CANOUAN - GRENADINES OF THE ST.VINCENT

Canouan (pronounced "can - ah - wan") is an island in the Grenadines belonging to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. It is a small island, measuring only 3.5 miles (5.6 km) by 1.25 miles (2 km) and has a surface of 7.6 km². It lies approximately 25 miles (40 km) south of the island of St. Vincent. The population is about 1,700. A barrier reef runs along the Atlantic side of the island. The highest point on the island is Mount Royal. Two bays, Glossy and Friendship, are located on the southern side of the island. Some time prior to 200 B.C. a cultivated tribe called the Arawaks reached the island using dug-out canoes. These new residents brought plants, animals, and basic farming and fishing skills with them. They lived there for 1,500 years until the Caribs invaded the island . More than 200 years after Columbus laid eyes on St. Vincent, the Europeans established a kind of permanent settlement. Its mountainous and heavily forested geography allowed the Caribs to defend against European settlement here longer than on almost any other island in the Caribbean.  After the Caribs were defeated on other islands they joined slaves who had escaped repression on Barbados by following the current and trade winds westward to St. Vincent, as well as those who had survived shipwrecks near St. Vincent and Bequia.

The mixed descendants of the island warriors and the freed Africans, who became known as the Black Caribs, had a common distrust and disgust for the Europeans, and proved to be a fearsome foe. The Caribs feared complete domination so they allowed the French to construct a settlement on the island in 1719. The French brought slaves to work their plantations. By 1748, the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle officially declared St. Vincent and its surrounding islands to be a neutral island, controlled by neither Britain nor France. The two countries continued to contest control of the islands, however, until they were definitively ceded to the British in 1814. In 1951 universal adult suffrage was introduced in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and in 1979, it became an independent state within the British Commonwealth with a democratic government based on the British system.

In 2008, the runway at Canouan Airport was lengthened to almost 6,000 feet to accommodate larger aircraft. It is now the jet port for the Grenadines. Scheduled ferries link Canouan to St. Vincent, Union Island and Mayreau.