Gabriola Island is one of the Gulf Islands in the Strait of Georgia in British Columbia (BC), Canada. It is about 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) east of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, to which it is linked by a 20-minute ferry service. It has a land area of about 57.6 square kilometres (22.2 sq mi) and a resident population of 4,500.

Gabriola has public beaches and forests, shopping centres, restaurants, a library, an elementary school and a museum. It is known as the Isle of the Arts due to its high percentage of working artists, and its many cultural events include annual festivals related to art, poetry, gardens, music, boating and fishing. The Gabriola Arts Council produces three large annual events: the Isle of the Arts Festival (April), Cultivate Arts Festival (Summer) and Thanksgiving Studio Tour (October).

Gabriola is part of the traditional territory of the Snunéymux (of whose name the nearby city of Nanaimo was given an anglicized form). The earliest archeological record on Gabriola is a cave burial dated to about 1500 BC.

The pre-contact population of Gabriola is difficult to estimate, but in mid-Marpole times—between about AD 1 and 1000—several thousand people lived in the village at Senewélets or more commonly known as, False Narrows, the site of today's El Verano Drive. Archaeologists have found that infant mortality at that time was surprisingly low and that the population was well adapted to its environment. Other smaller villages on Gabriola were scattered around the coast. After contact, and perhaps as early as AD 1500, the population of the Snunéymux declined drastically from smallpox and other diseases brought to North America by Europeans. Overall, there are over 200 archaeological sites on Gabriola and the isles near it.

The island is famous for its petroglyphs, which, while commonly believed to be thousands of years old, are almost impossible to date. Because they are carved in relatively soft sandstone, they are eroding rapidly.

The first European visit to Gabriola was by the Spanish schooner Santa Saturnina under José María Narváez in 1791. Narváez is said to have given the name Punta de Gaviola to the southeastern end of the island. It may also have been Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, rather than Narváez, who bestowed the name. Over time, "Gaviola" may have been corrupted into "Gabriola" and applied to the whole island. Gaviola is sometimes said to be a misspelling of gaviota ("seagull"), but it may refer to the Spanish surname Gaviola.

In 1792, the island was again visited by a Spanish expedition, under Galiano and Valdés. Galiano and Valdés stayed at Pilot Bay for several days, to repair their vessels and explore the vicinity of what is now Nanaimo. They called the anchorage Cala del Descanso ("Cove of Rest"). Galiano stayed at the island for four days and while there, encountered several Indians and engaged in limited trading. Galiano also found an abandoned Indian village. This site was later wrongly identified as the present Descanso Bay by British cartographers. The British expedition of George Vancouver may also have visited the island very briefly in 1792. While the Spanish explored and charted the Strait of Georgia, they left no permanent settlements. In 1827, fur traders of the Hudson's Bay Company established a post at Fort Langley on the Fraser River, but no Europeans settled in the Nanaimo area until the discovery of coal there in 1852. From the mid-1850s on, coal miners and ex-gold miners began to move to Gabriola, where they started farms to supply the growing population of Nanaimo.

By 1874, 17 settlers were working the land on Gabriola, and two-thirds of those had First Nations wives and young families. Portuguese settler John Silva, for whom Silva Bay was named, married "Louise," the daughter of a Cowichan chief, in 1873. Three of their sons volunteered to fight in the First World War; one was killed, another wounded. The name of Frank Silva, missing in action on Vimy Ridge in 1917, is inscribed on the Vimy Memorial in France.