Archeological dig continues at Mill Bay Marina site

The old Mill Bay marina store is removed from the site in November. The new marina structure and building are expected to be completed in less than one month.

The archeological dig at the Mill Bay Marina site is anticipated to continue for another two to three weeks as archeologists and First Nations representatives continue to find items of interest at the end of Handy Road.

Native and turn-of-the-century artifacts, as well as the remains of at least four people, were found at the development site at the beginning of January.

One month later, the dig continues.

"In terms of the archeological dig, we're still not prepared to speak to (findings) directly out of respect for what's going on down there," said development spokesman Duane Shaw.

Archeologists hired by the developers are working alongside First Nations representatives from the Malahat band to uncover an undisclosed number of items at the site.

"At the end of the whole process, in conjunction with the Natives, we would release a report of our findings," Shaw said.

He couldn't say definitively when the dig would conclude, but estimates it'll be another two or three weeks.

A spokesman at the province's archeological branch confirmed nothing out of the ordinary has been discovered at the dig site.

"The work is ongoing and so are discussions with the Malahat First Nation with regard to protocols around dealing with the human remains," spokesman Brennan Clarke wrote in an email to the NLP. "This is a fairly standard site and the developer is being very co-operative and trying to avoid as much of the site as he can."

In the meantime, work continues on certain aspects of the project, which includes a 14-home development as well as a new marina to replace the one destroyed in a spring 2010 storm.

"We're still progressing on the work over the water, working on the marina building itself," said Shaw. "And there is an area on the land outside the archeological zone which we could continue to work on should we choose to, but because we need to build the parking lot next there is essentially nothing going on on that land."

Shaw expects the marina itself to be completed in less than a month, but power and water services won't be operational for another month or two after that.

Still, certain aspects of the marina have proven to already be working.

"We had a 50-knot wind in the harbour two Saturdays ago, and the breakwater stood up fantastically," Shaw said. "It was a 60-knot wind that wiped out the old marina, so we're pretty excited."