C 26: Port Alice

 Kemano II project was enormous investment for Alcan. A new dam would be constructed and the waters of two lakes be diverted through  a 12 km long tunnel to penstock to a 650 MW power station that would be built in Kemano. 

The original Nechako Reservoir was created by damming the Nechako River. Some water from the Reservoir continued to flow over the dam into the river, the rest was diverted through a tunnel to the Kemano power station. The reservoir had enough capacity to provide water for both the power station and the river.  However in years of extreme drought, Alcan was obligated to keep a minimum water flow into the Nechako River and a few times was forced to shut down one or two generators. The new dam will hold enough water for both the power station and Nechako River regardless of the season ….

 But immediately after the Kemano II project was announced, there was huge outcry from parties downstream of Nechako River: Municipalities, farmers, commercial fishermen, sport fishermen, canoeists and the Green Party, they were all protesting, calling Members of Parliament, radio talk shows and sending letters to newspapers with their complaints : “Alcan is stealing our water! There will not be enough water in the river for salmon to spawn, to fish, to irrigate fields, and towns will be forced to ration water!” 

Alcan management in Montreal first tried to ignore the protesters, maintaining they have the right to develop Kemano II, but as protests grew stronger it dawned on them that they were losing the public relations battle. Their solution was to hire a PR firm that created a mobile display of the “Kemano Completion Project” as Kemano II was now called, and started to visit all communities, explaining the project and how the water would be shared.

 When the Nechako reservoir was built, trees along the shore were left standing which was normal at that time. Some thirty years later shores along the whole reservoir were a tangled mess of standing and floating dead trees. To improve its image, the company announced that it would clean up the shores of the reservoir. A tree harvester mounted on a barge would cut down dead trees and they would be burned in huge incinerator mounted on another barge.

 “The Alcan Travelling Circus”, as the mobile display was called by its detractors became a fiasco. Wherever it went, it was met by well organized, placard - waving protesters. Pictures of dead trees sticking out of water were prominently displayed and the Greens ridiculed Alcan’s efforts to clean up the shores “First they polluted water, now they will pollute the air and steal our water.”

                

       Kemanoites watched the PR war with puzzlement, listening to the many half-truths and accusations coming from both sides. Nobody ever came to Kemano to talk or listen to us. Then out of the blue, Alcan management made a brief announcement. “The Kemano Completion Project was postponed, all work would be stopped.” Its opponents were cheering and Kemano became a quiet place again. However the decision had a great impact on my work. Many projects I was working on were put on hold or cancelled and I was contemplating my future. Should I stay in Kemano or ask for transfer back to Kitimat?

One day somebody dropped off the Vancouver Sun newspaper in our office and at coffee time I was flipping through it. One wanted ad caught my eye. “Project engineer, five years of experience, pulp mill, Port Alice….” Port Alice was located at the North West corner of Vancouver Island, about fifty km from Port Hardy, the town that had impressed us so much on our sailing holiday. Maybe it was time to change jobs. I sent in my resume and a couple of weeks later I was organizing a difficult trip for the job interview: by NECHAKO to Kitimat, a friend would drive me to the Terrace airport, next a flight to Vancouver, another to Victoria, renting a car to drive to Port Alice on the other end of Vancouver Island and back three days later to catch NECHAKO.  The job interview went well, maybe it helped that the plant engineer also had a sailboat, and few weeks later I was offered the job, all moving expense paid, plus a $ 2000 signing bonus. I was ecstatic.

The pulp mill in Port Alice had an interesting history. It was built around 1915 in the remote Neroutsos Inlet, accessible only by boat. The company also constructed a port, housing for employees and a store. Later came the post office, school, bank, clinic and the small community grew into Port Alice. The mill produced cellulose, material used in many industrial products like paper, textiles, cellophane and rayon. War times were boom times for the mill because cellulose is the base material for the production of gun powder and explosives.  Over the years ownership changed hands many times. The last owner was Rayonier, a multinational US corporation. The company was not really interested in an antiquated mill, but with it came vast timber rights, mostly on the Queen Charlotte Islands. Their plan was to close down the mill and sell the timber rights to the highest bidder. However their goal was derailed by the NDP Government that wouldn’t permit selling the timber rights of the Crown Land. With the prospect to make a fast profit gone, the pulp mill was sold to Western Forest Products in Nanaimo.

The scenic Neroutsos Inlet  polluted by the pulp mill in Port Alice. 

        Port Alice was a small, modern town of 800 people. The original town was built beside the mill but the pollution was so bad that the whole town was moved and rebuilt some ten kilometers away, facing the sea on one side and a mountain on the other. The mountain was previously deforested by strip logging and after one very wet summer it started to slide down and the town was in a great danger of being pushed into the sea. Fortunately the weather changed and the town was saved. The mountain side was hastily reforested, logging roads that scarred the mountain and likely started the slide were landscaped and the residents were hoping for the best. 

Moving to Port Alice was easy; the moving company shipped a container to Kemano, packed our furniture and even squeezed in our Grumman canoe. The challenge was to sail my boat to Port Alice singlehanded. The first section of the trip would be easy, retracing our sailing holiday to Victoria. The rest of the voyage would take me around Cape Scott at the north end of Vancouver Island, then along the West coast to Port Alice. That area is known for its rich fishing grounds and wicked weather. Bull Harbour was the last protected anchorage before Cape Scott and when I arrived, there were many fishing boats tied to mooring buoys.

One buoy had a solitary boat so I threw my line to the fisherman cleaning the deck. “Come over for a drink after you get settled down” he invited.  He was an older, weathered man and over a bottle of rum he talked about fishing, weather and his life. Later there was a commotion on the deck. A good looking girl stepped into the cabin, said “Hi,” and climbed into the V-berth.  “My deckhand” he mentioned and I felt little envious sailing solo. After a while the girl came out with duffle bag, said “I am moving out” and was gone. The fisherman just glowered after her. “That bitch, she is moving with John, he’s got a bigger boat.” He complained, “Girls don’t make good deckhands, they don’t like hard work. They are just looking for fun and start boat hopping.”

It was easy to see that I was approaching Port Alice. The clean ocean water turned murky with spots of floating white foam, and the odour of the pulp mill wafted through the air.  My fun was over and I was wondering what life would be like here, after living in unspoiled Kemano.

I didn’t have to wait long. A couple of weeks after starting my new job, the Pulp and Paper Union  went on strike across BC and my engineering pencil - pushing job changed drastically. The company took advantage of the production shut-down and staff employees were assigned to different jobs in the mill. The engineering department was sent to the boiler house heat exchanger.

The heat exchanger is a huge chamber filled with 8’ long metal tubes through which the boiler combustion air is passing and is preheated by burning gases from the boiler. We climbed inside the heat exchanger wearing face mask, goggles, hard hats and paper coveralls sealed around gloves and boots with duct tape. The interior was coated with thick layers of cinder, soot and black carbon powder that smeared everything touching it.  Our job was to knock out the corroded, twisted or collapsed 6” diameter metal pipes and replace them with new ones. It was still hot inside and when we started to hammer, falling soot reduced the visibility to almost zero. Our sweat was soon drenching the coveralls and we could only stay inside for an hour. If there is a hell on earth it couldn’t be much worse than the innards of that heat exchanger!

One maintenance man on the picket line asked me what was going on in the mill. When I told him about the work in the heat exchanger he laughed: “Fixing the heat exchanger was supposed to be my job, so keep working on it, we will stay out until that job is finished.”  There were many other jobs we worked on. Rayonier squeezed a profit from the aging mill by doing only the minimum maintenance and we were kept busy tightening leaking pipes and fixing worn out equipment.

In the meantime something astonishing was happening in the inlet around the mill. Usually the water was so polluted that nothing would live in it. Now with the production shut down, water cleared up and miraculously the fish came back. At lunch time people were even fishing from the wharf.

The strike lasted a few weeks and the future didn’t look very bright when the production resumed. The world was sliding into a recession and the company inherited Rayonier’s marketing system of selling cellulose on the spot market to get the highest price. This market now dried up, large rolls of cellulose were filling up the warehouse and finally the production was shut down.                  

     Then we heard more bad news, WFP had postponed the modernization of the mill and there would be layoffs. Last hired, first fired, I knew what was coming and wasn’t surprised that I was one of the four engineers that got a pink slip, just one year after getting the job. 

Suddenly my life fell apart like a house of cards. Until now everything I wanted to do in my life came through. Escape, immigration, university, Kitimat, another job, sailboat.... everything. I was devastated. It didn’t make sense for us to stay in Port Alice. My wife and kids went to Ontario to stay with her parents in Owen Sound. I was going to move to Nanaimo or Vancouver, live on my sailboat and look for a job there.

      

   

       But before saying good bye to Port Alice I wanted to hike to the Cape Scott Provincial Park at the northern tip of Vancouver Island. The Park is known for its sandy beaches, rugged terrain and a long, rough hiking trail. It was going to be a seven - day hike in rainy weather so I had to pack a sleeping bag, tent and spare warm clothing. I carefully rationed my food for seven days but it would not all fit into the backpack. I put two days’ worth of food rations in a plastic bag that I was going to clip to the backpack. Alex, a friend from Port Alice, agreed to take me to the start of the hiking trail and to pick me up seven days later. At the sign marking the trail were discarded hiking boots, confirming its wicked reputation. I pulled my knapsack from the trunk of Alex’s car; he assured me he would be back in 7 days and left. I just got on the trail, when it dawned on me that I had left the bag with the extra food in his trunk. I was stuck on a logging road, 40 km from the closest habitation. It was going to be an interesting hike…