Another Mile Another Destination Blog: Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada

“How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!”

John Muir

Our last stop on our cruise before heading back to Seattle was Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada. This city is located in a beautiful area on the west coast of Canada with large mountains and scenic views. The port at Prince Rupert is a deep water port, in fact, it is the deepest ice-free natural harbor in North America and the third deepest harbor in the world. So it makes an easy stop for the cruise ships and cargo ships and is a very busy harbor. This is the first inbound port of call for cargo ships between eastern Asia and Western North America.

This town was named after Prince Rupert of the Rhine, the first governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company who was a German-English army officer, admiral, and scientist that lived back in the 1600’s. The people voted in a nation wide competition held by the Grand Trunk Railway, and decided on naming the town after his honor. The town was incorporated on March 10, 1910.

Unfortunately, the town of Prince Rupert doesn’t have as much to offer if you are just walking around the city as other cities. After going to all the quaint cities along the Inside Passage in Alaska, our cruise ship pulled into the harbor of Prince Rupert. The town looked scenic enough from the ship with the mountains surrounding it, so we excitedly piled out to walk through this town and check it out.

Down in the port area, there were many lovely parks that we enjoyed walking through. The Pacific Mariners Memorial Park is a beautiful park just off of McBride Street and overlooks the harbor. There is a statue of a mariner designed by the late sculptor, Elek Imredy who was a Hungarian sculptor who immigrated to Vancouver, British Columbia in 1957. This park had beautiful gardens, antique buoys, a ships propellers, and a nice children’s playground that grace the area.

Rotary Waterfront Park is located directly across from where our cruise ship docked. It is is nice park that is lined with benches up against the shoreline. It features a carved statue of a Grey Whale and a calf that was carved by the late Hans Siniarski who’s family donated it to the city.

The Sunken Gardens Park is a nice two level park with a small pebbled walkway that was once the site of the courthouse. The park is well manicured and was originally built in 1923. It had become in disrepair and the local garden club got together and transformed it into a beautiful park with many lovely and colorful plants and flowers. The garden club continues to volunteer many hours to this beautiful gem of a park making it what it is today. There is a built in Chess and Checkers table. This was a small park but very well laid out and was my favorite to see while in town.

We strolled around the town, where we found there wasn’t much happening. There was only a handful of stores open and it was just a regular town not offering anything special. Maybe this was a new cruise port but it appeared as the town wasn’t very welcoming and didn’t expect the cruise passengers to leave the port area to walk into town. I believe the only people here were the residents and workers from the cargo ships. We learned that the best part of town was down near the cruise port.

We believe the cruise ships hadn’t been coming to this location for long so it really wasn’t a destination yet. We heard this town may not be on the cruise schedule for long since it really didn’t have anything special in town to see or do. If we would have had more time, there was plenty of beautiful things to see and nice things to do outside of town, but as far as being a cruise ship passenger only there for a few hours, it wasn’t the best place to stop and was not impressive.

At one time, Prince Rupert had been known as the “Halibut Capital of the World” and the North Pacific Cannery was located down near the harbor and was running a full speed canning their product and shipping it out worldwide. The cannery has now been closed for many years. It is still for great area for fishing. Prince Rupert has been called “the city of Rainbows.” It is Canada’s wettest city getting 103 inches of rain a year and having rain 240 days a year. That is a lot of rain. They must have to take a lot of Vitamin D to supplement the sunshine. They get about 50 inches of snow a year and the summer temperature in town averages a cool 56 degrees in the summer and winter about 36 degrees.