Historical
History, archaeology and paleontology of northern BC.
Colour of the Water
Sometimes adventures take a strange turn and, when they do, they etch themselves firmly in your memories—including the colours. Paul Glover takes us on a trip down the Nass, and the proverbial memory lane.
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Colouring the Map
You know when a place is named for a colour? Blue River, Red Bluff, etc. etc. Sometimes the reason why is not as obvious as you’d think. Jo Boxwell checks out a few colourful northern BC locales.
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Onions, Little and Big
Just outside of Babine Mountains Provincial Park, "The Onion" is a "tick-the-box" kind of hike.
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Lost or Found?
We asked six writers and one photographer (Michelle Yarham) to tackle this issue’s theme in whatever way they saw fit. What they came up with is quirky, funny, poignant, reflective, and uniquely northern.
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Eternal Spaces
These are the graves of sailors and captains. Of fishermen whose blood runs thick with salt. This place tells the story of how they lived. And that is the power of cemeteries.
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The Barn
The first time climbing the ladder is transcendental. Crossing from one world into another. Photo essay by Marty Clemens.
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Haida Gwaii: The Board Game
Incorporating Haida cultural history, Nang K’uulas develops a new strategy game
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The Crawl
Patrick Williston lives in Smithers in a mountainside home with a dark and spidery crawl space. When days are longer, you will find him and his family gunkholing around the Chatham Sea in an old sailboat. This is his first piece of fiction for Northword.
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Beginnings
Check out Northword's latest publication, a collection of northern stories and amazing images.
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A Terror of Tyrannosaurs
The best way to see ancient dinosaur footprints is in the dark. It’s also the best way to feel that tingly sensation on the back of your neck. Jo Boxwell takes us to Tumbler Ridge, where lantern tours of the dino trackways are a mainstay of the growing paleo-tourism industry.
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By Boat
In Haida Gwaii, the dark months of winter mean more time for things like hunting trips. Join photographer Joseph Crawford as he explores abandoned buildings and the subdued coastal landscapes while on a boat-access hunting excursion.
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Future Past
“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” - Søren Kierkegaard
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Hazelton’s Unsung Navigator
I don’t believe in being a “war buff.” The term buff trivializes this particular subject, as if one can have an exuberant interest in combat’s destruction and despair like a bird watcher or a train spotter. It’s too close to being a fan.
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A Mammoth Discovery: Decades later, fossils still shrouded in mystery
In the summer of 1971, men and machines were working on removing the overburden (mining lingo for “dirt”) on Noranda’s Bell Mine on the Newman Peninsula of Babine Lake when their work revealed a jumble of ancient, oversized bones.
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Great Glaciers: Experience these prehistoric beauties before they’re gone
The glaciers are melting.
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Gone but not forgotten:Port Edward’s defunct canneries offer everything from history to beachcombing
A freight train rumbles past not 50 feet from our red-hued cottage, a throwback to an age when rail was the only way into this once-remote outpost on the northwest coast.
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Cultural Conservation: A Tahltan fights to preserve his first nation’s language
It’s a well-worn cliché that the Inuit have dozens of words for snow.
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Peaveys, Pickaxes & other Perfect-for-the-Job Implements: Nostalgia for heritage gardening equipment
With amazing vigour, the rootstock for my Montmorency pie cherry sent suckers across the yard into the garden.
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Glass Fishing Floats: Vintage treasures from the Westerlies
My aunt almost married a North Coast fisherman. The romance between the pretty young teacher and the tall Norwegian fell casualty to family objections and World War II, but the story, like the jade-coloured glass fishing floats which sat in my grandmother’s kitchen window, did not fade away.
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The Collections Renewal Project: Bringing the past to light
I’ve poked around in museum backrooms throughout BC’s Northwest; wearing those white gloves while sifting through old papers in archives and artifact storage rooms.
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Relax by Rail Travels through the North by train and ferry
I recently travelled by rail from Prince George to Prince Rupert, a journey that should have taken 12 hours.
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Leadership Development on the Land
It was more than a decade ago that I was backpacking in the remote and isolated Spatsizi in the heat of the day and the weight of the pack was taking its toll.
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The Paradox of Anyox—New hope springs from old mine site
What does it feel like to stand in the middle of a slagheap? To climb around the innards of an old-but-not-forsaken dam? Or to pick your way across a falling-down power plant whose crumbling floors could swallow you with nary a burp?
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Nass Valley volcano: Tseax crater and Nisga’a Memorial Lava Bed Provincial Park
As a child, I was terrified of volcanoes.
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Diversity, adversity and prosperity: A colourful history meant ups and downs for BC immigrants
In the mid- to late-1800s, northern BC’s non-aboriginal population exploded.
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Super Spuds: Heritage potatoes return to the North
No one was eating the mashed potatoes.
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Summit Lake sojourners: Stories of early settlement
The community of Summit Lake has a long and chequered history.
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Spectacular Spatsizi—Vast wilderness with a rich history and uncertain future
Our horses walked slowly into a biting winter wind, making fresh tracks across the sparkling snow.
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Gwaii Haanas Legacy Pole—First monumental pole in 130 years celebrates Haida past and future
I first visited Haida Gwaii nearly 20 years ago with three friends, before the temporary moniker Queen Charlotte Islands was returned to BC
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Excavating Wu’dat
In 2010, the Lake Babine Nation and the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) joined forces to excavate an archaeological site at the north end of Babine Lake.
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One hundred years wiser Reflecting on our joint kungax during Smithers’ centennial
In the Witsuwit’en language, “yin tah” is the word for “land,” but it carries more weight and more context than its English equivalent.
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The World’s Largest Fly Rod: A true community art project
In the 1980s, tourism promoters in British Columbia encouraged cities and towns to develop a roadside attraction or landmark that would draw visitors.
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Midsummer Festival, 30 years on: the stuff of legends
It’s 8 p.m. on a Monday evening, and in the Stokes’ kitchen a Midsummer Music Festival meeting has just wrapped up. A teapot and half-empty wine bottle sit on the table. But what flows most generously are the stories.
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est. 1952: Kitimat’s smelter-site school
On July 20th, 1952, Alcan posted ads in Vancouver papers seeking applications for elementary and high school teachers and one principal for their Smelter-site School in Kitimat.
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Reinventing the Central Park Building
I sit in the office of the Bulkley Valley Museum on the main floor of the Central Park Building and gaze down Smithers’ Main Street. Alpine Al continuously blows his alpenhorn as Hudson Bay Mountain rises behind him to meet the clear sky.
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Skeena Forks—The history of Hazelton
In the early 1800s, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) was having difficulty breaking into the long-existing First Nations trade routes through northern BC, especially the trails and seasonal trade patterns between the Nass River and Babine Lake.
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McGillivray’s Map
Simon McGillivray, a trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company, was the first outsider ever to visit “the Forks,” the place where the Skeena and Bulkley rivers join, and later the site of the town of Hazelton
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Fifty-Four Forty or Fight: How a U.S. border crossing almost wound up in the Bulkley Valley
I’m sitting on Hubert Hill, a small forested prominence by Highway 16, about 15 minutes south of Smithers, between Round Lake and Woodmere Roads. Here in the soft light of early summer, I can look across the highway and the Bulkley River to the Telkwa Mountains. Below me, the busy US border crossing has cars backed up
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100 Years of Smithers’ Main Street
On March 28, 1913 the Smithers Interior News announced, “The board of Railway Commissioners at Ottawa has approved of the station site at ‘Smithers,’ the second divisional point East of Prince Rupert, Mile 226.5…
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Digging up the past: Archaeology in a cultural context
Issues around the dead—whether recently deceased or ancient ancestors—are seldom simple.
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From the Depths: Who threw this olive jar overboard?
When you step into the Masset Maritime Museum in Haida Gwaii, you see large-scale models of sailing ships, walls covered in nets, and exhibits of Pacific Ocean fishing and sea-faring life.
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Wildcat Strike in Kitimat
When a union goes on strike, things get tense. In Kitimat, at 6am on June 23, 1976, the situation was ominous when riot squads unloaded from school buses and faced a picket line of union members from the Canadian Association of Smelter and Allied Workers.
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Step Into the Past: Exploring the historic sites of northern BC
Northern BC has a few distinctive characteristics that stand out to visitors when they come to the region.
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The colossal fossil conundrum: Modern-day management at prehistoric site
Gordon Harvey is long gone, but his old homestead dwindles on, slowly returning to the earth near Driftwood Creek.
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Northern “memory places”: Unmarked sites of historical significance
Historians tend to view their surroundings from the perspective of not just what is here now and what might be there in the future, but also what was once there: an abandoned village site, a forgotten town, a manned lighthouse.
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Slim Williams: Alaska to Chicago by Dogsled
Clyde “Slim” Williams travelled to Alaska in 1900 at the age of 18 to prospect, and survived there by mining, trapping, delivering mail and raising sled dogs.
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Ghost town on the Skeena: Days of Dorreen
Approximately 30 miles northeast of Terrace, across the Skeena River from Highway 16, is the historic community of Dorreen. There, running along the railway track from the old station to the railway bridge over Fiddler Creek, are the remains of a community that at first glance seems to have been simply left behind. Alders grow on the flat deck of an old round-fendered truck, horse-drawn farm implements peek out from the bracken ferns, a one-room schoolhouse sits vacant. But it wasn’t always like this.
READ MORE➦Winter 2018-19: Slow
Slow repairs, slow pace, slow recovery, and much more.
