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Chapter IV
Prince Rupert

When I woke we were still sliding past low, spruce clad islands and it was bitterly cold, grey and still, our wake rippling over water like dull green silk as we passed the mouth of the Skeena River and Digby Island. Fort Edwards near here had served during the War as embarkation point for Alaska, and as a supply base for Alaska and the Aleutians.

Soon after ten we docked at Prince Rupert, the most northerly coastal city in British Columbia, forty miles south of the International Boundary. With lumbar and mining industries, it had the largest cold storage fish plant in the world, and was a renowned centre for fishing and hunting.

The sun came out and I landed to cross a rail track beside the wharf and climb a steep path up the hillside, crowned with a row of totem poles. Carved from single trees, usually the giant coast cedar, these monuments served the coastal Indians somewhat as heraldry elsewhere. Having no written language, legends and tales of the coastal Indians were passed down from one generation to another, the various characters of which were represented in these carvings. As in parts of Europe, certain dances and songs are peculiar to one locality, even to one village or family. Here the totem poles depicted characters, historic or legendary, seen as a crest of the family or tribe whose deeds it commemorated.

Grotesque heads with blank staring eyes, frogs, mammoth fish, bears and hook-beaked birds with widespread wings, mounted one on another as the tale unfolded. Sometimes to a height or eighty or more feet, these crudely coloured monuments possess an intrinsic, brooding quality, arresting despite their often grotesque design. Most of those so far discovered are of no great age. This may be accounted for by earlier ones having rotted away but it is a curious fact that no mention of them was made by early explorers. Captain Cook, an indefatigable observer, who throughout his voyages gave such detailed accounts of native customs and manners, including those of this coast, makes no mention of them other than a reference to the so-called ‘images’ seen at Nootka on the West side of Vancouver Island during the course of his voyage up the Pacific Coast in 1778 in search of a North West Passage.

2… many of these houses are decorated with images; which are nothing more than the trunks of large trees, of the height of four or five feet, placed at the upper end of the apartment, with a human face carved on the front, and the hands and arms upon the sides. These figures too are variously painted, and make, upon the whole, a most ridiculous appearance. These images are generally called Klumma; but the names of the two particular ones, standing abreast of each other, at the distance of about three or four feet, were Natchkoa and Matfeeta.

A sort of curtain, made of mat, usually hung before them, which the natives were sometimes unwilling to remove and when they did consent to unveil them, they seemed to express themselves in a very mysterious manner. It seems probable that they sometimes make offerings to them; for, if we rightly interpreted their signs, they requested us to give something to these images when they drew the mats from before them.

From these circumstances, it was natural for us to suppose that they were representatives of their gods, or some superstitious symbols; and yet they were held in no extraordinary degree of estimation, for, with a small quantity of brass, or iron, any person might have purchased all the gods in the place.

Mr. Webber, in drawing a view of the inside of a Nootka house, wherein these figures are represented, was interrupted, and hindered from proceeding, by one of the inhabitants. Thinking a bribe would have a proper effect upon this occasion, Mr. Webber made him an offer of a button from his coat, which being metal, immediately operated as it was intended, and he was at liberty to proceed as before. But soon after he had made a beginning, he was again interrupted by the same man, who held a mat before the figures. He therefore gave him another button, and was suffered again to proceed. He then renewed his former practice till Mr. Webber had parted with every single button, and then permitted him to proceed without further obstruction”.

In the edition published in 1784, the drawing made by the persevering Mr. Webber is reproduced, and the ‘images’ while not many feet high, appear somewhat like the carved heads on totem poles.

NOTE: (Book IV. Transactions with the Natives of North-America; Discoveries on that coast and the Eastern extremity of Asia, and return southward to the Sandwick Islands. Chap. 3 from a Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, undertaken by Command of his Majesty, for making Discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere: Performed under the direction Captain’s cook, Clerke, and Gore, in the Years 1776, 1777, 1778, 1779, and 1780, being a copious, comprehensive, and satisfactory abridgement of the Voyage written by Captain James cook, F.R.S. and Captain James King LL.D and F.R.S. in 4 volumes. Published 1784).

By way of an unpaved, muddy lane I reached the main street of Prince Rupert, down which I went to look for a shop where I could buy a bottle of rum, thinking it might be welcome if it turned very cold further north. I passed perky little shops filled with dresses and blouses, electric washing machines and the latest models of irons and radio sets. I past a window hung with clusters of silky furs and lines of moccasins, the wide street ran downhill, casual and leisurely, the atmosphere windy with bright sunlight and the sense of wide space and water. The buildings began to peter out, and I had crossed over and begun up the opposite side before realizing that the dignified exterior I had just passed, as a Bank or estate office was in fact, a liquor store.

The atmosphere was almost church like when I opened the door, hushed and dignified. Crossing the wide floor to a young man with bright red hair, I almost whispered my request for a small bottle of rum. He produced a bottle for my inspection and conferred with a colleague.

“The lady wants some rum.” Then, wrapping up the bottle, he told me he had been in England for several years when he came over during the War. His wife, he added, came from Leytonstone. I couldn’t have asked him why, except that from Leytonstone to the borders of Alaska seemed a very far cry, and there is a solid, matter-of-fact sound about Leytonstone not lightly to be disregarded. “She’s there just now” the young man added, and I wondered if she had fled there in longing for its familiarity.

He wished me a happy trip with friendly sincerity and I wandered on up the wind-washed, sunny street and bought bananas from a girl who replied, sighing, to my enthusiasm for the morning that she hoped the sun really would for once shine all day – nothing but rain all summer!

A steep hill shot off at a tangent up a near mountainside, and with equal abruptness widened to a shelf on which perched a small white church with a single bell in its belfry. The wind fought me to the door, enhancing the sudden peace within as it fell shut behind me. Sunlight chequered the white plaster walls and yellow woodwork, and the candlelight burning without a flicker before a painted figure of the Virgin. No clock ticked and except for the wind knocking in muffled gusts against the walls the silence was complete.
 

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