Turning On The Lights In Port Essington

The Skeena River Heritage Trust intends a simple gesture that will recognize one of the key sites in the settlement of the North - they hope to turn on the lights in Port Essington.

"Port Essington" was a name applied in error, and one that might have slipped into the abyss of time. In 1793 Captain George Vancouver entered the Skeena River estuary without in fact recognizing it as an estuary, and named the supposed bay in honour of one of his Royal Navy friends. When Irish businessman Robert Cunningham established a trading post at a place called "Spokeshute" some eighty years later. He used the name chosen by Vancouver. Thus Port Essington came into life.

Built for a gold rush in the Interior, then bolstered at first by the fur trade and ultimately by the blossoming salmon industry, Port Essington was the transportation hub of the North. From here the Skeena riverboats thrummed busily up and down the river; here was the coastal steamers' port of call. From far-away villages came cedar canoes filled with First Nations workers for the six canneries clustered around the town. Port Essington was a multicultural boom town centred around Cunningham's store; with solemn churches, long boardwalk "streets," gambling houses and grand hotels (one of which boasted "the longest bar north of San Francisco").

The beginning of the end for Port Essington was the Grand Trunk Pacific's dream of empire; which culminated in the incorporation of the city of Pnnce Rupert on Kaien Island in 1910, and the subsequent rail-link with the East. The community of Port Essington lived on, but it was no longer the focus of northern expansion. One by one its residents slipped away to the new city. The community was staggered by disastrous fires, and by sweeping changes in the fishing industry. Finally, two large fires in the 1960s ended the life of Port Essington.

A standing committee created in 1997 by the Skeena River Hentage Trust is now investigating what might be done to recognize and develop Port Essington as a key site in the development of the North. One of their initial projects is the clearing and mapping of Essington's fascinating historic cemetery. Other, more long-term, projects may include rebuilding a segment of Dufferin Street, and the refurbishing of a small dock to facilitate a permanent Skeena River study base at Port Essington. No matter what the future brings, however, one thing is certain. With the erection of an illuminated sign by the Skeena River Hentage Trust in 1998 or 1999, the town will once again be seen and known by the people of the coast. Indeed, with the help of solar-charged batteries, the lights need never again go out in Port Essington.

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