North Coast Regional District Regional District

"A vivid and comprehensive history of the City of Prince Rupert, from its ancient roots as a rich, multicultural trading hub between different Indigenous Nations to its current state as an ethnically diverse community set against the stunning natural backdrop of the Great Bear Rainforest. Since time immemorial, rain has defined life on Kaien Island, now known as the townsite of Prince Rupert. As the rainiest and cloudiest city in Canada, Prince Rupert is the perfect environment for rainbows--and the rainbow is an apt metaphor for the city: a symbol of diversity and inclusion, a supernatural gateway between worlds, and a universal sign of hope and calm after a storm. From its original Ts'mysen inhabitants to the first European explorers and fur traders, the building of dozens of salmon canneries to the construction of the transcontinental railway, the global upheaval of two World Wars to decades of industrial boom and bust, Kaien Island, and Prince Rupert, has always been a rich, multicultural trading hub that has weathered countless storms. By weaving together historical events illustrated by compelling archival photographs, The City of Rainbows strives to tell the story of Prince Rupert from a modern perspective, one that confronts the impact of colonization head-on and moves away from a romanticized account of the development of a "pioneer" town. Balancing the histories of Indigenous Peoples, European and Asian settlers, and recent immigrants, this book reveals powerful, intriguing, uncomfortable, and beautiful truths about an undoubtedly colourful city."-- Provided by publisher

vi, 251 pages, 14 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 22 cm

"For many thousands of years the lands and waters of Haida Gwaii have been home to the Haida. Plants of Haida Gwaii, written with the cooperation and collaboration of Haida knowledge holders and botanical experts, is a detailed and insightful record of the traditional uses of over 150 species of native plants. Moreover, it explains the systems of knowledge and understanding that enabled the Haida to use the resources of their islands sustainably from one generation to the next over millennia. The Haida names of these plants indicate their importance, as do the many narratives featuring them. From the ts'uu--massive western red-cedars--of the forests which provide wood used for canoes, house posts, poles and boxes, and bark carefully harvested for weaving mats, baskets and hats, to the ngaal--tough, resilient fronds of giant kelp--used to harvest herring eggs, the botanical species used by the Haida are found from the ocean to the mountain tops, and are as important today as ever before. With over 250 photographs and illustrations, this book is both beautiful and informative."-- Provided by publisher

262 pages : illustrations (some colour), colour maps, portraits (some colour) ; 24 cm

Native artist Bill Reid once called Haida Gwaii, home to the Haida people, the "Shining Islands." This revised edition in Raincoast's popular Journeys series shows why. Known also as "Canada’s Galápagos," these islands are a natural marvel, featuring awesome vistas and a rich ecosystem. The islands also offer more than 400 cultural sites, including the UNESCO World Heritage village of Ninstints. Ian Gill's lively text and David Nunuk's dramatic photographs celebrate this unique, still relatively unspoiled place.

vii, 149 pages : illustrations (chiefly color), map ; 26 cm

"The Queen Charlotte Islands have always been a half-legendary land of mists and mystery, set off and seemingly different from the rest of the coast. Human occuption goes back some 9,000 years, with intriguing hints of a people there before the Haida. Although the islands were "discovered" by Juan Perez, a Spaniard, in 1774, records indicate that voyagers from Asia had arrived much earlier. This is a story of people - Edenshaw, Weah, Davidson, Dawson, Collison and others - from Haida chiefs and carvers to European explorers and settlers

xii, 180 pages : illustrations, map ; 22 cm

"The Haida of the Queen Charlotte Islands in British Columbia constructed some of the most magnificent houses and erected some of the most beautifully carved totem poles on the Northwest Coast. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, images of the Haida's immense cedar houses and soaring totem poles were captured, first on glass plates and later on film, by photographers who travelled to then-remote villages such as Masset and Skidegate to marvel at, and record, what they saw there." "Haida Monumental Art ... includes a large number of these remarkable photographs, selected from a collection of over 10,000 original prints and photographic plates. They depict the Haida villages at the height of their glory and record their tragic deterioration only a few decades later. ... By combining archaeology and ethnohistory, George MacDonald presents an integrated framework for understanding the physical structure of a Haida village. He explains how the houses and poles are part of a fascinating web of myth, family history, and Haida cosmology, which provides a unique insight into Haida culture."--Back cover

218 pages : illustrations (some color), maps ; 31 cm

Published by Kenneth Campbell, North Coast Odyssey: The Inside Passage from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert captures the dramatic geography and rich maritime heritage of British Columbia's isolated northern marine highway. The book chronicles a coastal voyage through labyrinthine fjords, treacherous narrows, and wind-swept archipelagos, blending nautical adventure with local history, Indigenous lore, and observations of the region's abundant marine wildlife. Through vivid descriptive prose, the author details the weathered cannery towns, lighthouses, and remote settlements that cling to a magnificent yet unforgiving coastline. A keen insight drawn from the work is how the Inside Passage functions as a liquid highway that simultaneously isolates and connects; by relying entirely on maritime transit through a maze of stone and water, coastal inhabitants experience a profound sense of remoteness that can only be bridged by a deep, respectful attunement to the fickle rhythms of the Pacific tides.

202 pages : illustrations, maps, portrait ; 23 cm

Ninstints, located on Anthony Island, one of the smallest and most southerly of the Queen Charlotte chain, contains the vestiges of the great wooden structures and houses of the Kunghit Haida people who abandoned the village in the late 1800s. George MacDonald combines archival material and scientific and photographic evidence to record what is known of the history of Ninstints and its people. Details are given of their houses, of their great chiefs, and finally of their exodus from Ninstints.

60 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 26 cm

The Ghostland People was the name given by the Haida to the early white settlers. This book is a gathering of firsthand accounts of exploration and discovery in the Queen Charlotte Islands during the little-known period bordered on one side by the maritime fur traders, and on the other by the farmers and the fishermen, and the loggers and the miners. William Downie visited the islands in 1859 and filed his report with Governor James Douglas. Robert Brown made his way there aboard the Goldstream in 1866, and Judge James G. Swan made his first trip to the Charlottes in 1883/and left a fascinating yet forgotten account. In 1878 George Dawson, the “little giant,” wrote his classic study (here reproduced for the first time in 110 years) of the Islands and the Haida. Lord Dufferin and his wife, the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, toured the Queen Charlottes in 1876 and both left detailed accounts. So did Charles Horetzky, who was there two years earlier. The next visitor to leave important views of the Islands was George A. Dorsey, who, with James Deans, cruised the area in 1898 on the behalf of the Field Museum in Chicago. Just after the turn of the century, Charles Seldon, a professional hunter from the United States, visited the Islands to observe the long-fabled Queen Charlotte Island caribou. This is the fourth volume in the West Coast Heritage Series. In it, editor Charles Lillard has also provided the first detailed chronology of Island history, the first major bibliography, and chapters on the Islands’ mystique and prehistory. As was the case with the previous books, Lillard gathers together material which has not been accessible to the general reader for over eighty years.

318 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Kathleen E. Dalzell’s The Queen Charlotte Islands, Volume 1: 1774–1966 serves as a foundational spatial and documentary chronicle of Haida Gwaii, tracing the archipelago’s turbulent transition from an autonomous Indigenous maritime stronghold into a resource-extraction frontier. Drawing heavily on archival logs, pioneer journals, and oral testimonies, Dalzell details how European maritime fur traders, gold seekers, and homesteaders entered a densely organized geography long governed by the Haida nation, whose village sites, cedar reserves, and open-ocean canoe routes spanned the treacherous waters of Hecate Strait and Dixon Entrance. The text documents the systematic superimposition of colonial infrastructure—ranging from early mineral outposts and Anglican mission stations to commercial fish canneries, timber leases, and coastal steamer docks—directly over ancestral Haida town sites such as Masset (Kayung/Atewaas) and Skidegate (Hlgagilda). Dalzell underscores the profound physical isolation of the archipelago, illustrating how early non-Indigenous survival was wholly contingent on interdependent alliances, wage labor, and critical logistical aid from Haida mariners, who provided essential open-water canoe transport, coastal piloting, and food provisions. Ultimately, the history captures the enduring tension between expanding industrial enterprises and an unceded Indigenous marine domain, revealing how twentieth-century logging camps and civic settlements remained physically grounded upon the ancient geographic networks of the islands.

340 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.

Kathleen E. Dalzell’s The Queen Charlotte Islands, Volume 2: Places and Names serves as an exhaustive toponymic gazetteer and spatial record, documenting the linguistic and cartographic superimposition of Euro-American settlement across Haida Gwaii. Functioning as a granular geographical ledger, the volume systematically traces how eighteenth-century naval charts, colonial surveys, and pioneer mining and timber claims assigned British, Spanish, and settler monikers over ancient Haida village sites, hereditary fishing stations, and ancestral canoe passages. Dalzell details the logistics of frontier navigation, illustrating how remote infrastructure—such as isolated lighthouses, steamship landings, copper prospects, and coastal canneries—was anchored to specific sheltered inlets and treacherous tidal passages long mastered by Haida mariners. By cataloging the origins of every inlet, reef, and headland, the work reveals the geographic friction between an imposed imperial cartography and an enduring Indigenous maritime domain, demonstrating that the archipelago’s modern civic map remains an indelible palimpsest built directly upon ancestral Haida geography.

472 pages : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 23 cm

Memories of the Skeena chronicles the grueling industrial expansion and precarious pioneer settlement along the turbulent, deeply carved river valleys of northern British Columbia's Skeena watershed. Wicks details how the region's formidable physical barriers—specifically the sheer, impenetrable slopes of the Coast Mountains and the treacherous, rapid-choked currents of the Skeena River itself—strictly dictated the margins of human survival and commercial salmon extraction. By mapping the arduous daily labor within isolated, water-bound canneries and the dangerous navigation of shallow-draft sternwheelers fighting upstream against massive seasonal floods, the narrative highlights the immense physical endurance required to carve an economy from this unforgiving northern environment. The utter lack of viable overland routes initially forced these remote outposts into an absolute reliance on the riverine and marine highways, completely anchoring their existence to the cyclical rhythms of the Pacific salmon runs and the severe coastal climate. Ultimately, this autobiographical record serves as a deeply localized spatial history, demonstrating how the immense hydrological force and extreme, mountainous topography of this Pacific Northwest river basin inherently shaped the fiercely resilient, strictly water-dependent character of the Skeena frontier.

215 pages, 16 unnumbered leaves of plates : illustrations ; 23 cm

R. Geddes Large’s Prince Rupert, a Gateway to Alaska chronicles the ambitious, heavily mechanized struggle to carve a transcontinental railway terminus out of the punishing, muskeg-shrouded topography of British Columbia’s remote northern coast. The narrative maps how the sheer physical severity of Kaien Island—characterized by relentless maritime downpours, impenetrable temperate rainforests, and unyielding bedrock—required massive explosive engineering simply to secure a structural foothold for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. Despite the agonizing overland construction through the rugged Coast Mountains, the settlement's precise location was strictly dictated by the immense strategic value of its deep-water, ice-free harbor, which offered an unparalleled maritime shortcut to Asian markets and northern frontier resources. Ultimately, the book illustrates how conquering this profoundly isolated and inhospitable coastal geography was the absolute prerequisite for establishing a vital, industrialized marine gateway to Alaska and the broader Pacific seaboard.

210 pages illustrations 29 cm