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A rustic-looking barn stands near the island’s grass airstrip. Although the island was briefly settled by Scottish farmers in 1874, the barn itself was purchased on Quadra Island — more than 200 kilometres to the north — and transported in pieces to its current site. A 5,000 square foot cedar house, its roof covered in sod, comprises the main residence.

Mr. McCaw last put James Island up for sale in 2001 in an effort to ratchet back costs after he saw his fortune drop from $7.7-billion to $2.7-billion due to the collapse of the Dot Com bubble. “He’s selling it because he hasn’t been there in over a year and a half … he wasn’t using it,” Bob Ratliffe, vice president of McCaw’s Eagle Ridge Investments, told Postmedia in 2001. Originally listed for more than $70-million, the price had dropped to $49-million by 2003, before the sale was scrapped altogether.

Since 1995, James Island has been the focus of a land claim by the Tsawout First Nation, who held a permanent settlement on the island until they were pushed out in the early 1900s to make way for the munitions plant. “It was the understanding of our leadership of the day that upon dissolution of the factory, we would have the island reinstated to us,” Tsawout spokesman Floyd Underwood said in 2001.

Last November, the Tsawout had already announced plans to file their second claim on the island. “We’ve got a lot of history there,” said Eric Pelkey, the Tsawout’s senior treaty officer, saying that the island was the site of pitched battles with Haida raiders from the North and remains the site of an unmarked Tsawout cemetery.

“We’d really prefer to have it returned to us; it was our island,” said Mr. Pelkey.

This time around, Mr. McCaw told the Wall Street Journal in an email that his family “adores being on the island.” All he provided by way of explanation for the sale was that it was spurred by “a perfect storm of kids’ activities and no one wants to be left behind.”

National Post

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