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We decided to camp in a private park at Port Edward, a few miles from Prince Rupert. The weather forecast was for cool and rainy weather and we had a discount park (Passport America) that we could access in Port Edward. We arrived on Wednesday night and got set up – it was drizzling with low clouds. Even though most of BC is under a fire ban, the campground manager said they had been exempted because it was so wet there, but with the weather as it was, we weren’t even interested in having a fire!

The next morning we headed out to the North Pacific Cannery – a National Historic Site. Established in 1889, it is the oldest remaining salmon cannery on the West Coast of North America and operated continuously for nearly 100 years. At its peak, it employed hundreds of men and women of Chinese, First Nations, Japanese and European backgrounds during the months the salmon were running up the Skeena River.

We arrived in time to join a guided tour that had just started. The many buildings from the cannery are still intact and many have machinery that was used for the canning process. We saw how they initially cleaned and canned the salmon all by hand and then how they were able to use machines to cut down the manual labour.

This is the machine that replaced the many workers that butchered the salmon. A skilled butcher was able to butcher up to 2000 salmon in a ten hour shift – they were paid by the piece. This machine replaced up to 30 skilled butchers with one operator and a couple of assistants. It even adjusted to the different sizes of fish!

It was an interesting tour. We were told there are no longer any factories canning salmon here today but that the salmon is flash frozen and sent overseas to Asia for processing!

One of the buildings was the general store for the cannery. Workers could get anything they wanted here. Initially, no money changed hands – there wasn’t even any price on the items. The worker would simply select what he wanted, and the storekeeper would write the items down along with whatever price he felt like the item was worth. The problem was, that many of the workers ended up at the end of the canning season OWING more money than what they had made in the whole season. This then became an incentive for them to return next year to pay what they owed! Eventually this practice changed and items began to have prices on them.

After the tour finished, we headed to Prince Rupert. We drove through and saw the port, but left fairly quickly due to the weather. We had more rain Thursday than what we’ve had the whole of our trip. It rained right through the evening so we had a quiet evening in the trailer, catching up on some reading.

Tomorrow we head northeast through Smithers, enroute to Vanderhoof on Saturday night. We also have been fortunate to get 3 nights of camping in Jasper National Park and 2 in Banff next week!

Our drive towards Stewart, BC didn’t net us any berries. We didn’t see any evidence of people out picking them and any of our stops, we didn’t see any growing. It’s hard with a trailer to drive into some of the back forest roads exploring. We had more nice scenery, and when we arrived to camp, found there were only a few sites available. The park was nearly full – a dramatic difference from our last stop! However, we were able to get set up and then as supper was almost ready, Paul went out to help a camper who was having some difficulty getting parked. The camper had turned into a driveway across from the site, ready to back into the site but cut the corner too tight resulting in one set of trailer tires ending up in the ditch, suspended. The truck was on solid ground but the back of the trailer on that side had become grounded – couldn’t go forward, and couldn’t back up. With the help of a couple of men from the park who were able to supply a couple of jacks and extra lumber, they built up a support for the wheels. Once that was done, the truck was backed up and the trailer was set up in the site beside us. Paul helped to check it over and everyone was relieved that no major damage was done and even the stairs were able to be unfolded and used. In the process, we met a nice camper and were able to make a new friend!

The weather turned rainy with low clouds but on Tuesday we headed in for a day trip to Stewart and Hyder. Stewart is in BC; Hyder in Alaska. There is no border crossing into Alaska, but you do report to the Canadian Customs agent upon return to Canada. Hyder has very little in terms of homes or stores.

Unfortunately with the low clouds, we didn’t get to see the many hanging glaciers that are on the road into Stewart. We did go to Fish Creek in Hyder, but didn’t manage to be there when the bears were fishing. We did see more fish spawning, seagulls eating fish, a couple of eagles and a juvenile great blue heron.

The area is very lush with huge Sitka Spruce trees – very much like a rain forest. Although disappointing because of the weather, we did have a few nice sights. The low clouds over the water made for some interesting pictures!

We’ve had such wonderful weather all round, so we aren’t complaining about a bit of rain.

Tomorrow, we’ll head towards Prince Rupert – we figure we are this close, we might as well make the trip out to the coast before heading inland to Prince George.