A private island rental between Quadra Island and Campbell River — your own dock, your own beach, your own slow mornings.
A short crossing from Campbell River. Long views across to Quadra Island. A restored house, a dock above a kelp forest, a wood-fired sauna barge — and the rest is trees, beach, tide pools, and the kind of quiet you can only get when nobody else can walk over.
We didn't build the house — we restored what was already here. Three bedrooms, two baths, comfortable but unfussy. The location, the views, and the sights and sounds outside the windows do almost all of the work.
Three bedrooms, two baths, woodstove, full kitchen, big south-facing windows out toward Discovery Passage. Comfortable for a family or a group of six. Modest by design — the spectacle is outside.
Bring your own boat, or have a water taxi run you over from Campbell River or Quathiaski Cove (our caretaker is happy to arrange one). The dock takes vessels up to ~40 ft. Look straight down at low tide and you're looking into the kelp forest that makes the diving what it is.
One of only a handful of floating saunas anywhere in British Columbia. Fired with deadfall gathered from the island — which produces the dense, soft löyly that real wood and live steam make and electric saunas can't. From the bench you look out at a couple dozen harbor seals hauled out on the rocks beside the sauna. The protocol: sweat, plunge directly into the cold Pacific off the side of the barge, climb out, repeat.
The south side of the island has a pocket beach next to the house and tide pools that fill twice a day with whatever happens to wash in. Best at the lowest tides.
Black-tailed deer swim across the channel from Quadra and spend days at a time grazing the island. Harbor seals haul out on the rocks beside the sauna. Bald eagles work the channel from the snags. The interior forest — second-growth, mossy, thick with salal — was never cleared and we plan to keep it that way.
A small fleet of stand-up paddleboards and kayaks is included with your stay. If you'd like a rowboat — for a quick crossing to Quadra or for fishing in the cove (not for runs to Campbell River) — we list ours separately on GetMyBoat. Rowboat operators must hold a valid Pleasure Craft Operator Card (PCOC).
The whole island runs on a solar array, with a small generator for backup. Drinking water comes from a well drilled deep into the hard igneous bedrock at the center of the island — clean, mineral-rich, and unusually good. Off-grid living at its finest.
There is enough on Grouse Island itself to fill a long weekend without leaving the shoreline. There is enough on Quadra to fill the rest of the week.
The interior of Grouse Island was logged only at the perimeter — the Pidcocks couldn't reach the middle with their pile-driver winch in 1909, and we've left it alone. What's there now is classic Pacific Northwest second-growth: thick moss on the stumps, salal and sword fern at knee height, the occasional Douglas-fir holding court. Trails wrap the perimeter and cut a couple of routes through the middle.
The shoreline walk is the other half of it — pocket beaches, oyster shell, exposed igneous bedrock, the occasional bald eagle. Two hours if you take your time.
Campbell River — across the channel — calls itself the Salmon Fishing Capital of the World. The Tyee Club, founded in 1924, has been awarding pins for landing salmon over 30 lbs on light tackle from rowboats since the 1920s. They fish from the Tyee Pool just across Discovery Passage. The waters around Grouse are part of the same fishery.
Shore fishing. Discovery Passage runs deep right up to the island, which puts species that usually require a boat to find within rod-and-reel range from the bank.
Salmon by boat or by guide. Troll the channel from your own small boat — even a runabout will do — or have a Campbell River salmon guide pick you up directly from the dock. The major runs (chinook, coho, pinks, chum) move through the Passage from June through October.
Crab traps in the next harbor. Drop pots in Gowlland Harbour, the next inlet up the coast, for Dungeness and red rock crab. (The abundant seals around our own cove eat most of the crab here — plan to set traps elsewhere.)
Shellfish at Rebecca Spit. Discovery Passage itself is closed to bivalve harvest year-round — which is why you head around to the east side of Quadra. Rebecca Spit Provincial Park has practically unlimited Pacific oysters, manila clams, varnish clams, and a few mussels at low tide.
Sea urchins for uni at extreme low tides. Right at the island, on the lowest tides, hand-pick a few of the abundant red and green sea urchins from the shallows. The roe is some of the most delicious uni you'll ever eat. Hand-picking only — no harvesting while diving — and check the current DFO recreational shellfish limits before you go.
Bring a BC tidal-water license and check current shellfish-harvest openings before you go. Cooking on the outdoor grill is encouraged.
"The best temperate-water diving in the world, and second only to the Red Sea."
Grouse Island sits a few miles off Vancouver Island's east shore, in the same current-fed waters Cousteau was talking about. Dive Campbell River lists the west side of the island as one of their Top-5 local dive sites — a wall that drops fast, with dense life clinging to it.
One thing that makes the diving exceptional: the entire Discovery Passage region is a no-take zone for divers. You can fish or set traps, but harvesting while diving is prohibited. The wildlife has noticed — octopus sit out on ledges, wolf eels watch you go by, ling cod let you get close.
The site is boat-accessible only — which, when you're staying on the island, means you walk down to your dock and you're already there.
Cousteau quote via PADI. Site description and species list from Dive Campbell River. More on diving the Passage at Diver Magazine.
The pocket beach next to the house and the rocky shoreline either side of the dock fill twice a day with cold clear water and the small universes that live in it. At the lowest tides — anything below about a +0.3 m — the pools open up to walking-around depth and the life that's normally underwater becomes visible from above.
A short field guide to what's commonly found:
Look, don't keep. Touch lightly, lift gently, and put everything back exactly where you found it. (Sea urchins are an exception — see the Catch your dinner section.)
Quadra Island is a five-minute row from the dock. The whole of it — the public dock and the Q Cove village immediately across the water, the Cape Mudge lighthouse, the Nuyumbalees Cultural Centre, the bakery and the cafés, the trails through Main Lakes Chain — is yours to explore for a day or for a week.
A short list of what people who stay on Grouse end up doing on Quadra:
The 10-minute BC Ferries crossing from Quathiaski Cove to Campbell River runs every hour or so during the day, so the mainland is also a short hop if you forgot something at the market.
By air. Campbell River Airport (YBL) is closest — multiple daily flights from Vancouver, plus connections from Calgary and Seattle. Comox Valley (YQQ) and Nanaimo (YCD) are within a 1.5–2 hour drive south if Campbell River doesn't work for your routing.
By ground, then water. From Campbell River it's a 15-minute taxi to the water-taxi docks, then a ~20-minute crossing to the island. Our caretaker can arrange the water taxi on your behalf and will meet you at the island dock for an orientation — see the Local Guide for details.
Once you're here. Grouse Island sits inside the sheltered notch of Quathiaski Cove. From the dock it's a short hop to fish the salmon runs of Discovery Passage, paddle around the cove, or run up to Desolation Sound for the day.
50.0398° N · 125.2253° W
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Reviews will land here as the 2026 season fills in. Until then, the rest of the page has done all the talking.
We list the island on the major rental platforms during open windows of the year. Tap through to the live listing, or email us directly for longer stays and full-island bookings.