Prince Rupert to Stewart, B.C.

Written June 1, 2016

The North Pacific Cannery at Port Edward was once a booming salmon cannery employing large numbers of Canadians separated by ethnicity for their accommodations and the work they performed.

Today it is a National Historic Site, museum and interpretive centre.

This was my first stop Wednesday after checking out of my motel in Prince Rupert. I’d tried to go Monday based on my guidebook saying it was open daily, but like the museum in Prince Rupert, it shuts down Mondays. Better luck this time.

I arrived just as a tour was leaving led by Lori, a First Nations woman who had grown up around the fishing industry. She now lives with her cats in one of the many cabins that once housed fishery workers.

First Nations workers as well as Canadians of European, Chinese and Japanese backgrounds worked at the plant in its heyday in the late 19th and early 20^th centuries.

Lori showed us through the cabins where a large First Nations family might have lived in one room with a primitive toilet in the corner. At least it flushed twice a day when high tide came up, she said.

We toured the net loft where nets were hung to dry and community events were sometimes held. There was the rip-off company store where workers bought on credit and sometimes had to pay their entire season’s earnings to pay off their debts at the season’s end.

There was the rendering plant where workers had to wade deep in putrefying fish heads and guts, which decomposed for days before the oil was extracted for fish oil nutritional supplements and cosmetics and the solids were turned into pet food.

Back on the road, I retraced my route through Terrace and on to Kitwanga, the start of the Cassiar Highway.

My first stop not too far up the road was the First Nations village of Gitanyow, not a prosperous community by any means, but home to a beautiful collection of totem poles. Some of these are as old as a century and a half, and artistically, these were in a class above some of the others I’d seen. Painter Emily Carr used these ones as a source of inspiration.

It alternated between downpour and drizzle and back to downpour. I sometimes turned my wipers off for a minute or two, only to have to switch them on to high.

I had considered camping at Meziadin Junction where there is a provincial park at the turnoff for Stewart and Hyder, but just as a got to it, the sky opened up. There were a few motor homes, but no one was crazy enough to be camping in a tent. I wasn’t either.

I decided to continue on to Stewart, where I managed to find another basic room, discounted because it was above the kitchen of the King Edward Hotel and there was (minor) fan noise.

Stewart was once a booming mining town. There’s still some mining in the area, but these days tourism plays a larger role. The tourist season is only just beginning.

There are numerous old wooden buildings in various states of disrepair. Some have been restored for tourism while others continue to decay. Stewart is certainly a community with lots of character. And when the clouds break and you look up at the mountains towering above it with their snow and glaciers, it’s spectacular.

I’m here for two nights, and will visit Hyder, Alaska, three kilometres away, tomorrow.