The largest lake in the Egmont and Pender Harbour plan area, split between two fire protection districts with unprotected ground in between.
Where Sakinaw Lake sits, and the other places we attend
around Egmont. Every name on the map is a link.
A 686 hectare lake five metres above the sea
Sakinaw Lake was adopted as an official name on 2 November 1950, on map sheet 92F/9, with its centre at 49.67333 north and 124.0175 west. Bylaw 708 calls it the largest lake in the Egmont and Pender Harbour plan area at 686 hectares. The federal status report on its sockeye gives the physical measurements: a surface area of 6.9 square kilometres, a mean depth of 43 metres, and an elevation of only 5 metres. The shoreline perimeter is 35 kilometres. The outlet stream is under 500 metres long, running straight into Georgia Strait, controlled by a permanent dam with an integrated fishway.
The lake is meromictic. The same report describes "a 30-m freshwater layer overlying warm, anoxic salt water; this prevents seasonal mixing".
Road access is at the north end only
Bylaw 708 identifies the properties that can be driven to as those "located at the north end of Sakinaw Lake in proximity to the boat launch on Sakinaw Lake Road and Lakeshore Road". The Sakinaw Lake Community Association holds its annual meeting at the boathouse parking lot at the bottom of Lakeshore Road. Minutes of the 4 August 2024 meeting record an access proposal serving 75 lot owners, with about 62 of them putting in $1,500 each toward application costs. The road extension "would create circular access to 23-24 private properties via Crown Land District Lot 4700". Roughly two dozen properties on this lake therefore have no road at present. The same minutes record the public boat launch as being in poor condition, and boathouses and docks as grandfathered under 20-year renewable leases.
Shoreline lots are Rural Residential A under the plan: 1.75 hectares minimum, 60 metres of lake frontage, a 30 metre riparian assessment area and a 20 metre recommended setback.
Two fire districts, and a gap between them
The regional district's evacuation plan puts only the northern shore inside the Egmont and District community, and states that the southern shore "is under the Pender Harbour Fire Protection area". The regional district's fire page repeats that qualifier when it lists the department's communities: Egmont village, Earls Cove, Ruby Lake, and only north Sakinaw Lake. Parts of the Sakinaw Lake area fall inside neither district. The lake is named among the Coast's unprotected areas in the regional district's 2025 discussion of rural firefighting, reported under the headline "'State of limbo': SCRD directors grapple with lack of support for rural firefighting". The companion piece is headlined "Fire insurance in 'unprotected areas,' can cost significantly more".
Distance compounds it. The evacuation plan puts Sakinaw Lake about an eight-minute drive south of Ruby Lake, and the Egmont fire hall is about eight minutes north of Ruby Lake on the other side. That is roughly sixteen minutes of driving to the north shore after a paid-on-call crew has assembled, and the Pender Harbour department comes from the opposite direction to the south shore.
The alarm system is an air horn
A structure fire at Ruggles Bay on 24 July 2024 brought Egmont and Pender Harbour crews and BC Wildfire, and the association's minutes two weeks later record what the lake did in the meantime. Six volunteer firefighters were recognized with $100 gifts each, and the association approved a contribution of $500 to $1,000 to the Egmont volunteer fire hall. One line of the minutes reads "Fire equipment missing from July incident; residents urged to tag personal equipment with names". The pumps and hoses used at a fire here belong to individual owners. Bill Sievewright set up the Sakinaw Emergency Network, a WhatsApp group for emergencies only. FireSmart carried out over 60 home assessments on the lake that year. The association's bank balance stood at $12,672.00.
Without this strong community, we don't know how horrific this could've been.
Paul Stapleton, Sakinaw Lake Community Association annual general meeting, 4 August 2024
The association's safety page tells residents to call 911 or BC Wildfire at *5555, and to use the emergency network group to call for help. It keeps a map of where the fire pumps are around the lake. It states that everyone should have a horn, and that the agreed signal is three blasts of two to three seconds. None of that works at a cabin with nobody in it. On 9 December 2020 the RCMP reported two vehicles broken into at the end of Sakinaw Lake Road, in the same report that listed mailbox break-ins at Ruby Lake.
What a check at Sakinaw Lake covers
Confirmation of whether the property is reached from Sakinaw Lake Road and Lakeshore Road or by water only
The cabin's own fire pump, hose, intake, and fuel, started and run, with the equipment tagged with the owner's name
Brush, needles, and firewood cleared back from the walls, in the terms FireSmart uses in its assessments here
Doors, windows, boathouse, and the dock gear, including the lease-held float and its cables
Heat on and holding, or the water off at the source and the lines drained
Well or lake intake, pressure tank and the septic tank lid and field
Propane tank level, regulator, fittings, and the line to the appliances
Storm damage on the access road and at the boat launch, which the association records as being in poor condition
A photographed record of every item, dated and sent the same day
Almost every household policy sets a rule for a building nobody lives in over winter. The Insurance Bureau of Canada says most policies name the interval at which a competent person must check the house so that the heat is kept on. The alternative, where a wording allows it, is the supply closed and the plumbing emptied. What binds you is the sentence your own insurer wrote, four days at the outside in some, and it is the one we look up first.
What it costs
A scheduled check at Sakinaw Lake is
$55 a visit, plus
$10 travel. The travel charge is the same
everywhere between Gibsons and Egmont. There is no minimum term and no joining fee.
See the full price list.
Where these facts come from
Every figure, date, and quotation on this page was taken from one of these. They are
listed so you can read them yourself.
