PRINCE RUPERT
I am at the north terminal of the Canadian National Railways and the
port of the shortest Pacific route to the Orient. Prince Rupert is
located on an island in a beautiful bay five hundred miles north of
Vancouver and only thirty miles south of our Alaskan boundary. Its
harbour is open all the year round. It is fourteen miles long, is
sheltered by the mountains and islands about it, and large enough for
all the demands of travel. The town reminds me of Jaffa, the port of
Jerusalem. It is right on the sea, and the buildings climb up and down
the mountains of rock close to the shore. The chief difference is that
the hills of Jaffa are bleak and bare, while those of Prince Rupert are
wooded and clad in perpetual green.
Until 1912, when the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, now a part of the
Canadian National lines, chose this point for its western terminus,
this place was a forest. Pines and cedars covered the mountains above,
and the stumps still rising out of the vacant lots look like the black
bristles of an unshaven chin. The town has several thousand people, and
I venture it has thousands of stumps. They are rooted in the crevices
of the rock, and the ground between them is matted with muskeg, which
holds water like a sponge and makes it impossible to go across country
without thick boots or rubbers.
[Illustration: Southern British Columbia is a land of winding rivers
and lakes, towering mountains and sheltered valleys. Many of the little
cities along the Columbia and the Kootenay have been settled largely by
Britishers.]
[Illustration: Apples from the irrigated orchards of the Pacific slope
are sold in eastern Canada, three thousand miles away, in competition
with the famous Nova Scotia fruit. British Columbia often ships a
million boxes of apples a season.]
[Illustration: Victoria, in its appearance, its climate, and its
people, is like a section of the south of England transplanted to
Vancouver Island. It is noted for the beauty of its location and for
its handsome provincial parliament buildings.]
The muskeg was one of the difficulties that had to be overcome in
laying out and building the city. Another and still greater difficulty
was blasting the hills. Every bit of the town is founded on bed rock,
and many places have had to be levelled with dynamite for the business
streets and foundations of buildings. The streets in the residential
section are paved with three-inch planks. They look like continuous
bridges, but they are substantial enough for heavy teams, motor trucks,
and automobiles. In some places the planks are spiked to trestle-work
from ten to fifteen feet high, and in others they lie on the rock. The
steep hills that extend back to the wooded mountains behind Prince
Rupert are so rough that to cut roads through them would bankrupt the
city many times over.
It was in company with a member of the board of trade and the civil
engineer who laid out Prince Rupert that I took an automobile ride
through the town. The plank roads are so narrow that turning-out places
have been built at the cross streets and curves, and the inclines are
so steep that we had all the sensations of a giant roller-coaster as we
dashed uphill and down. I expected a collision every time another car
passed. Now we shot around a curve where a slight skidding might have
hurled us into a ravine; and now climbed a hill where the trestle-work
trembled beneath us. We rode for some distance through “Lovers’ Lane,”
a part of the ninety acres of forest in the public park, and later
climbed the steep slope of Acropolis Hill.
On top of Acropolis Hill we inspected the city’s waterworks. The supply
is carried to a reservoir here from Lake Woodworth, five miles away.
The reservoir, which has been dug out of the rock, contains a million
gallons of water more than the regular needs of the city.
On another part of the hill are the municipal tennis courts and
baseball park. The tennis courts are made by laying a level plank floor
upon the uneven surface of the rocks, and erecting about it fences of
wire netting so high that the balls cannot possibly fly over and roll
down the steep slopes of the mountain. The ball park was blasted out
of the rock. It is so situated that the hills about it form a natural
grandstand, and consequently admission is free. The players are paid by
passing the hat.
We have a good view of Prince Rupert from Acropolis Hill. In front of
us is the harbour, sparkling in the sunlight and backed by mountainous
islands of green. Behind us are forest-clad hills, lost in the clouds,
and below is the city, connected with the mainland by a great bridge of
steel. The business section is made up of two- and three-story frame
buildings, painted in modest colours. Here and there the spire of a
church rises above the other roofs; and should you take your spyglass
you might pick out the signs of banks, stores, and real-estate offices.
There are many comfortable one- and two-story wooden cottages rising
out of the muskeg. The people have blasted out the stumps in making the
foundations for their homes, and some have brought earth and stones
and built up level yards with lawns as green and smooth as those of
old England. All kinds of vegetation grow luxuriantly. There are many
beautiful flowers, and the town is green from one end of the year to
the other.
The climate here is milder than in Baltimore, Richmond, or St. Louis.
The mean temperature in summer is about sixty degrees Fahrenheit, and
in winter the thermometer seldom falls below eight or ten above zero.
There is but little snow in the winter. The rainfall reminds me of
that of southern Chile, where they say it rains thirteen months every
year. Because of the dampness the frosts are heavy, and they sometimes
cover the roads to a depth of three inches. Then the people have
tobogganing parties on these roller-coaster highways.
Prince Rupert started with a boom. The town was planned and partially
developed before a single lot was offered for sale. The Grand Trunk
Pacific Railway decided upon the site, named it after the first
governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, who was the nephew of Charles I,
and sent its engineers to clear the land, level the hills, and lay out
the city. The railway owned twenty-four thousand acres of land and the
first sub-division covered one twelfth of that area. The future city
was advertised, and auctions were held in Victoria and Vancouver. The
first lots brought high prices, and the boom continued until the war
halted its progress.
The inhabitants believe this city will become a great port and that it
will some day have a population of one hundred thousand or more. With a
view to the future, the city has built the largest floating dry dock on
the Pacific coast. It has cost more than three million dollars and will
accommodate ships up to six hundred feet in length and twenty thousand
tons capacity. Nearly three thousand vessels enter the harbour in a
year, and this number is on the increase.
Prince Rupert lies so far north on the globe that it is five hundred
miles nearer Yokohama than are Vancouver and Seattle. Moreover, the
journey from western Canada to Europe is shortened by the railroad
route from here to the Atlantic. England is only about four days from
Halifax. The Canadian National runs from there to this port in one
continuous line across the continent. It crosses eastern Canada far
north of the Great Lakes and from Winnipeg goes through the wheat belt
to Edmonton. It climbs the Rockies by easier grades than any other
road. It has short cuts by various connections to all the United States
cities, and it promises to be the fast freight route for perishable
products between Alaskan waters and the rest of the continent.
The city is two days nearer Alaska by steamer than are the Puget
Sound ports, and travellers from the eastern parts of Canada and the
United States can reach there that much sooner by coming here over the
Canadian National.
The fisheries of British Columbia are the most valuable in the
Dominion. Prince Rupert has become one of the fishing centres of the
Pacific and the chief halibut port in the world. It has thirty-five
canneries and seven large cold storage plants, and scores of steam
vessels, sailing boats, and gasoline launches go back and forth between
here and the fishing grounds. About fifty American vessels land their
catches at this port every week, and every train that goes eastward
over the railway carries carloads of fresh fish to the cities of the
United States.
Halibut are caught for nine months of the year, twenty million pounds
being landed here in a single season. The moment they are taken from
the sea they are packed in ice for shipment or put into cold storage.
I am told that the fish can be kept perfectly fresh for a month by the
present method of packing. During the summer as many as a half dozen
carloads are shipped in one day. More than a quarter of a million
pounds were recently sent to New York and Boston in a single trainload.
[Illustration: Prince Rupert has miles of streets made of planks,
upheld by trestle work, or resting on the rock underlying the city.
Most of the streets and building sites were blasted by dynamite from
the sides of the mountains.]
[Illustration: British Columbia leads all Canada in the value of its
fisheries, of which Prince Rupert is the centre. More halibut is
brought here each season than to any other port in the world.]
[Illustration: The animals, birds, and fish surmounting the totem poles
are the family crests indicating the different branches of an Indian
tribe at Kitwanga, not far from Prince Rupert. The poles number a score
or more, and some are a hundred feet high.]
The chief salmon fisheries of the Pacific coast are farther north in
Alaska, but nevertheless British Columbia’s catch is worth ten million
dollars a year. At Vancouver I saw the fleets of salmon trawlers in the
mouth of the Fraser. There are many salmon fisheries near the mouth of
the Skeena, not far from Prince Rupert, and forty per cent. of all the
salmon packed in the province is put up in this city. The fresh fish
are shipped only during the summer months, but they are exported in a
frozen state from the cold storage plants throughout the winter.