Here we are in prince rupert, british columbia.
[cheering & applauding]
Canada's pacific northwest
Doesn't get "northwester" than this,
A two-hour flight north of vancouver.
And we're so close to the alaskan panhandle,
I packed my oven mitts.
[laughing]
Also known as the "city of rainbows"...
Prince rupert holds the record for the
Rainiest city in canada.
[cheering & applauding]
"take that, vancouver,"
Said the guy from st. John's.
[laughing]
You guys have, on average,
Measurable precipitation
240 days out of the year.
Yet, nobody around here seems down about it.
The people, the place itself,
Nothing seems gloomy about it.
People seem positive and optimistic.
In fact, I would say the people of prince rupert
Not only believe their glass is half full,
They know it could easily be full-full
If they just hold it out the window.
[laughing]
When you grow up in a small town in newfoundland,
You see that people have
A sense of humour about hard times.
Check, check.
I turned that into a career and hit the road.
[mc] mr. Jonny harris!
Now I'm on a mission to find the funny
In the places you'd least expect it,
Canada's struggling small towns.
Towns that are against the ropes,
But hanging in there...
Still laughing in the face of adversity.
This is prince rupert, british columbia!
♪
-How are ya? -Good, yourself?
♪
[indistinct conversation]
♪
[cheering & applauding]
In the pacific northwest,
The king of the sea is salmon,
But this area was not just known for a salmon fishery.
All along the coast, canneries provided people
With a livelihood here for generations.
It was a way of life.
Now, there's not a single one.
So, to help me process the fish plants,
Or lack thereof,
I spoke to a retired cannery millwright and
Former union president, arnie nagy.
[cheering & applauding]
Arnie is half haida, and he told me
His grandmother told him he wouldn't receive
His haida name until he had earned it.
I became active in the union.
And took on a lot of issues on the environment,
On the rights of working people.
And for all the work that he's done for the
Preservation of the salmon
And the salmon fishing industry,
At age 50, he was given his haida name.
My haida name is- [indigenous name]
Which means "strong salmon voice".
Strong salmon voice.
I don't think I was bestowed the same kind of honour
When, at 15, people called me tuna breath.
[laughing]
But, I had to assume it was strong.
It was strong.
It was a real heyday.
It was really something to see.
Arnie told me at the peak of the industry,
Over 3000 people worked canning fish
Here in prince rupert.
We had the largest salmon cannery in the world that was
Capable of canning up to a million pounds a day of fish.
He said at the heart of it was a machine called
The iron butcher.
♪
And I saw an older version of this machine up at
The old north pacific cannery.
It's a contraption full of conveyor belts and
Pulleys and spinning blades.
An iron butcher is attached to what they call an indexer.
So, the indexer cuts the head off the fish.
It would chop the fish's head off.
That's when the fish was getting indexed.
I, I guess it sounds better than lopping.
I think they used that during the french revolution, right?
People would get sent to the guillotines to be indexed.
[laughing]
You definitely didn't want to be behind it
When it was running.
There'd be guts flying everywhere.
[laughing] oh, my god.
And his job was to climb under this machinery,
To tighten the chains and the tension on the pulleys.
He was the man with the spanner under the canner.
[laughing]
So, you're always getting fish blood and
Fish slime on ya.
It was dirty work.
In fact, this was one place where you knew the
Machinery malfunctioned if there was
No blood and guts spewing out.
Do you know what I mean? It's like, "oh, my god,
At the plant today, whoa,
Paul got his sleeve caught in the machine.
And the next thing you know...
There's no blood flying anywhere."
[laughing]
-It was loud. -Yeah.
You couldn't yell to find out what was going on,
So there was hand signals.
And he said it was loud in there.
So they would have hand signals
For all the different species of salmon.
Coho was a 'c'.
-Sockeye. -Right, makes sense.
You can probably guess what this one is.
Sockeye.
Ah, there were humpies.
There's a dog salmon, would be the bark.
He did this for a dog salmon, right?
He did it like this.
I would have done it more like that.
[laughing]
But I went to a performing arts school, so I'm going to-
Yeah, yeah, I would've put some flair on it, right.
I would've been like 3 coho, 4 humpy.
[laughing]
So, arnie, what happened?
I mean, why did it close down?
Greed. Greed.
Because we got proper benefits,
We had decent wages.
Company says they weren't making enough money.
2015 saw prince rupert's
Commercial fish canning come to an end.
You look at prince rupert now,
Still feeling the ramifications of it.
There's so many businesses that shut down because
There's no more of that disposable income.
Processing got outsourced.
And not just to alaska- overseas.
If you were to pick up a packaged frozen salmon in the
Cardboard box, chances are it was processed in china.
I think for the people who lost their jobs,
It had to be unexpected.
If you're working at a cannery,
The whole point of a can,
You're not thinking things are gonna go bad.
[laughing]
After you open it,
It's almost impossible to close one.
[laughing]
And if you try, you expect cuts.
[laughing]
[applauding]
♪
[indistinct conversation]
After the last cannery closed,
Prince rupert's other waterfront industry-
Shipping- has kept things afloat.
Prince rupert is now,
By the value of goods shipped,
The third biggest port in canada.
[cheering & applauding]
And there's talk of expansion at the port.
Now, one problem is these
Increasingly busy shipping lanes
Cross the migration paths of whales.
Fortunately, we have scientists here who don't
Just watch whales, they really look out for them.
I had a chat with whale researcher,
Karina dracott.
[cheering & applauding]
Just here in the harbour, we see a lot of whale activity,
So we're worried about some of the increasing threats.
Karina explained to me that whale strikes are
A concern for ships and boats of all sizes.
Sometimes you'll see whales doing this resting behavior,
And they're often just below the surface
So you can hardly see them.
Part of our messaging is to let people know
To look out for whales.
If you see like a blow, to slow down
Just to help reduce the chance of hitting a whale.
And I know prince rupert has a history of a proud
Union town, but we got to end whale strikes.
[laughing]
Karina said the goal is to study these animals at
A distance, to interfere with them as little as possible.
When we're out on the water, we're taking photos,
But we're also looking to collect
Different types of samples.
We collect environmental dna.
Part of studying them at a distance involves collecting
What she calls "environmental dna".
I said, "what's that?"
She said, "you really want to know?"
I said, "dump it on me."
Whale poop or, a fecal sample, if you will.
It's whale poop.
[laughing]
Well, if you're really curious,
I did bring you a little sample to examine, yourself.
-You shouldn't have. -Yeah, I know.
Well, there you go, that is some whale poop.
Not super fresh.
The reason they collect this is the same reason
Your doctor might ask you for a sample.
This is- it's full of information.
Yeah, it gives us a lot of information.
Just like when you go to the doctors and they want tests,
We kind of can tell the pregnancy, the sex,
We can tell what they ate.
It can tell us how stressed they are, even,
Their cortisone levels.
They can figure out more or less
Whether the whale is healthy or sick.
I was dying to keep it, just in case
If my doctor ever asked me for a sample...
-[laughing] -slip that in.
That'd be hilarious! Then my doctor calls me up,
And says, "jonny, I'm very concerned.
I don't know how you got pregnant in your late 70s,
But you should lay off of the krill."
[laughing]
-How do you get it? -[laughing]
She said they might be out in the boat
Watching a humpback whale.
Sometimes we're watching, and then we're like, oh,
That whale pooped. Okay, quick. Mobilize.
It's a race against gravity.
They gotta go as quickly as they can, right?
And we'll try to get to it before it disappears.
And sometimes we make it and sometimes we don't.
I can imagine things are tense on the boat.
It's like, "oh, my god, can you go any faster?
I'm going as fast as the boat can go.
Well, if you don't go any faster,
I'm gonna lose my s***!"
[laughing]
I mean, sometimes when you're really lucky,
It's just floating all together and you can scoop it up.
Although, whales are smart.
I wonder if they're ever like, "oh my god,
There's that lady again, scooping up my poop with a
Pool skimmer, and she's worried I'm sick?"
[laughing]
♪
Karina told me there's more to her job than
Looking out for a whales.
Sometimes whales just need somebody to listen.
Whales live in an acoustic environment.
We live in a very visual environment, but they're,
They're listening. They're talking to one another.
They don't have great eyesight.
They depend on sound a great deal.
So the presence of ships nearby
Can cause interference
With the way the whales communicate.
[chirping whale song]
This is a hydrophone here.
Whale researchers study this by putting a microphone
In the water, a hydrophone.
And she took me out.
We went out in the boat.
She got me to drop the hydrophone in the water.
All right, throw 'er in.
Which I can honestly say that was my first ever mic drop.
[laughing]
Let's switch that.
[crackling]
This hydrophone can pick up sound from
Hundreds of kilometers away.
That's a big ship.
We're likely hearing a mixture of
Several boats, actually.
Humpback whale songs can get masked by
The sound of shipping.
[crackling & whirring]
We got lucky.
I don't know what, mathematically,
What the odds were.
We got unbelievably lucky.
Like there was no whales, but it was sunny.
[laughing]
[applauding]
Beautiful sunny day!
Bombing around in a boat, sun beatin' down.
Town looks beautiful, it was great.
-Blue sky. -You never know.
It changes every 15 minutes or so.
Maybe I shouldn't jinx it.
[thunder]
♪
Long before prince rupert's container ships
And salmon canning,
First nations people were catching, cooking,
And curing fish in this area.
Salmon was always a staple, but I met a couple of people
From the tsimshian nation, who told me
A mega source of offshore oil is
The eulachan fish.
Alayna russell and randy cobb!
[cheering & applauding]
Should I try something right off the bat?
-Yeah, go for it. -What's a good, like...?
This is just fried.
So, starting with the tail?
Yeah, take the tail and break it off, and...
You can eat that actually.
That's the best part. [laughing]
We had fresh pan-fried eulachan.
The head's still on.
[pitter patter of rainfall]
So I went for it, I ate it, head and all.
-That's delicious. -Mm-hm.
It was good, tasted just like the rest of the fish.
I could feel I popped an eyeball at one point,
That was kind of weird.
-[laughing] -but, all natural.
Like, you'd find weirder stuff in a wiener.
[laughing]
The eulachan is not only delicious,
But it's versatile.
This would be fresh out of the water,
Right into the frying pan.
That's my favourite way, and then puttin' them
On sticks to hang in the smokehouse.
And these are sundried.
And then, as you're breaking the head off,
Just give it a pull and the...
The backbone comes out with it.
I didn't know that hack.
And, they make from it eulachan grease.
This grease here is real white so,
This one must have been from my very first cook.
It's always been a highly valued commodity for the
Indigenous people of the area.
You can eat it so many different ways.
Some people even put it on toast,
Instead of butter, it's just...
Eulachan grease and a little bit of salt.
I was like, whoa, hang on now.
I was already impressed with the eulachan.
Now it feels like you're fishing for condiments.
[laughing]
To make this eulachan grease,
First you have to catch the eulachan,
And alayna said that that's actually the fun part.
We go out there with our chest waders, our dip nets.
We tie that sled to like our hip waders,
And then we just scoop, and...
Chuck 'em in the sled.
Those are the best days to be out there.
And then, randy takes them.
We put it straight into a bin that drains,
So you let it sit until it ages and ferments.
Once they're ready,
I fill up my tote right there with water.
Dump 'em in.
As the bodies start to break up,
And then whatever has grease floats up.
But it's funny 'cause randy,
He made it sound simple at first.
He's like, "if you know how to let food rot and
You know how to boil water, you can make it."
[laughing]
I said, "do I know how to rot food...?"
[laughing]
I'm the michael jordan of letting food rot.
I had carrots up in my cupboard one time that,
I guess I just got used to it, but one day...
Cops showed up, okay?
[laughing]
[applauding]
In a town that sees this much rain,
You don't screw around with a sunny day.
You get out there and you enjoy it.
You let the good times roll, and here in prince rupert,
When the good times roll, they roll 20-sided dice.
I had a pretty good larp with local elven entrepreneur,
Founder of good times games, rob gruber!
[cheering & applauding]
Rob's shop is full of dungeons and dragons,
And role playing games,
And card games, and board games.
He also organizes a lot of game programs for kids,
And there's this amazing larp program.
It's short for live action role play.
So, it's basically like playing dungeons and dragons
But doing it- doing the adventures in real life.
And rob invited me to take part in
One of their weekly battles.
♪
Kids show up dressed as medieval knights, wizards,
And healers, and archers.
There must've been 60 or 70 kids
Who showed up to this thing.
Now the most important rule of
Live action sword and sorcery is?
That's right. "honour in epic death," is just a
Fancy way of us saying we play fair every time.
Rob's character is the elf king.
Alright, you guys ready for some battles?
-Yeah! -Okay, epic.
♪
And I, too, joined the battle.
I was a feared warrior that
Went by the name of the iron butcher.
[laughing]
Today is a day unlike any other in the great history
Of still standing!
9 seasons have come and passed...
And now, we fight for a 10!
-Still! -Standing!
-Still...! -Standing!
-Still! -Standing!
And then he got them divvied up into two teams.
Blue and orange over there, red and green over there.
Top field, on the dry spot.
At one point I asked some of the bigger kids,
Maybe 13 years' old or so, and I was like,
"do we just charge into battle?"
And one of them was like, "yeah, that's exactly
What you do if you want to get killed right away."
[laughing]
He goes, "best thing to do is let some of the
Little kids run in first as a meat shield."
[laughing]
[snarling]
Skull crushers ready!
Yeah!
[snarling]
Smoking elves ready!
[growling]
To start the battle, he blows this enormous conch.
[horn blowing]
[growling & shouting]
Whoa!
And then, it's like a mix between
A battle scene from lord of the rings
And red rover, red rover.
[laughing]
[children's chatter continues]
♪
The idea is, you know,
If someone else's sword touches your arm
You can't use it, or your leg.
Or if you get hit in the torso, you're slain.
But it's all on the honour system so,
Rob, to encourage fair play,
They should act out a dramatic-
What he calls an epic death.
Agh!
I'm a trained actor, so I did a little bit of like
Shakespearean julius caesar.
[laughing]
Mixed with willem defoe in platoon.
[laughing]
Ah!
I fell to my knees first, and then-
It was hard then for me to stay in character
'cause I was worried I was gonna
Get goose poop on my new jeans.
[laughing]
And if that happened, like, oh, my god,
Forget some elf with a battle axe.
My mom's gonna kill me.
[laughing]
♪ [magical, sparkling harp] ♪
Did you just heal me?
Thank you! Help me up, help me up!
[grunting]
Ah! Thank you, squire!
I was slain until a girl ran over and she healed me,
And then I got to battle again.
She healed me just by holding her hands above me and-
You could make a lot of money doing that in vancouver.
-It's called reiki. -[laughing]
Agh!
Larping, like for kids, it's a cool thing to learn.
[growling & shouting] roar!
Especially the epic death, like if any of them
Go on to become soccer players.
[laughing]
♪
The canneries are gone,
And if some suggest that's wrong, well,
From the little I know, I'd have to say, yeah, kinda.
If you're buying frozen salmon,
Bought a couple miles away but got gutted, cleaned,
And froze somewhere in china.
There might be consternation
About measurable precipitation,
But you must consider just what the rainfall brings.
In this city of rainbows,
Prince rupert's people know...
That the rain can only precipitate good things.
Thanks for coming out, everybody,
You've been amazing!
[cheering & applauding]
♪
The seriousness of what's been going on
In this community,
You gotta have a laugh sometimes.
Blue sky, nothing but blue sky.
That's 'cause my eagle brothers are
Keeping an eye on us up there.
-Two of them. -Where?
Whoa.
♪
Jonny's jokes were great.
He's got something to learn about science though.
♪
Felt pretty proud of that actually, that was...
That was cool.
[group chatter]
♪
Avenge me, for pete sake!
[cheering] yeah!