Prince Rupert and the Northern Canyons

This title sounds like the start of a fairy tale; it was indeed a fairy tale approach to a new land. We made a charmed passage into Dixon entrance (the dreaded dash out into open Pacific ocean waters) in a calm window between lows, and stole across the border by moonlight. At first light, dawn’s rosy fingers pointed the way into Prince Rupert harbor, our first landfall in Canada. We had to climb into the country: with another extreme low tide, it was a 45° scramble up the quayside ramp, clutching our passports, to reach customs. Then a sunlit walk up to the museum as a string of Steller’s jays left their roost in tall Sitka spruce trees. But wait: we have crossed several new boundaries here: and it dawns on us that suddenly everything is different: the red maple leaf flag of Canada, the rising sun and union jack symbol of British Columbia, a solid brick and sandstone courthouse on the hilltop in British Empire style, and a flock of European starlings in a red-berried Rowan bush, immigrants from the Old World.

Our museum visit introduces us to the world of the Tsimshian Indians who still live here in their ancestral lands. We are divided into Wolf, Eagle and Orca clans and must elect chiefs to lead us into the Long House where we will be welcomed by local Chief Nath-an-Geaksh (“Killer whale by itself, far out into the ocean”) in a ceremony enacted in time-honored tradition. “Ya-neh-gi, Ah-neh-gi” he intones, “Come and sit beside me, it is peaceful here”. Protected by these words, guests, strangers and even old enemies can sit in the House of the Raven and know they are safe. To seal our welcome, he dances to the beat of hand-held drums, as from his head-dress, eagle down flies high and floats down to land at our feet, an ancient symbol of blessings and peace. After enacting the story of how Raven released the stars, moon and sun, we accept gifts of soapberry, seaweed and alder spoons to mark the end of our feast. What a fine welcome to a new land. Casting off into the windy funnel of Grenville Channel, we steam south past glowing green forests of western red cedar and into the Land of the Rhinoceros Auklet. New flags, new friends, new trees, new birds and, awaiting us down the Northern Canyons, new adventures.