D’Arcy Island

Canada’s Forgotten Leper Colony for Chinese Immigrants

By: Jessica Jones

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Hidden in the waters of British Columbia lies an island with a troubling past.

For more than three decades, D’Arcy Island served as Canada’s leper colony for Chinese immigrants diagnosed with Hansen’s disease. Beginning in 1891, men were transported to the small island near Victoria and left there in isolation.

Unlike many medical colonies around the world, D’Arcy Island offered very little care. The patients received limited supplies, almost no treatment, and were largely expected to survive on their own. Some built small homes. Others fished, gardened, and tried to form a community while cut off from the outside world.

Most Canadians never knew the colony existed.

The creation of the island settlement occurred during a period of intense anti-Chinese sentiment in Canada. Chinese workers had helped build the Canadian Pacific Railway and contributed to the growth of British Columbia, yet they were frequently treated as outsiders and subjected to discriminatory laws. Fear of disease only deepened those prejudices.

Officials searching for a place to isolate patients chose D’Arcy Island precisely because it was remote. The colony remained there for more than thirty years.

During that time, many of the men sent to the island never returned. Some died there, far from family members who often never learned what had happened to them.

In 1924 the patients were moved to a new facility on Bentinck Island, and D’Arcy Island fell silent again. For decades its story remained largely forgotten.

Today the island is a quiet provincial park visited by boaters and campers. Yet beneath that peaceful landscape lies a history that reveals much about fear, disease, immigration politics, and the way governments once handled public health crises.

D’Arcy Island is not just a story about illness. It is a story about how societies respond when fear meets prejudice.

This short historical exploration looks at the origins of the colony, the lives of the men who were sent there, and what this forgotten island reveals about Canada’s past.