Stewart is a district municipality at the head of the Portland Canal in northwestern British Columbia, Canada,[2] near the Alaskan panhandle.

The Nisga'a, who live around the Nass River, called the head of Portland Canal Skam-A-Kounst, meaning "safe house" or "strong house", probably because it served them as a retreat from the harassment of the Haida and Tlingit from the outer coast.

It and the rest of the Portland Canal had previously been the domain of the Tsetsaut people, also called the Skam-a-Kounst Indians, or Jits'aawit in Nisga'a, an Athapaskan people who became decimated by war and disease and were driven out of the Stewart area by either Haida or Nisga'a in 1856–57.

Nearby Hyder, Alaska, boomed with the discovery of rich silver veins in the upper Salmon River basin in 1917 and 1918.

The exterior shots from John Carpenter's science fiction classic The Thing were filmed within Salmon Glacier.

[7] Due to its proximity to the ocean, the climate retains strong maritime influences, with winters being far milder than locations farther inland.