Due to weather out in Chatham Sound and Dixon Entrance we
stayed in Prince Rupert for three nights.
Dixon Entrance is the second of the two main bodies of open water to be
crossed on the Inside Passage. This body
of water marks the international boundary from Canada back into the United
States and Alaska! Due to strong and
confused tidal flows and complex wind and weather fronts, nasty chop or breaking
waves can develop – so we are waiting to cross during benign weather. It looks like the weather may break for a
good crossing on Sunday.
Boy did it rain in Prince Rupert!! We really got use of our rain gear during
this stay.
We stayed in Cow Bay which is has some shops and some good
restaurants all within walking distance from the marina. To get to the downtown area you have to walk
up hill but at least bringing your purchases back to the boat was all downhill!
Because this is town caters to the commercial fishing fleet,
the Petro-Canada fuel dock next door to the marina where we were staying has a
station on the end of their fuel dock for changing the oil on your boat! How convenient!
As noted earlier in our blog, we changed out our motor on
the boat the winter before last and as we now reached 100 hours on the new
engine it was time to change the oil.
So you pull up to the oil changing station on the dock, had
them delivered two five gallon buckets of oil by crane to the boat and away we
went. There was an oil depository for
the old oil right there on the dock and we were in and out in less than an
hour! Kind of like going to Jiffy Lube
but for the boat!
Early one evening while in Prince Rupert we heard a big
explosion like a transformer box exploding and then the sirens started. Looking out over the stern of our boat we
clearly saw very black smoke. At first
we thought this might be a house fire but then the black smoke got blacker and
billowing over the hillside. We found
out the next morning that a fire broke out in an industrial storage unit and
the fire department had a problem getting the fire under control. The black smoke was caused by the industrial
chemicals and the explosion was propane tanks exploding.
One afternoon while we were in town, Bruce & I took the
local bus and headed out to explore the North Pacific Cannery (NPC) which is a
national historic site located south of the village of Port Edward on the
Skneena River.
The cannery was established in 1889 and was the longest
running cannery on the west coast finally closing in 1981. At one time there were over 200 active salmon
canneries in BC!
The cannery was built on pilings so no matter what the tide,
a fresh catch could be delivered to the cannery and processed in a timely
manor.
Walking on a tour of the cannery was fascinating! We got to see all of the old canning
equipment and how it actually worked.
Learned about how new technologies of the time transformed the industry
and the workforce beginning with the manual canning lines through the
introduction of mechanized canning lines.
Some time was spent learning how the fishermen tended their
nets which were stored and mended in “Net Loft’s” and walked through the
bunkhouses for the various workers, Chinese Bunkhouse, First Nations Houses,
European Housing and the Manager’s & Asst Manager’s Houses. It was very apparent the status of each of
the classes of workers when you saw their housing.
And the company store still has many of the supplies that
were left when the cannery was closed.
It was fun to see all of the old contents of the store and guess how
some of it was used! Including the
ledger that the company store clerk used to keep track of the purchases made by
the employees at the cannery. At the end
of the season the total owed to the company store was deducted from the
employees pay, in some cases the employees owed more than their wages at the
end of the season!
Here is a picture of one of the old buildings that I believe
was used for storage on a piece of the boardwalk that remains:
It would be interesting to go back for another visit in a
few years and see how much further along they are in rehabbing the building and
fixing equipment.
