Swinging toward and then away from Haida Gwaii - DAY SEVEN - stuck in Prince Rupert

Saturday August 16th


As previously reported, I slept on the overnight ferry back from Haida Gwaii and awoke into mist and foghorns and – suddenly – the harbour. The mist didn’t lift until nearly 2:00pm, and I stayed until then at the hostel (which itself just assumed I was already a checked-in guest, left over from the previous night). I realised that I had 23 hours to kill until my ferry to Vancouver Island left the next day. This was inevitable: the ferry from Haida Gwaii gets in 15 minutes after it, on the days that were possible for me. So I sat in the mist and I blogged. Alex from the Queen Charlotte Observer called and we talked for nearly 45 minutes (then she had to go to her other job (I assume) at the Masset library). I wasn’t sure if the mist would ever burn off, and I wasn’t sure what I would do if it didn’t. But it lifted into a bright, hot, *perfect* day in Prince Rupert. And suddenly, I didn't feel so stranded by the BC Ferries schedule.

Andy called (he was staying at a different hostel, as before) and after some very inefficient stuff-rearranging at my car (understandably: I was tired) I walked down to downtown and found him sitting on a picnic table in the park by the glorious harbour. I believe my first words were "I think I can see why people live here now!". Now that the fog and rain were - not gone - but elsewhere, the city was in a gorgeous setting. Across the harbour were endless rolling treed hills, splotched with partial sunlight. Float planes and tugboats puttered around. There was a sign that said "No Tenting" in the park, and a statue of the founder (presumably) of Prince Rupert (the artist formerly known as Rupert), pointing whitherforth like Jebadiah Springfield from The Simpsons.

We were next to the Royal Northern BC Museum (I think that's the name), so we went in to see the exhibits. The artefacts in were terrific - mostly Tsimshian, some actually only a few years old and some ancient - some Haida - and some relics of northern BC history, including what appeared to be the entire stock of a 1940s camera store, and a complete telegraph office. It was interesting to compare this museum to the one in Skidegate on Haida Gwaii. There, the descriptions are in first person: a museum by the Haida about the Haida. This was more traditional: an anthropological catalogue, in fact with very few functions for objects described, or even dates given. Take away the museum carpet and careful air conditioning and it felt a little like a private collection... and I'm sure the collector would have a few stories about how he (always he) found/bought/"acquired" such-and-such. No need for labelling, he can spin you a yarn. But like I say, *that* seems to be the typical way that museums display native objects: like they are mummified. The presence of newer art objects suggests that I'm wrong, though - but I could do with some more alive labelling!

After the museum with trundled down to Cow Bay, the picturesque tourist part of the harbour, and grabbed fish and chips in a place called "Smiles" that has been going since the 1920s. Andy isn't sure about fish and chips in Canada, but has wisely decided not to compare. I keep insisting that there may not be a consistent thing that we could agree is "Canadian-style" fish and chips. And that Canadians are not universally polite. But the evidence he is collecting is skewing his perceptions.

We walked along the harbour and suddenly found ourselves in an industrial zone that made for glorious photographs in the evening light. The employees of a fish cannery, on break, stared back at the semi-cold lens of our two digital cameras. We walked back toward the more harboury part of the harbour and watched the sea bottom at low tide. Star fish! A dogfish - sacred to the Haida - scuttled around the rocks. A family of otters (or two families?) came up onto a dock below us and noisily divvied up the catch of the evening. We watched them for about 20 minutes! On the way back to our two hostels, we stumbled across a tunnel under a road, marked "Sunken Garden". So of course we went in. For some old industrial reason, there was a nearly enclosed area hidden away below the yards of other buildings, and now it is filled with flowers and civic pride. We played checkers/draughts on the provided table: vaguely dark rocks for black, vaguely light rocks for white. The kings would never stack up.

The midges eventually overwhelmed us and we went our separate ways to seperate hostels - myself via Safeway, to pick up a few groceries for the new two days of travel (food is EXPENSIVE on the ferry). Back at the hostel, I donated Aura's bicycle to the hostel (she *found* it, for free of course, and didn't need me to bother to eventually get it to her again) and basically just went to bed, setting my alarm for 4:45.