In 1977 on my way back south to ship my Land Rover back home to Hawaii after a five week fishing/camping trip to the Yukon the BC ferry Queen of Prince Rupert went past the Butedale cannery. The captain (or somebody) announced we were passing the cannery on the ship's PA system, and added the comment that it had the distinction of being the largest cannery on the west coast.
I don't think the cannery was in operation then: all I recall was a bunch of big buildings which in my mind's eye were painted red (but maybe weren't). But it seemed pretty intact. It was on that ferry passing through that landscape that I made the decision to leave Hawaii and move to the PNW. Two years later, I did.
In 1985 when my wife and I made our first flight up the Inside Passage with a Beaver on floats we landed at Butedale and tied up to what was left of one of the floating docks. We spent several hours there, talking to the caretaker and exploring the place. The huge cannery building had burned down but the rest of the community was still intact. There were even still some items on the shelves in the store although the store itself was closed.
On our subsequent flights over the years we couldn't stop at Butedale itself because there were no docks left that were conducive to mooring a floatplane. So we would fly into the lake up behind the site, back the plane up to the shore, and eat our picnic lunch before finishing our flight to Seal Cove in Prince Rupert.
As the years went by the remaining buildings deteriorated rapidly, with some of them including the store toppling sideways as the pilings under them rotted out.
This evening Butedale came to mind for some reason. Even though it figured in one of the stories in my book about Kenmore Air Harbor Bob Munro, Kenmore's founder, had never taken any photos of the place when'd he'd stopped there when it was a going concern. So I did a little web search.
I know a number of people here have taken their boats up and down the Passage in recent years so I thought I'd put the photos I found up so they could see what Butedale was like when it was actually canning salmon.
I don't think the cannery was in operation then: all I recall was a bunch of big buildings which in my mind's eye were painted red (but maybe weren't). But it seemed pretty intact. It was on that ferry passing through that landscape that I made the decision to leave Hawaii and move to the PNW. Two years later, I did.
In 1985 when my wife and I made our first flight up the Inside Passage with a Beaver on floats we landed at Butedale and tied up to what was left of one of the floating docks. We spent several hours there, talking to the caretaker and exploring the place. The huge cannery building had burned down but the rest of the community was still intact. There were even still some items on the shelves in the store although the store itself was closed.
On our subsequent flights over the years we couldn't stop at Butedale itself because there were no docks left that were conducive to mooring a floatplane. So we would fly into the lake up behind the site, back the plane up to the shore, and eat our picnic lunch before finishing our flight to Seal Cove in Prince Rupert.
As the years went by the remaining buildings deteriorated rapidly, with some of them including the store toppling sideways as the pilings under them rotted out.
This evening Butedale came to mind for some reason. Even though it figured in one of the stories in my book about Kenmore Air Harbor Bob Munro, Kenmore's founder, had never taken any photos of the place when'd he'd stopped there when it was a going concern. So I did a little web search.
I know a number of people here have taken their boats up and down the Passage in recent years so I thought I'd put the photos I found up so they could see what Butedale was like when it was actually canning salmon.
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