Bensins Island
Feature Type:Island - Land area surrounded by water or marsh.
Status: Official
Name Authority: BC Geographical Names Office
Relative Location: In South Bentinck Arm, SW of Bella Coola, Range 3 Coast Land District
Latitude-Longitude: 52°13'00"N, 126°55'16"W at the approximate centre of this feature.
Datum: WGS84
NTS Map: 93D/2
Origin Notes and History:

Adopted 2 July 1924 on Ottawa file OBF 0870, as suggested March 1924 by BC's Surveyor-General.

Source: BC place name cards, or correspondence to/from BC's Chief Geographer or BC Geographical Names Office

Labelled King Island on preliminary draft of chart; presumably changed to avoid confusion with the long-standing "King Island" separating Dean & Burke Channels.

Source: BC place name cards, or correspondence to/from BC's Chief Geographer or BC Geographical Names Office

A corruption of "Menzies" (Captain Vancouver's assistant), as identified in Mackenzie's Narrative: ".....at two in the afternoon the swell was so high and the wind so boisterous that we could not proceed with our leaky vessel, we therefore landed in a small cove on the right side of the bay. Opposite to us appeared another small bay, in the mouth of which is a island, and where (according to the information of the Indians) a river discharges itself that abounds with salmon.... We met with fifteen men...(but) not the same people as those we had lately seen, as they spoke the language of our young chief with a different accent. One of them made me understand that a large canoe had lately been in this bay, with people in her like me; one of them he called "Macubah" (Vancouver) and the other "Bensins" (Menzies)....." (transcript from Mackenzie's Narrative, extracted in report of "Mackenzie's Rock" by R.P. Bishop, BCLS.

Source: Canadian Geographical Names Database, Ottawa

Kinkilst is an [Indigenous] name for island

Source: Canadian Geographical Names Database, Ottawa