Hawg--- Corpus Christi is actually in a different country but yes, it is south of us.
And I don't think you need to fear the Gulf Islands (or anywhere else in BC) becoming over-run by riffraff, at least not the kind from the US. Riffraff from the UK and Germany may be a different story but since they have cool accents and know what football actually is, they're a lot easier to tolerate.
Most people from the US don't "get" BC for several reasons:
1. Americans coming across the border are soon put off by the logic, common sense and self-reliance of the folks who call the raincoast home. People who can think for themselves and aren't afraid of what... Rain? Clouds? Trees? Sharp saws? .... tend to totally baffle US citizens so they soon depart for southern climes where they can depend on the security of others doing their thinking for them.
2. BC is way scary. There are all the aforementioned trees along with huge ferns and stickerbushes with creatures living amongst them like bears, ravens, otters and banana slugs that are waiting to eat "visitors." Then there are the Orcas. Not the Walt Disney "resident" pods that eat salmon and pose for the whale watch crowd but the nasty, vicious transient pods that lunge out of the water to snag seals off the beach and love nothing so much as ripping into some poor boater's Tollycraft or Bayliner or Grand Banks and after reducing it to shards of fiberglass devour any humans who might have been inside. (This explains the popularity of metal boats up here with fishermen, water taxi operators, etc. who know better than to run around in easily chomped-up wood or glass boats.)
3. There are stretches of coastline that not only don't have a McDonalds or Jack in the Box or WalMart every couple of miles, there isn't
anything for a whole lot of miles. That, to the typical American boater, is terrifying.
4. The harbors are
way too funky for Americans. Take one we happen to like a lot, Telegraph Harbor on Thetis. Wooden docks with gaps between the planks that can snag a high heel shoe and that are held in place by (the horror) old creosoted piles. And to make things worse, you have to tie your boat to a bull rail. From what we've observed over the years bull rails are as baffling to Americans outside the PNW as securing the eye in a mooring line to the boat instead of the dock.
On shore there is pub. No five-star Westin or Grand Hyatt hotel with a heated horizon pool and swim-up bar. To get to the ferry that runs across to Chemainus you have to
walk over the hill. No chauffeured Bentley or frilly horse-drawn carriage.
5. The very nature of the water is terrifying to most American boaters. Tidal ranges of 10 or 12 feet to up over 20 farther north cause currents and rapids and whirlpools that suck boats out of sight never to be seen again. You're pretty familiar with this coast, right Hawg? So you know that by typical BC standards, Dodd Narrows is pretty tame even in full song. But we've seen American charter folks take one look at it and do a 180 and head south at flank speed and not stop until they were tied up securely in Roche Harbor in the San Juans. And even then they were too scared to continue so had the charter company come out of Anacortes or Bellingham or wherever to retrieve the boat while they took a plane home.
So no, I don't think we have to worry much about the Gulf Islands becoming over-run like the San Juans have been. Leave aside the fact that a growing number of Americans don't even know where BC is (or Canada for that matter), the place is simply too terrifying to contemplate as a boating destination.
It even intimidates the hell out of the cruise ship captains, which is why they never stop there but beat feet as fast as they can for SE Alaska where, even though it has the same scary stuff that BC has, it's all hidden behind a veneer of Walmarts and fast food joints and souvenir stores selling plastic totem poles made in Sri Lanka.
