Prince Rupert and the Skeena River Canneries - Mile 553

 It's hard to believe but there are records of over 200 canneries - not at the same time - having operated along the Skeena River to harvest the huge salmon runs. Most started in the early 1900s and closed before 1950, but in its heyday, a true cannery row existed along the waterfronts of Prince Rupert, nearby Port Edward, and Port Essington, now a ghost town on the other side of the Skeena River. Sadly, overfishing took its toll and today just a few canneries remain. 

     Fortunately a far sighted Prince Rupert group has kept one of the major old canneries from falling into the river as most of the others had and is using it instead as a museum to show visitors the scope of the industry and what cannery life was like. 

     Today Prince Rupert, with a population of around 15,000, is the economic center of the northern British Columbia coast, based primarily on the fact that it has both a road and a rail connection through the coast mountains to the rest of Canada, one of the very few places on the Inside Passage where a road actually gets through the rugged coast mountains to the sea. 

    While Ketchikan, a smaller town just 90 miles across the Alaska border gets some 500 plus ship visits a year, Prince Rupert had just a handful in 2011, and is working on developing the right mix of facilities and attractions that would allow them to attract more ships. It has a very scenic setting, abundant wildlife, but like other BC ports, except Vancouver, has a hard time competing with Alaska..

In the heyday of the British Columbia salmon industry, hundreds of canneries and literally thousands of boats would swarm the coast each summer.

Above: a guide at the old North Pacific Cannery, now a museum, explains to visitors how the canning process works. It is a very worthwhile tour.

Bottom: raw logs being loaded aboard an Asia bound freighter in Prince Rupert harbor. That's also jobs leaving - Alaska has a law that requires raw logs to be processed before they can be exported.