Society Launched To Hold Memories In Trust

Once we were truly a coastal people, clinging to the shore in wooden villages, taking our living from the sea. As the memory of this way of life crumbles back into the sea that gave it birth, those who remember our coastal heritage have come forward to create the Skeena River Heritage Trust. The group adopted a simple mission statement - "To act as the guardians of sites of historical importance in the Skeena River estuary" - and the simple task of canny for the places and stories of our past.

From crazy rows of tilted pilings rising from the mud at Haysport Cannery... to the colourless ghost of Brown's Mill on the Ecstall River, where a pioneer sawmill is changed only by an alien silence... to Port Essington - Spokeshute -where a thriving town once stood at the heart of a transportation network built on canoes and riverboats and coastal steamships... to storied cannery villages at Carlisle and Claxton, Standard and Humpback Bay... to Oceanic, Osland and Dominion on Smith Island... to Cannery Row on Inverness Passage... to heritage sites in Port Edward and Prince Rupert... Digby Island, Metlakatla, Tuck Inlet and Georgetown... to Second World War "forts" mouldering in the forests around us... to the lighthouses that guided manners into safe anchorage off our shores.

The list seems endless, and for that reason the Skeena River Heritage Trust has made its first undertaking the simple gesture of recognition. The first tasks of the Trust standing committee responsible for Port Essington are to erect an illuminated sign identifying the town, and the clearing and mapping of Port Essington s historic cemetery; truly fitting tributes to the memory of the thousands of people who made Essington a part of their lives.

Nor has the Trust forgotten the storied boats of our past. Indeed' a second Trust standing committee is attempting to salvage Captain Charlie Currie's beloved tugboat the C.R.C. To refurbish her and dedicate her as a memorial to those who developed this coast is to recall in the minds of the people of the Skeena the rellet and goodwill brought by the arrival of Charlie and the C.R.C.

This is only a beginning. Over a period of several years, the Trust hopes to place at least a memorial marker on each historical site within the Skeena River estuary. The goal is to save every fragment of the past that it is humanly possible to save. and to hold it in trust for the future. Your membership in the Skeena River Heritage Trust will help to accomplish these goals. In addition you will receive four copies of River Notes in 1998, each one filled with Skeena River history and updates on the Trust's preservation efforts. What begins as a dream can become reality through your support.

Next Page - Page 2