Alaska is separated from the mainland U.S. by a strip of coastline belonging to Canada. On July 3, 2026, we stopped at Prince Rupert, a port on that Canadian coastline.
We spent most of our day in Prince Rupert visiting the grounds of a former cannery that has been preserved as a national monument. Years ago, fur trapping, canning, and forestry were the main industries of Alaska. Fishing is still the main Alaskan industry, but much of the harvest is frozen, rather than canned. There is not much fur trapping or logging in Alaska anymore.
Bringing train tracks upriver to the cannery made the operation possible. Before airplanes, Alaska's vast spaces were tied together by train tracks.
The cannery buildings had cavernous areas for cleaning and processing fish, as well as assembling nets for the fishing boats.
Cannery workers were hired for the season and stayed in tiny houses like this one. Many of the workers were Inuits, who left their villages for a few months each year to help out in the canneries. Other workers were Chinese or Anglo, and each ethnicity had its own area of houses to live in.
The supervisors had more comfortable accommodations.
We paused at a mockup of the company store. The essential items were tobacco, liquor, and sugar.
The store used this antique cash register.
Canneries were built along Alaska's rivers, so the salmon could be processed as soon as it was loaded off boats which had prowled the nearby river.
After buying one last t-shirt, we boarded our ship and headed for Seattle.
No comments:
Post a Comment