It is time to be starkly explicit.
My research suggests that the original, pre-contact, trail is the Lake and canoes on the Lake.
Horne Lake’s modern stakeholders thought the pre-contact trail went around the lake. And made an agreement with Qualicum First Nation that it has right of access to the trail in perpetuity. But here’s the thing. Different needs make for different modes.
The Coast Salish people traveled by foot through the mountainous terrain and there are hints that they stationed canoes at either end long before before fur traders came to trade. HBC voyageurs used tumplines and (I imagine) were reasonably likely to have used the canoes to traverse the lake. Who used them first, I don’t know. But the local Nations’ people stationed and used canoes to traverse the length of the lake long after HBC left.
Not colonial and Royal Navy officials! They used pack animals (and navy ratings) to carry gear; and were repeatedly surprised to discover canoes hidden in the bush. But preceded to ignore (!) them; instead struggling through the thick, centuries-old undergrowth along the shore. Even after the footpath became a horse trail and then waggon trail, settlers kept recording their surprise encountering canoes stashed at either end of the lake.
British officials preferred a trail. Which became a waggon road, and then logging railway, and then road again.
But the lake is the trail.
Does this discovery mean that the waters of the lake belong to Qualicum First Nation? And the foreshore?