Next up is the town of Smithers. 370km west of Prince George with population 5200. It's claim to fame is that it is home to the worlds first egg carton designed and patented by local resident Joseph Coyle in 1918. Smithers has quite an "Alpine" feel to it mainly influenced by a large influx of European migrants following WWII.
Apologies to regular readers regarding the recent dearth of posts to this blog. Things have been keeping me too busy to blog but I'll endeavour to keep you up to date in the near future.
And so to Prince Rupert (popl. 13000), 717 km west of Prince George and the largest port city on the pacific coast in Northern British Columbia. While we were there we had atrocious weather which apparently is pretty normal for Rupert. Nonetheless, we enjoyed a fascinating trip to the North Pacific salmon cannery museum where we learnt all about the salmon canning industry through the early and mid 20th Century. During it's day this cannery produced canned salmon for export to the UK. It turns out salmon from the same single line went into tins of both "premium"John West salmon and the cheaper Co-op own brand with only different labels attached. I'm never paying a premium for branded canned foods again! We also had regular tea, coffee and snacks at "Cowpuccinos" on Cow Bay and saw charter fishing boats arriving at the dock with 50lb rod-caught Chinook salmon by some lucky anglers.
