18 September 2022 – Before we arrive in Prince Rupert someone asks, “What’s the weather like?” The answer is: “Well, it rains. And then sometimes it’s … ‘Oh! It’s not raining!'” We fall around laughing.

Prince Rupert

So we are not surprised, the following morning, to awaken to rain.

But we don’t care, because (a) we can dress for it, and (b) some of us are starting the day dry & comfy in the Museum of Northern BC. It is a magnificent introduction to this part of the world, and I recommend it to everyone who visits the city.

Late in the visit we pass through a gallery with an exhibition of recent works by local artist Suzoh Hickey. It includes a painting I want to show you (which I therefore downloaded from her own website), because it shows another face of Highway 16. Yes, it is the Highway of Tears, but it is also more than that — and that, too, is the way of the world. Both/and.

From the Museum, I look out over Prince Rupert Harbour…

and decide that’s where I’ll start a local walk. So I do.

It takes me past commercial docks toward old cannery buildings, now repurposed, down in Cow Bay…

where I hang over a wharf edge to eye a cluster of buildings. I am particularly struck by that patch of vivid blue.

Later I walk around the corner, and discover it is called Smiles Seafood Café, and dates from at least 1968 since that is the year of an old menu on display in one of the windows. I go in. I want a salmon burger.

I don’t get it, since they don’t offer it, but I’m happy to try my first halibut burger instead. And — while also busy with well-vinegared crispy chips — I shamelessly eavesdrop on local conversation. There’s the son working up in Alaska… the mother-in-law who just sold her home in Vancouver… the couple just back from a camping experiment with the kids. (“They loved it! Happy kids? Happy parents.”)

And back out into the rain, where I admire the whale-tail mural on the side wall of Johnny’s Machine Shop…

and the whale-tail bench almost next door.

I think it a one-off, but it’s not. It is the style of local benches, and once I understand that, I’m able to identify this handsome silhouette on the far side of a rain-deserted children’s playground.

We all put our heads down early this night, because we must be out of the hotel by 5:40 a.m. the next morning. Really. (“Silly O’Clock,” as English relatives of mine describe that kind of hour.) That day will be our day to travel the Inside Passage with BC Ferries.

Inside Passage

The rain is pelting down when I first get up (at Very Silly O’Clock), but merely drizzling by 8 a.m., when we get underway.

Good-bye Prince Rupert.

The trip will be 16 hours, Prince Rupert to Port Hardy at the northern tip of Vancouver Island, on a modern, spacious, safe & comfortable vessel provided with a number of distractions to while away all those hours. But, oh, it is still a great many hours!

Sunny/cloudy around 11 a.m., as we pass through the Grenville Channel…

and quite sunny indeed at 5 p.m., with ripples spiralling out to trace our course past the Dryad Point Lighthouse at the northern entrance to Lama Passage. Built in 1899, it still earns its keep: that light is visible for 29 kilometres.

Just take my word for the fact that we dock in Port Hardy about midnight.

It is very dark and we are stunned-stupid with travel. We are also busy being resolutely stoic at the news we’ll be making an early departure from Port Hardy! All in the name of further adventures.

The adventures justify the early start.

And that comes next…