged to learn and acknowledge the stories behind the works.
These protocols remind travelers that the totems are not generic decorations. They are expressions of lineage and identity, shaped by communities who continue to live, work, and create in and around Duncan.
The Historic E&N Railway Station and Museum Heart
In the centre of Duncan, the handsome railway station built in 1912 still anchors the city’s sense of place. While trains no longer stop here, the building has found a second life as the Cowichan Valley Museum and Archives, connecting the town’s transportation past with its role as a guardian of regional history.
A Heritage Station with Outsize Ambitions
Designed for the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway, the station reflects early twentieth century optimism about Duncan’s future as a rail hub. Its generous proportions, gabled rooflines, and broad platform canopy were intended for heavy use by passengers and freight, linking the Cowichan Valley’s farms and mills with markets elsewhere on Vancouver Island and beyond.
The building’s importance was recognized nationally when it was designated a heritage railway station in the 1990s. For visitors today, its red-trimmed facade and position along the old tracks still communicate the central role that rail once played in daily life.
From Platform to Exhibit Hall: The Cowichan Valley Museum
The interior of the former station now houses the Cowichan Valley Museum and Archives, run by the Cowichan Historical Society. Inside, exhibits chronicle everything from early Indigenous and settler encounters to the growth of Duncan’s commercial district, the impact of logging, and the stories of immigrant communities, including a once-thriving local Chinatown.
Displays often emphasize personal narratives and artifacts: a recreated general store, family photographs, tools, and textiles that give a human scale to larger historical forces. Seasonal and rotating exhibits allow the museum to explore specific themes such as wartime service, regional sports, or the evolution of local industries.
Archives and Community Memory
Beyond its exhibit halls, the station houses an active archives that collects photographs, documents, and maps related to the Cowichan Valley. Researchers, students, and curious residents can arrange visits to trace property histories, family stories, or changes in the built environment over time.
This role as a keeper of memory gives Duncan a depth that might surprise travelers passing through. A short visit to the station can reveal how a small city has documented and debated its past, including difficult chapters tied to colonization, resource booms and busts, and shifting economic fortunes.
Forests, Logging, and the BC Forest Discovery Centre
To understand Duncan’s development, it is crucial to look beyond downtown to the forests that surround it. The BC Forest Discovery Centre, located just north of the city core, interprets the powerful influence of logging and forestry on both the Cowichan Valley and coastal British Columbia as a whole.
A Museum Grown from a Private Collection
The Forest Discovery Centre began as the personal collection of Gerry Wellburn, an enthusiast of railway and forestry history who spent years gathering locomotives, rolling stock, and logging artifacts. In the mid-1960s, his collection evolved into a public museum dedicated to the forest industry.
Over time, that museum expanded to occupy roughly one hundred acres of land, with indoor galleries, heritage buildings, and outdoor displays that range from chainsaws and logging trucks to impressive steam locomotives. For visitors, this scale makes the industry’s footprint tangible.
Railways, Logging Camps, and Working Landscapes
One of the centre’s most distinctive features is its operational narrow-gauge railway. Vintage locomotives pull passenger cars around the property, evoking the days when similar trains hauled logs from remote camps to mills and shipping points. The rhythmic clatter of wheels on rails and the smell of creosote offer an evocative sensory window into that world.
Heritage buildings and reconstructed camp elements, such as bunkhouses or workshops, illustrate what daily life looked like for loggers and their families. These settings highlight both the hardship and camaraderie of work in the woods, while interpretive panels discuss the broader environmental context and evolving practices.
Forestry, Ecology, and Changing Perspectives
Modern forestry in British Columbia is markedly different from the era when huge old-growth trees were routinely felled with hand tools and steam-powered equipment. The Forest Discovery Centre addresses these changes by presenting a nuanced view of the industry, from technological advances to debates over sustainability.
Walking the site’s trails and marsh boardwalks, visitors can see how second-growth forests regenerate and how local ecosystems respond to disturbance. This pairing of machines and ecosystems helps explain a central tension in Duncan’s history: the economic benefits of logging versus the long-term health of the land and waterways that sustain both humans and wildlife.
Chinatown, Immigration, and the Layers of Community
While Duncan is often introduced through its railway and forestry stories, its social fabric was also shaped by migration. One of the most compelling, if less visible, chapters is the history of the city’s former Chinatown and the broader contributions of Chinese and other immigrant communities.
Duncan’s Historic Chinatown
From the late nineteenth century into the early twentieth, Duncan was home to a small but vibrant Chinatown that served Chinese laborers working in nearby mines, sawmills, farms, and service industries. Shops, boarding houses, and community associations clustered together, creating a support network in a society that often excluded non-European newcomers.
Although many physical structures from this Chinatown have since disappeared, its presence is documented in archival photographs, business records, and oral histories preserved by local institutions. The story of Chinatown helps explain how the city’s economy functioned and how racial boundaries were enforced and slowly challenged.
Everyday Life, Festivals, and Cultural Persistence
Beyond work, Duncan’s Chinese community maintained cultural and religious practices that connected residents with their ancestral villages. New Year celebrations, traditional foods, and mutual aid associations allowed people to preserve aspects of identity even as they navigated discriminatory laws, head taxes, and social barriers.
Today, museum exhibits and interpretive projects seek to honour these experiences and to reconnect current residents with this little-known layer of their city’s past. For visitors, learning about Chinatown broadens the narrative beyond a simple story of pioneers and resource extraction.
Wider Currents of Immigration in the Cowichan Valley
Duncan’s history also includes waves of settlers and workers from Britain, Eastern Europe, Japan, South Asia, and other parts of Canada. Each group left its imprint in farms, churches, businesses, and clubs that grew up around the town.
Understanding these layers helps explain everything from local place names to the evolution of schools and civic institutions. It also frames contemporary conversations about diversity, reconciliation, and belonging in a region that is far more complex than its small size might suggest.
Small City, Big Culture: Festivals, Arts, and Everyday Life
Beyond museums and landmarks, Duncan’s character emerges through its street-level culture. Markets, festivals, performance groups, and public spaces offer a living counterpoint to formal history, revealing how residents use their city today.
Totem Ceremonies and Public Gatherings
Raising or rededicating a totem pole is not a casual affair. Ceremonies often involve local First Nations drummers and dancers, speeches by elders and civic leaders, and the distribution of gifts to witnesses. These events knit together Indigenous protocols and contemporary civic life, underlining the city’s ongoing relationship with Quw’utsun’ artists and knowledge keepers.
When major poles are installed or anniversaries marked, visitors who happen to be in town can sometimes join these gatherings, gaining insight into how tradition adapts in a modern setting while still respecting core values around reciprocity and remembrance.
Markets, Music, and Downtown Revival
Like many small North American cities, Duncan has invested in its downtown as both an economic engine and a social commons. Seasonal markets bring farmers, craftspeople, and food vendors into the streets, while nearby venues and public spaces host live music, community theatre, and cultural festivals.
Amid the totems and heritage storefronts, this activity lends downtown Duncan an energy that contrasts with its modest population. For travelers, it offers a chance to engage with contemporary life rather than treating the city as a static historic site.
Everyday Heritage in Cafes and Side Streets
Some of Duncan’s most revealing moments come not from organized attractions but from everyday encounters. Conversations in cafes housed in century-old buildings, glimpses of murals in alleyways, and the sight of children weaving between totems on their way home from school all hint at how heritage and daily life intersect.
This blending of past and present is perhaps the clearest thread tying together Duncan’s many stories. The city’s cultural and historical highlights are not isolated points on a map but reference points in an ongoing conversation about identity, memory, and place.
The Takeaway
Duncan’s scale invites people to underestimate it. Yet within a compact downtown and its immediate surroundings, the city weaves together the deep time of Quw’utsun’ presence, the transformative impact of the railway and forestry, the struggles and contributions of immigrant communities, and the creativity of contemporary residents.
The totems that line its streets are a powerful starting point, but they are only one chapter in a much broader narrative about land, culture, and adaptation. For travelers willing to slow down, visit the museum, walk the totem routes, and listen to local voices, Duncan becomes more than a brief highway stop. It emerges as a microcosm of Vancouver Island history, where the past remains visible and influential in the rhythms of everyday life.
FAQ
Q1. Why is Duncan called the City of Totems?
The nickname reflects the large outdoor collection of carved totem poles in and around downtown, created in partnership with Indigenous artists and local organizations.
Q2. Which Indigenous Nation is most closely connected to Duncan?
Duncan lies within the traditional territory of the Quw’utsun’ (Cowichan) people, part of the Coast Salish cultural group, whose main community is Cowichan Tribes.
Q3. How did the railway shape Duncan’s development?
The Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway established a stop at Duncan’s Crossing, attracting businesses and residents and helping the settlement grow into a regional service centre.
Q4. Can visitors still see the historic train station in Duncan?
Yes. The 1912 station building remains a downtown landmark and now houses the Cowichan Valley Museum and Archives, though passenger rail service has been suspended.
Q5. What is the best way to experience Duncan’s totems?
Most people follow the self-guided Totem Tour on foot through downtown, stopping to read interpretive signs and, in summer, sometimes joining guided tours offered locally.
Q6. What does the BC Forest Discovery Centre explain about Duncan?
It interprets the history of forestry and logging around Duncan and coastal British Columbia, using artifacts, locomotives, trails, and heritage buildings to tell the story.
Q7. Did Duncan really have a Chinatown?
Yes. A small Chinatown once served Chinese workers and families in the area; while most buildings are gone, its history is preserved through archives and museum exhibits.
Q8. How can visitors learn about Quw’utsun’ culture in Duncan?
By exploring the totem collection, visiting local museums, attending cultural events when available, and engaging respectfully with interpretive materials created with Indigenous input.
Q9. Is Duncan walkable for cultural and historical sightseeing?
Very much so. The downtown core is compact, allowing visitors to see the totems, museum, historic station, and many heritage buildings on foot within a few hours.
Q10. What makes Duncan culturally significant compared with other small towns?
Its combination of strong Indigenous presence, rich forestry and railway heritage, layered immigrant histories, and an unusually dense public art collection give it distinct depth.