Waiting out the weather in Prince Rupert

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.