Mariners navigating northbound along the northernmost coast of British Columbia have a choice. From Wright Sound vessels can take the direct ferry route 50 miles NW along the straight Grenville Channel to the approaches for Prince Rupert, or, if time and weather permit, detour west to follow the magnificently castellated coast of Pitt Island.
Captain Cove
The Pitt Island route includes big, often windy waters, with deeply incised inlets providing solitary protection amongst steep mountains. Jupiter’s roundabout way to Prince Rupert includes an overnight at Captain Cove, visited last summer. The cove is surrounded by land of the indigenous GitxaaĊa Nation.
The Petrel Channel waters leading to Captain Cove are surprisingly full of forest: limbs, slashwood, barkmats, snags and small deadheads. As Jupiter turns into the inlet a floatplane overflies our approach and the crew is startled by the transformation of wilderness into an intense 21st century logging operation.
A formerly forested hillside is now scarred with swathes of felled cedar, the timber being extracted by an endless round of helicopter circuits that deposit logs into waiting log booms at an astonishing rate using every generous hour of summer daylight.
Helicopter C-FQNG is a vintage heavy-lift Sikorsky S-61N “Shortsky” built in 1960 and frequently used for logging, utility and firefighting work.
Voyagers to Voyeurs
Jupiter passes empty acres of booming grounds ready to receive logs. We dodge the manifold detritus of tree reaping, and find our way into the small protection of several islets.
As we anchor a show of sea and air-power consumes the cove; working boats, lifting helicopters, seaborne cranes, and log broncs. A mink flees the noisy destruction. The crew metamorph from voyagers into voyeurs, shamelessly observing the efficient determination of man.
A floathouse to shelter fallers, tree climbers, buckers, feller buncher operators, choke setters, slingers and skidders, graders and scalers, markers and chippers, camp cooks, mechanics, pilots and clerks is attached to the shore near a graded and graveled fuel depot and parking lot for tractors and trucks, backhoes, loaders and amphibious barges.
There is a saying amongst the peoples of the Northwest Coast
John Vaillant, The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed.
“The world is as sharp as the edge of a knife. A totem-pole carver imagines this edge as a circle. If you live on the edge of the circle, that is the present moment. What’s inside is knowledge, experience: the past. What’s outside has yet to be experienced. The knife’s edge is so fine that you can live either in the past or the future. The real trick is to live on the edge.”
