The Inside Passage – Bella Bella to Port McNeill – July 31, 2019

The hum of our generator wakes me. I can hear Chris making coffee and he’s already pulled in our shore power cord and the two spring lines. I climb down from the snug bed in the forward V-berth and pull on a turtleneck, pair of leggings and fleece sweatshirt. It’s still pitch black, but our last leg in this amazing journey will take twelve hours or more so he’s getting the boat ready to leave just before first light. Dew still clings to our deck and windows, so I grab a cup of coffee and head up to the pilot house.

Although a frequent stop for refueling and provisions for small boats and fisherman, Bella Bella remains a frontier town. In 1876, a Canadian reporter for the Toronto Globe described the settlement at Bella Bella: “The Indian houses situated on the very edge of the water were built of roughly hewn cedar planks about 15 or 18 feet square. The planks are made by splitting cedars which have grown to an enormous size and smoothing them after a fashion. Posts are stuck in the ground and the planks are nailed around them. A plank bark covered roof is then put on with an aperture in the centre for the escape of smoke. Round the enclosure in several different corners were small rooms which were doubtless the dormitories of the commingled families. In the centre of the main floor a fire smoldered, over its smoke hung lines of dried salmon and other fish, together with berries, skins, bark or any other article of household use that required drying or seasoning. Round the common chamber, squatting on the packed mud floor, were women smoking their pipes and busily engaged in making baskets and mats. They seemed quite content to be visited and the elderly ones made light and amusing jests at our expense. In every house, there was at least one slumbering papoose and an endless variety of dogs. There was a very ancient and fish-like smell about these dwellings…”

As we leave civilization behind, the water is a gray silk mirror. We thread the narrow channel between Denny Island and Campbell Island, then skirt the north side of Hunter Island. Sailing down its eastern shore, the channel widens along Nalu Island and Hecate Island. The fog and rain only add to the beauty of this place.

In 1987, British Columbia established the Hakai Protection Area to safeguard the marine and wildlife in the Hunter Islands archipelago, as well as the beautiful, long, sandy beaches on Calvert Island. Orca, humpback and grey whales, porpoises, dolphins, sea lions and river otters flourish here. The intertidal zone hosts a wide variety of mollusks, crabs, starfish, anemones, and sea urchins. On the islands of the Hakai, you’ll find black bears, wolves, black-tailed deer, and mink. Chinook, Coho, Sockeye, Chum and Pink salmon all swim through here on their way back to mainland rivers and streams. Halibut, lingcod and rock cod are common. More than 100 species of birds have been spotted in this rich environment: bald eagles, kingfishers, osprey, cormorants, sandpipers, loons, gulls, auklets, murrelets, oystercatchers, even black and ruddy turnstones.

Here we enter Fitz Hugh Sound where the ghost town of Namu lies to our west. At one time, Namu had a population of 400 cannery workers, office personnel and their families. The cannery was started in 1893, followed by a sawmill in 1909 to provide lumber for the cases of salmon. As with most canneries at the turn of the century, labor, working hours and housing were segregated into groups of First Nation natives, Japanese, Chinese, and Caucasians. The British Columbia Packers Ltd, the largest fishing and fish processing company in B.C., took over operations in 1928. By 1970, structures included several two-story bunkhouses, dozens of family cottages, recreation and mess halls, along with the fish processing facilities, an electric power plant, and a large pier—all connected by a maze of boardwalks.

In the 1990s, declining fish stocks and improved refrigeration on fishing boats eventually forced BC Packers Inc. to sell the facility. Purchased by a developer with plans to build a sportfishing resort, the idea was later abandoned. Many of the original buildings were torn down or lost to fires; however, the large fish processing facility, pier and a few homes that remain are slowly rotting away. There are dozens of these abandoned canneries along the Inside Passage—something that makes the daily bounty of fresh frozen fish displayed in the glass case at my local grocery store seem all the more miraculous.

The water is an evergreen color this morning and a row of sea gulls on a floating log looks more like an impressionist’s painting.

Queen Charlotte Strait between Vancouver Island and the mainland of British Columbia connects Queen Charlotte Sound with Johnstone Strait to Discovery Passage, the Strait of Georgia and eventually Puget Sound—an important link in the Inside Passage from Seattle to Alaska used by the men who sought their fortunes in the Klondike gold fields a century ago.

The swells are gentle as we enter the open water of Queen Charlotte Sound and we use binoculars to view a few whale spouts in the distance – most likely Orca whales off to their favorite hunting grounds for seals in the Queen Charlotte Islands offshore.

I photograph a family of playful sea otters in the kelp beds, but we are both surprised not to spy more wildlife this afternoon.

As we enter Johnstone Strait at the northern most tip of Vancouver Island, miraculously the clouds and fog begin to lift.

An hour later, we pass a BC Ferry bound for Port Hardy. Port McNeill, sheltered by Malcolm Island, was originally a base camp for loggers and didn’t become a settlement until 1936. Not surprisingly, another town named after a Captain in the Hudson Bay Company (William McNeill).

A barren sandspit on the southwest corner of Malcolm Island, Pulteney Point marks the separation of Broughton and Queen Charlotte Straits. Named in 1846 after Admiral Sir Pulteney Malcom, a Scottish-born British Naval Officer, famous for chasing the French fleet all the way to the West Indies following the Battle of Gibraltar. Kwakiutl legends say the island rose up from the water and someday it would return to its watery grave. For this reason, the natives never inhabited the island although they did harvest cedar for ceremonial masks and totem poles.

In 1900, a group of Finnish immigrant coal miners in Nanaimo petitioned Canada for a piece of land to escape their miserable working conditions and create a Utopian community. They were given Malcom Island. Sointula—the Finnish name of the island’s main town—means “a place of harmony.” The Finns petitioned for a lighthouse to be built at Pulteney Point in 1905 and their descendants served as lightkeepers for the next 100 years. In 1942, the nearby Estevan Lighthouse was shelled by the Japanese, and all lights along the West Coast were ordered to “go dark.” With no light to guide her, the Alaska Steamship Company’s Columbia ran aground on the spit.

In June 1792, dealing with poor weather and dwindling food supplies near here, Captain Vancouver encountered the Spanish ships Sutil and Mexicana under the respective commands of Captain Galiano and Valdes. Both were exploring and mapping the Strait of Georgia, seeking a possible Northwest Passage and were also trying to determine if Vancouver Island was in fact an island or part of the mainland. The two commanders agreed to assist one another by dividing up the surveying work and sharing charts. Working together until early July, they then split up: the British ships circumnavigating the island starting in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and navigating east and north, while the Spanish ships started in Nootka on the West Coast navigating west and north.

On July 19, 1792, Captain Vancouver traded sheet copper and blue cloth for sea otter skins at Nimpkish, just south of present-day Port McNeill. Lieutenant Broughton wrote, “In the afternoon, I went with Capt. Vancouver and some of the officers accompanied by the Chief to the Village. We found it pleasantly situated, exposed to a Southern aspect, on the sloping bank of a small creek well sheltered behind a dense forest of tall pines. The houses were regularly arranged and from the Creek made a picturesque appearance by the various rude paintings with which fronts were adorned. On our approach to the landing place in the two boats, several of the natives assembled on the beach to receive us and conducted us very orderly through every part of the village. We observed the houses were built very much in the same manner as Nootka, but much neater and the Inhabitants being of the same Nation differed very little either in their manners or dress from the Nootka tribe. Several families lived in common under the same roof, but each had their sleeping place divided off and screened in with great decency and a degree of privacy not attended to in the Nootka inhabitations. The Women were variously employed, some in culinary occupations, others were engaged in Manufacturing of Garments, Mats and small Baskets and they did not fail to dun us for presents in every House we came to in a manner which convinced us they were not unaccustomed to such Visitants. Buttons, Beads and other Trinkets were distributed amongst them and so eagerly solicitous were they for these little articles of ornament that our pockets were soon emptied of them & tho they were free & unreserved in their manners & conversation, yet none of them would suffer any of our people to offer them any indecent familiarities, which is a modesty of some measure characteristic of their Tribe. On coming to an elderly Chief’s House we were entertained with a song which was by no means unharmonious, the whole group at intervals joind in it & kept time by beating against planks or any thing near them with the greatest regularity, after which the old Chief presented each of us with a slip of Sea Otter Skin and sufferd us to depart.”

Perhaps fitting the Broughton Archipelago Marine Park, established in 1992, was named after this Lieutenant who so vividly described early explorations 220 years earlier. The Park lies east of Malcolm Island and is British Columbia’s largest marine park with dozens of undeveloped islands, sheltered waters, and peaceful anchorages framed by tall peaks of the coastal mountain range to the east. A mecca for sea kayakers from around the world, I can’t help but wonder what Lieutenant Broughton would write about this wilderness today.

As we swing around Ledge Point to the marina, tiny Haddington Island, a mere 98 acres, is directly off our bow. Formed more than 3.7 million years ago as the Juan de Fuca plate to the west, subducted under the North American Plate, the island’s blue-grey to buff-colored andesite rock, prized for stone carving and sculpture, can be found on some of the province’s most famous buildings: The Empress Hotel and Parliament buildings in Victoria and the Vancouver Art Gallery, Hotel Vancouver and Vancouver City Hall.

As it’s the height of summer, the docks are crowded with all sizes of pleasure boats, yachts, even tall-masted schooners. Our berth is a tight squeeze between two other boats. After tying up for the night, we enjoy fresh Halibut fish & chips at the local pub.

The marina is magical as dusk deepens to night and boat lights reflect on the water. On our last night aboard, I also reflect on our remarkable journey. We were always connected to civilization by radio and GPS, never too far from a friendly port to stock up on provisions, a safe harbor or anchorage for the night easily identified on our nautical charts.

Yet with all these advantages today, boats still sink or run aground. I can’t help but wonder about the early explorers of these vast—and then largely uncharted—waters. The men whose writings I have read and quoted in this blog. Their primitive wooden ships. Their meager supplies dependent on successful fishing or hunting for food on the islands. Their families not hearing from them for years at a time. Those who did not survive.

My friends think I am brave to sail the Inside Passage in a relatively small boat. Adventurous maybe. But “brave” is a word that belongs to those early sailors.

May 1, 2023

The Inside Passage — Klemtu to Bella Bella — July 30, 2019

A minus tide has exposed a wide swath of rocky beach where juvenile eagles scavenge clams and crabs in the early morning light.

Thankfully, our late-night anchoring held firm and we are still floating in a shy fifteen feet of water. If we had anchored closer to shore, our stern would be stuck in the mud. Chris’ careful reading of the chart and mindful calculations of the tide have kept the Well Sea well situated.

A slight mist is lifting, and the black and red talismans painted on the Klemtu Longhouse are now distinct. The Kitasoo and Xai’xais are two of the fifteen Tsimshian nations that call the Great Bear Rainforest home. Thousands of years ago, the Kitasoo people lived in villages scattered along rivers, bays and inlets of the outer central coast. The Xai’xais settled in the large river systems on the mainland of the central coast. They were not nomadic tribes due to the abundance of natural resources and plentiful marine life.

According to tribal legends, Raven made one in every ten black bears white to remind the people of a time when glaciers covered the world so they would become thankful stewards of the bountiful land. For many years, tribal elders rarely spoke of the legendary and elusive Spirit Bear for fear it would be hunted into extinction if word spread of its existence. Yet today the opposite has happened: tourists from across the globe travel to Spirit Bear Lodge in Klemtu for a chance to glimpse the rare and endangered Kermode Bear in its natural habitat (it’s estimated that only 50 to 100 of these white bears exist).

Around 1875, the two tribes began to settle in Klemtu (a word meaning “blocked passage”) to take advantage of its strategic location for trade and to supply cordwood to steamships traveling the Inside Passage. In the 1830s, exposed to viruses from the colonialists, the Kitasoo and Xai’xais villages suffered devastating losses. When the Canadian government established the reserve system and moved remaining “Indians” in the territory to Klemtu, the two distinct tribes formed one First Nation.

The natural ecosystems in the region also suffered from colonialism. For more than 100 years, resources such as fish and forests, were unsustainably extracted with no compensation provided to the Kitasoo/Xai’xais people. Klemtu, like other First Nation communities along the coast, suffered extensive economic, social, and cultural damage throughout this period.

Starting in the 1980s, the tribes began developing a community-based economy. Using revenue from a commercial herring spawn on their kelp license and securing additional community-owned licenses for sea cucumbers, urchin, prawns and other marine life, they were able to build a seafood processing plant. Next, they began farming salmon which provided significant new revenues and jobs. Eventually, management over forest harvesting in the territory led to acquisition of forest tenures and additional revenues.

Today, Spirit Bear Lodge is a worldwide model of conservation-focused ecotourism that minimizes impact on the land and animals in this remote corner of Canada. Recognized as a best practice model for Indigenous community-based tourism, the revenues from the Lodge support the protection of the Kitasoo/Xai’xais culture, language, and traditions. As the Lodge grew it helped the Nation play a much bigger role in stewardship and management of their territory. Ecotourism activities at Spirit Bear Lodge are aligned with Kitasoo/Xai’xais cultural values. “The elders always say what we have is not ours, we’re just holding it for the next generation.”

Our next segment is a short run this morning, so we linger here in Klemtu while I bake a batch of cinnamon rolls and fix a leisurely breakfast of fried Italian Coppa ham and scrambled eggs with capers and feta cheese.

After retracting and hosing off our muddy anchors, we are underway. I pull in the fenders as we round the promontory of the Longhouse and slip into peaceful Tolmie Channel. Cone Island shelters Trout Bay—Klemtu actually sits on Swindle Island, part of the volcanic cluster called the Milbanke Sound Group. Kitasu Hill on the Pacific side of the island is a monogenetic basalt cinder cone that produced lava flows thousands of years ago. A monogenetic volcanic field consists of volcanoes which erupt only once, as opposed to polygenetic volcanoes which erupt repeatedly over a period of time. Monogenetic volcanoes occur where the supply of magma is low or where vents are not close enough to the surface or large enough to develop systems for continuous feeding of magma.

Part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, the western mountain ranges in California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia are home to more than 100 polygenetic volcanoes including Mount Baker, Mount Rainer, Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams, Mount Hood, Mount Bachelor, Mount Jefferson, Mount McLoughlin, Mount Shasta, and Mount Lassen. Make no mistake, while many are dormant, these are still active volcanoes—Lassen erupted violently in 1917 and Mount St. Helens stunned the world in 1980.

There are more than 130 volcanoes in Alaska and dozens have erupted in the last 100 years. Mounts Shishaldin on Umimak Island, a picturesque volcano, symmetrical and smooth like Mount Fuji in Japan, erupted in 2020. The tallest mountain peak in the Aleutian chain of islands rising over 9000-feet above sea level, its upper portion is covered year-round in glacial snow and ice, and a thin stream of smoke continually rises from the crater. At over 10,000 feet high, major eruptions of the imposing Mount Redoubt, just west of Cook Inlet, grounded jetliners in Anchorage for days (1989 and 2009).

Sailing south through Tolmie Channel, we pass by Star Island, Needle Rock and Fish Island. Like the water in Trout Bay, this channel is relatively shallow (between 32 and 80 feet) but as we merge with the wider Finlayson Channel our depth gauge shows the ocean bottom drops off quickly to an average 2000 to 3200 feet of water. Named after Roderick Finlayson, a Scotsman with the Hudson Bay Company who is considered the founder of Victoria, this channel is a major highway of the Inside Passage. This morning we are the only boat in any direction.

I have to smile when consulting our chart—a few more places with female names. We’ll be skirting Susan Island, Dowager Island, Suzette Bay, and Lady Douglas Island. To starboard sits Mount Sarah on Swindle Island while Mount Jane crests Dowager Island at 2372 feet. There’s also Squaw Island, although its name might not pass muster today as politically correct.

Finlayson Channel empties into Milbanke Sound and here we encounter larger swells that have rolled in from Queen Charlotte Sound to the west. To our east, the Fjordland Conservancy preserves a portion of these glacial fjords. Established in 1987, the park covers 189,838 acres and was the first on the North American continent to protect this type of environmental zone. Since there are no roads, the Park is mainly enjoyed by kayakers and sailors.

Chris is hoping we might sight whales in Milbanke Sound, named after Vice Admiral Mark Milbanke who commanded the British fleet at the Battle of Gibraltar in 1782. Certainly, there were abundant whales here when Vancouver and Cook explored these waters. Today, we spot only a few Dall’s porpoises, a common species in the northern Pacific, often mistaken for Orca whales. Dall’s porpoises have a wide hefty body, a comparatively tiny head, no distinguished beak and a small, triangular dorsal fin. Mostly black with white to grey patches on the flank and belly, they are the largest porpoise species, growing up to 7.5 feet in length and weighing between 370 and 490 pounds.

Our crossing of Milbanke Sound passes quickly and soon we spot the Ivory Island Lighthouse which marks the entrance to Seaforth Channel, our final “turn” enroute to Bella Bella. Constructed in 1898 on an exposed rock, this lighthouse has endured many brutal storms, tidal waves, and tsunamis. But perhaps the most romantic story belongs to Gordon Schweers who became the head lighthouse keeper in 1981. He and Judy corresponded for nine months, before she left her family in California and headed north to marry a man she had never met and start a new life on this remote island. The kind of adventure story one might normally attribute to a woman in the 1880s, not the 1980s.

The first year on Ivory Island would test the couple’s mettle. On Christmas Eve 1982, nearby McInnes Island Lighthouse reported their barometer was 29.88 and falling rapidly. A winter storm had been buffeting the lighthouse station for about a week, and now the weather was getting worse.

Gordon and Judy were living in the main building which had been carefully built with seasoned fir and reinforced floors. Gordon reported that night “it was groaning in every rafter like an old barque” as gale force winds swept along the open ocean from Cape St. James to the station’s back door. The combination of wind and water made the kitchen windows “resemble a plastic sheet which was expanding under heat.”

The tide peaked early on Christmas morning when a wave surmounted the sea wall and flooded the station. Gordon later wrote the following description of that memorable Christmas Day:

“Our only indication that we were ‘over our heads’ came when the outer door to the radio room filled entirely with white sea water. For a second the door seemed to resist – then the dam burst, flooding sea water and debris into the kitchen pantry, basement, living room and cistern. Neither keeper was injured by flying glass, even though I had bare feet and fled the room while it was still awash. Andrew [the radio operator] followed abruptly, since the same wave in uprooting small trees and severing larger limbs had stripped the radio room roof bare of shingles. With an outer kitchen window shattered, we moved back into the safety of another room, but were again interrupted while ebbing the flow of water. There is no way of knowing whether the 32-foot metal tower was knocked down by the same wave or one succeeding it, yet the DCB 10 main light shone [its] search beam hard through the living room windows for several minutes before burning out. In the confusion I had briefly mistaken it to be the beam from a ship driven off course by the storm.”

Besides the dwelling, only the station’s radio antenna, braced by eight guide wires at the southeast corner of the point, remained standing. As adventuresome as I am, I doubt I would have stayed on this barren rock connected by only a footbridge to civilization on the adjacent Lady Dowager Island.

The importance of Ivory Island Lighthouse is evidenced by the fact it remains staffed today despite its dangerously exposed location.

As we round the bend in Seaforth Channel, we are in the Lady Douglas-Don Peninsula Conservancy, comprising several coastal islands and an intricate mainland shoreline with numerous small bays, coves, passages and shoals. This conservancy protects the important Marbled Murrelet habitat. The Marbled Murrelet is a small North Pacific seabird and a member of the Auk family. While suspected of nesting in old-growth forests, it was not documented until 1974 when a tree-climber found a young chick in a nest, making it one of the last North American bird species to have its nest described. The Marbled Murrelet has declined in significant numbers since humans began widespread logging of its nest trees in the 1850s. Considered globally endangered, the bird has become a bellwether for the forest preservation movement.

We keep to the center channel as we pass Dearth Island and dozens of small islets where underwater rocks are a navigation hazard. The beacon on Dryad Point marks our turn into the narrow entry to Bella Bella between Campbell Island and Saunders Island. Our depth gauge shows we go from 300 to 400 feet of water to 80 feet or less in a just a few hundred yards.

As we enter the Shear Water Marina, dozens of weathered commercial fishing boats with their distinctive winches and buoys line every dock. Commercial and recreational fishing in British Columbia is fiercely regulated: there are certain “Open Seasons” for different fish, daily limits, possession limits, and annual limits. The type of gear used is also specified. For example, fisherman can only use barbless hooks and lines for all varieties salmon; dip nets, ring nets and specific traps for crab; hook and line for halibut, sablefish and cod; and herring jigs, herring rakes, dip nets or cast nets for herring, sardines, anchovies, and mackerel.

While it’s starting to rain, Chris wants to fill up at the fuel dock before we tie up for the evening since we have a very long run tomorrow. Once snuggly in our slip at the dock, I take pictures of the majestic eagle standing guard on a nearby snag.

I savor this luxury of time where I can spend the evening reading in the enclosed pilot house while listening to rain on the roof.

March 15, 2023