Day 11 - Prince Rupert

This morning dawned a little overcast. I was expecting that. Every picture of Prince Rupert I've ever seen on the internet has shown a town cloud-covered and grey. We're about as far north as Newcastle upon Tyne here, I wasn't expecting the best of weather. Still, we chanced it, both putting on our shorts.

Breakfast was the usual, Sandra going for cereal, me going for something with eggs and bacon in it. And toast. And hash browns. The coffee in Canada is usually the good stuff, so I drink it black. They always come round and refill your mug too, no messing.

After breakfast we left the hotel and tried to find the VIA train station ready for tomorrow's trip on the Skeena Train. The map from the hotel lobby and the map in my Moon travel guide both pointed us down Bill Murray Drive (not that Bill Murray, this one). Sure enough the train was there, but the station next to it was all boarded up. It turns out that the station is now near the BC Ferries terminal where we were dropped last night. Good job we checked that out, I wouldn't have wanted us to have found ourselves standing outside a disused railway station with our suitcases at 7 am tomorrow.

We headed on into the centre of Prince Rupert. The conversation went something like this:

"What day is it?"
"I don't know."
"Is it Tuesday?"
"Tuesday? Er..."
"I think it's Tuesday."

To my mind, that's the sign we're having a good holiday.

The sun was trying to break through but it was still cloudy, so we spent some time in the Prince Rupert Museum of Northern British Columbia, which told the story of this town. Prince Rupert is on an island called Kaien Island, at the mouth of the Skeena River. For about 5,000 years the First Nation tribes lived in this area, hunting salmon and sea otters, trading dried fish and furs with other tribes for berries and meat. The arrival of fur-hungry Europeans upset that whole balance, and soon the sea-otters were extinct and the native tribes had moved to reservations elsewhere. When it was decided that a railroad link was needed to northern British Columbia to promote growth and improve the movement of timber into the mainland interior, lengthy surveys of the coastline were carried out, and the Prince Rupert area was chosen as the terminus. A base camp was established in 1906, and men and supplies were shipped out. They built a dock, living quarters, offices, a plank roadway, and soon a town was born. By the time the railway arrived in 1914, Prince Rupert already had its own local governing body. Like a lot of the towns we've seen on the coastline, Prince Rupert might have disappeared if not for the World Wars; during those conflicts the need for lumber increased enormously, and the future of the town was assured.

By the time we left the museum, the sun was blazing down. We made our way to the Cow Bay area of town, which used to be a salmon and halibut unloading and processing area, but which now holds shops and cafés. We ate a lunchtime muffin and had a coffee overlooking the seafront, then headed back to our hotel to drop some things off.

If you had told me earlier this year that I would find myself sitting on the shore front in cloudy old Prince Rupert, wearing shorts, rubbing sun lotion on, and relaxing to read a book, I would have laughed. Nevertheless that's what we ended up doing, chilling out in the sunshine (because sitting on our bums for 15 hours on a ferry yesterday really took it out of us). Prince Rupert has been lovely, far more than I expected from this part of the journey. I'm sure a lot of that has been down to the beautiful weather, but the scenery has helped, and so has the peace and quiet.

We ate Italian tonight. "So, you're visiting from England?" asked the proprietor. He's the first one to identify us as English.

Another early start tomorrow. The train leaves at 8 am. We'll be leaving the coast behind for the first time in a week and a half. In two days we'll be in the Rockies. At least then we'll get a break from these pine trees.