BCAA

12 BCA A .COM SPRING 2017 Janet Gyenes Suddenly our ride comes to a halt. Bryce slows the boat, and our cadre of six stares in stunned silence as a young grizzly swims across the river, barely creating a ripple on the bottle-green water. It scrambles up the embankment and disappears into the brush. We've travelled 25 km up this branch of the Lower Skeena River, 56 km west of Terrace, without seeing human or beast – until now. Yet we've barely begun our four-day June adventure, part of a continuing studies educational travel program offered through the University of Northern British Columbia ( UNBC). Travelling in an open-air jet boat – a nimble craft with no propeller to endanger marine life – we'll visit ghost towns, a First Nations village and historic canneries scattered along the Skeena River from Terrace to Prince Rupert, where the 610-km-long waterway plunges into the Pacific. Journeys like this one are part of an effort to educate travellers about BC's north, says Bryce, our captain. "Most universities offer some form of educational travel or alumni travel," he says. "Since we're a relatively new university, [in a] small market, we thought we would do things a bit differently and focus on bringing people to Northern BC and showcasing the amazing history, sights and locations that it has to offer." Remote passage In less than two hours by air we have been catapulted from the urban density of Vancouver into a realm shaped by the forces of nature. Double the size of the UK, the region of Northern BC extends north from Bella Coola to the Yukon border. It's an otherworldly place that has long seduced gold rushers, loggers and fishers with a mother lode of natural resources; a giant's terrarium filled with spectacular specimens. Like the rare and elusive white kermode, or spirit, bear (not an albino or polar bear, but a black bear with a double recessive gene), which Bryce tells us to watch for. We leave early on an overcast morning from Yellow Cedar Lodge, our riverside base for two nights, and don our daily uniform: chest-high waders topped with waterproof jackets. Looking like anglers or a motley military crew, we set off northward on the morning's first mission: exploring the historic ghost town of Dorreen, which is only accessible by boat or train. The Skeena River has always been the lifeblood of this region, as a transportation corridor and vital artery stocked with salmon. Along the shore, small groups of people are fishing, sitting in lawn chairs; poles planted upright in the sand. Ribbons and bells dangle from the tops of the poles to signal when a salmon bites. We spot waterfalls and a pair of bald eagles grappling in flight as we skim past the villages of Kitselas and Usk. Bryce finally cuts the engine and ties up in what seems like the middle of nowhere. Soon we're nosing through sword ferns, past a tree that has grown around a rusty fence. A swing set built from slabs of rough-hewn wood stands near a cluster of houses, whose layers of peeling paint reveal the decades like a tree trunk's rings. Indigo lupins and yellow-eyed daisies grow among rusty trucks and beat-up farm equipment. We've arrived in Dorreen, a 1900s ghost town once home to hundreds of gold miners. It was named for a railway engineer who resided at this outpost on the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, built between 1906 and 1914.

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