Lennard Island is situated on the southwest side of the entrance to Templar Channel, which leads four miles north to Clayoquot Sound and the town of Tofino. In 1861, Captain Richards of the survey vessel Hecate named the island for Charles Edward Barrett-Lennard, who the previous year had circumnavigated Vancouver Island in his cutter yacht Templar in company with his friend Captain N. Fitz Stubss. Lennard published an account of his voyage in 1862 as Travels in British Columbia, with the narrative of a yacht voyage round Vancouver Island.
In 1902, Colonel William P. Anderson, chief engineer of the Department of Marine and Fisheries, inspected the lighthouses in British Columbia and selected sites for several new lights, including one on Lennard Island, which would serve local mariners entering Clayoquot Sound as well as mariners “picking up the [Vancouver] Island coast after completing a voyage over the great circle route from the Far East.”