BCAA

iStock, Janet Gyenes SPRING 2017 BCA A .COM 13 jet boating TRAVEL (clockwise from top) A vital transportation corridor and salmon source, the Skeena River has long been the lifeblood of Northern BC; an eagle hunts for its supper; a totem pole depicting a beaver represents a sub-crest of the Kitselas Nation eagle clan; UNBC jet boaters take a break; wildflowers push up among forgotten structures in former cannery towns along the river. We meet up with Stewart Young, part-time resident and self-appointed caretaker, for a tour. Young cuts the grass and raises the flags here to make sure there are signs of life amid the ghosts. Inside an old, one-room library, dusty books line the shelves. Antiques fill the former general store. The train still picks up passengers at the tiny white station, but only if an orange-vest-wearing scarecrow is placed next to the track as a signal. Written in stone In days gone by, if you needed a ride on the river, "you'd wave a white flag and a sternwheeler would stop and pick you up," says Bryce. We're having lunch (hefty sandwiches on cranberry-studded bread, followed by chewy cookies large enough to sate a giant) on Ringbolt Island. Bryce points out rusty iron rings, the island's namesakes, once used for tying up sternwheelers like the Hudson Bay Company's Mount Royal and rival Robert Cunningham's Hazelton. During the late-1860s Omineca Gold Rush, the sternwheelers routinely crashed in the churning channels, and survivors were rescued via canoe by members of the nearby Kitselas First Nation, whose community is our next stop on the Skeena. "I'm a ganhada, a raven," says Webb Bennett, a local guide at the Kitselas Canyon Interpretive Village National Historic Site. He's referring to one of the four main clans of the Kitselas Nation (which is one of seven Tsimshian First Nations). The others are gispudwada (killer whale), laxgiboo (wolf) and laxsgiik (eagle), each represented by a newly carved totem pole where we're standing. Local archaeological remains show that these peoples' history here dates back more than 5,000 years. Bennett takes us up a hilly track to the village. Inside one of the longhouses, he regales us with legends, lets us try on woven cedar hats and shows us a rubbing of one of Ringboat's five petroglyphs, or prehistoric rock carvings. This one is so large the rubbing had to be made on a bed sheet. It depicts two animals with two humans in headdresses, thought to be shamans because of their circular mouths, which can symbolize a spirit entering or leaving the body.

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