Beneath Waves and Shadows

TYLER HOOPER was born in Ottawa, Ontario, but for the past decade has made his home in Victoria, B.C., a place whose rugged coastline and maritime history have shaped both his life and his work. Around 2015, he became captivated by a local legend about a ghostly ship said to haunt the waters off Vancouver Island: the Valencia. What began as a passing curiosity quickly became an obsession, and a research project he thought would last a few weeks quietly evolved into a years-long investigation.

While reporting his feature for The Atavist about the wreck, Tyler hiked the northern half of the West Coast Trail, retracing the forested headlands and storm-beaten beaches that a handful of survivors crossed in 1906. He later shared his findings through public talks for the Maritime Museum of B.C. and the Nanaimo Historical Society, and in 2020, he assisted the Maritime Museum with research for a dedicated exhibit on the disaster.

Tyler holds a Master of Arts in History from the University of Waterloo and later earned a Certificate in Journalism from Langara College in Vancouver, graduating with the Jeani Read-Michael Mercer Fellowship. That fellowship enabled him to further refine his reporting skills at the Vancouver Sun and Province newspapers. His writing has appeared in The Atavist Magazine, VICE, CBC, and the Vancouver Sun, and a feature he wrote for VICE was adapted into a CBC documentary he helped produce. Beneath Waves and Shadows is his first book.