Prince Rupert

We arrived in Prince Rupert yesterday. We had no decent wifi so posting was impossible. I am sitting in the local public library. I had a number of questions and the librarians here did a great job of answering them. Yay, librarians! 

Prince Rupert has totem poles scattered throughout the town that are replicas of much earlier First Nation poles. It is difficult to find them even though they are on the maps. 

The town is a deep water port shipping lumber, grain, coal and containers. Many of the containers leaving the port are loaded with milled lumber going to China.

The town has an active salmon cannery. This is one of the few left. There once were hundreds of canneries located along the rivers and into the tidal areas. We visited the Northern Pacific Cannery, which was active from the late 1800's until the early 1970's. It is now a historic landmark. Most of the buildings need continued preserving. 

We took tours of the workers' areas and of the canning area. The workers were comprised of First Nation Natives, Chinese, Japanese and a few Europeans.   

Each ethnic group lived in separate areas of the cannery grounds and interacted only in the cannery itself. The cannery started with everything being done by hand and gradually became mechanized. 

It was definitely an interesting tour!