A British Columbia adventure part 2

Cassiar Cannery opens its welcoming arms to us

We drove in Mark’s big four-wheel drive Chevy (had it wrong in the last post!) along the narrow, mud-slicked road from Prince Rupert, BC, toward Cassiar Cannery, and I saw no way out of the house swap situation but forward. 

We were all committed to the plan, regardless of the weather and other challenges. In just a couple of days, after Mark, Justine and Nicolas flew to Maui, our adult children would be coming up to join us for a family vacation on the Skeena that they’d taken time off for and committed to.

 I handed little Nicolas another cracker in his car seat and stared out at the forbidding, dripping forest surrounding us as Mike and Mark talked fishing in the front seat.

And then we stopped: a backhoe was still clearing the narrow route that dead-ended at Cassiar Cannery, which had been a thriving and busy salmon packing plant once upon a time. After the original cannery went out of business, a motorcycle gang moved in and squatted, generating tons of rusty, chopped-up vehicles an…