Misty Piers, Overpriced Snacks and Eh?

" A tourist remains an outsider throughout his visit; but a sailor is part of the local scene from the moment he arrives."
- Anne Davison 

Coordinates: 54.3150° N, 130.3208° W

I think back on that shop, gleaming with silver hooks, colorful bait, and dozens of spiky anchors, and I wonder if there’s any place in the world  quite like a tackle shop. As I’m typing here, the Star’s ship’s clock is ticking away above the engine room and the Captain is scrubbing out the dinghy, which should really be called the dingy after bearing the brunt of northwestern winds and harbor silt for the past nine months. Its been awhile since we made an entry in the log, but we’ve come back to the woes of non-existent internet my friends. So we’re playing catch-up again, and I’m turning back the hourglass four days to the final day in Prince Rupert, when we checked out of the hotel with nowhere to go and a great deal to buy, every minute ticking closer to midnight, when we needed to show up at the misty dock and drive onto the ferry—or risk our entire summer if we were late. First, though we had to shop.

Yet this wasn’t just any shopping trip. And Canada isn’t just any place to shop.

Prince Rupert itself is an odd if delightful town, full of dips and twists, with murals of wolves and orcas on every third street until the whole city feels painted blue. Among these twisty streets with painted maple leaves hidden coyly on every planter and curb, was several tackle shops where everything from the ordinary to the delightfully bizarre seemed to be in stock.

And that was just the people.

As we pulled up to the first grey-boarded building, the buoys in the front window proved we were in the right place. Stepping inside, giant spools of rope as thick as your wrist marched up two stories to the ceiling, harpoons leaned against the front counter and we were virtually the only women in sight—except for the cashier, who was swapping fish stories with a short, bristly fisherman leaning against the desk. 

Thousands of tiny, colorful squid called hoochies lined the wall, but they were the more ordinary objects in stock. We found professional-grade slingshot with ammo, fake baby halibut the size of a dinner plate (this was for bait, and yes we bought it—we couldn’t help ourselves), harpoon head replacements and bear attraction sticks—yes, you read that right. Guaranteed to burn for 12 hours with the scent of sow in heat, bear urine, honey, bacon, and pheromones. We picked them up gingerly, in case they were to suddenly combust and leave us smelling on Grizzly’s next breakfast.

We drove back and forth between the tackle shops of Prince Rupert, checking prices, browsing and swapping fish stories with the shopkeepers (One was also was a very good salesman—he talked to us into at least four extra purchases). Yet it was ever apparent we were in Canada, since “Eh?” cropped into the long conversations regularly, and not at all when you’d expect it, along with a peculiar accent I can’t describe, only attest to. Sometimes it was stronger than others, and typically we found the longer a person had lived in British Columbia the more pronounced the accent was, a lengthening of the a’s I think, and clipping some words short.

At the last tackle shop, the subject of guns came up. Let me tell you, the Canadians are quite under the impression that EVERYONE in America owns a gun. “Read a story that reckoned if Russia invaded New York, they wouldn’t make it three blocks!” the bespectacled shopkeeper told is in awe. “Cuzza every last person owns a gun!” The Captain and the shopkeeper swapped stories of growing up in rural America and rural Canada respectively, and it became quickly apparent that the people in the fish shop are very jealous, since they can’t own a revolver without a special permit in Canada, and can only carry it to the gun range and back.  Rifles are a different matter, as was apparent from the huge heads of caribou and bison hanging on the walls. Needless to say, it was an odd to realize that our neighbors to the north think we’re tough stuff.

As we left that particular tackle shop, the shopkeepers final goodbye sort of summed up the whole experience: “Good luck, eh?”

Then shopping was a new experience. Fifteen dollars for a bag of almonds—and that was translated into American dollars! Plus, I finally bought a bag of ketchup potato chips—which we’ve since tried, with mixed reviews (more on that later).

Finally, we called the hotel and begged to sit down in their lounge until it was time to drive to the ferry dock. They let us sit and watch the harbor (after stuffing all of our new purchases—including a five foot long fishnet and a small anchor—into our trailer). As the sun set, the mist moved in and cloaked Prince Rupert in fog, changing the streets and the trees into mysterious byways and disappearing shadows.

Finally, it was late, we were shopped out, and it was time. We all climbed back into the Jeep and drove the four miles down to the ferry dock, the streetlights shining oddly in the dim, half-dark summer night. We pulled into a waiting lane beside a tour bus from Virginia with Sunshine Tours painted on the side, and an old seventies camper in front of us. Then we set a laptop over the center console and watched a movie, Woman in Gold, sitting in our Jeep beside the pier.

Hours passed, and the intense, dramatic movie flitting from modern courtrooms to Nazi-era Austria seemed to fit the eerie fog and idling cars stretched into the mist. The ferry was just a huge, dark shape, three stories high, lurking in the darkness of the pier like a monster from Viking mythology. At 2 AM, a man in a highlighter vest waved us forward. We drove down a wide gangplank, into the dark bowels of the waiting Malaspina that was massive enough to hold nearly a hundred cars, relieved that despite all the changing plans and crazy purchases, we’d managed to make it here. On our way back to the Star at last, waiting patiently in Hoonah.

As we trundled with all our baggage up the clanging metal steps, bleary-eyed and relieved, I couldn’t help but think of the fishermen, and  hope his words held. “Good luck, eh?”

On a boat this big, perhaps we’d need it.

Skipper Krystal