Betty was reading us her story about the long-ago beginnings of her married life. Very young, very naïve, new to married life, and new to Vancouver Island, her husband was taking her on her first ever camping trip. Like so many camping trips, despite starting out in lovely sunshine this trip ended in a sodden hike back out in heavy rain.
My listening, however, had stopped dead in its tracks back at the whaling station. While traveling to their camping destination they had walked through a working whaling station. What? Betty saw a real live whaling station? I had questions!
Later she explained that she and Dave had traveled to the north end of Vancouver Island, to Port Alice, where they got on a bus to the whaling station. They then walked down to the pier to get on the boat to Holberg, where they would camp. For Betty, everything was new. Until marrying not long before she’d lived a very sheltered city-life in Montreal, always strictly overseen by “the nuns.”
The whaling station would have been in Coal Harbour, a half-way point between Port Alice and the camping in Holberg. The last commercial whaling station in Canada, it operated until 1967. Betty is the only person I’ve met who has witnessed such a thing.
What was it like? What did you see?
Betty spreads her arms wide, “it was like an enormous steak, being lifted up on a hook.” Her eyes are big. Words fail. It’s too hard to describe, although she clearly remembers the smell.
She makes a face. “The smell!”
Most of the whale meat processed at Coal Harbour, like that giant steak, would have gone into animal feed, such as for mink. It seems frivolous now to kill any animal to feed mink, but the fur industry was simply part of the overall economy then. It would have been an additional income stream from an animal killed for other purposes, something like the odd animal parts we see today in pet stores, sold for our dogs’ chewing pleasure. Rather than being discarded, they add to the overall income generated from each animal. In its later years Coal Harbour whaling also provided meat for Japanese consumers.
The effect on the little town no doubt was horrific. After the meat was removed all else was rendered in reeking processes of cooking and drying. The fouled waters of the harbor would add their own stench, as blood and other bits flowed back into the bay, using up all available oxygen and turning the harbor into a stinking sewer.
I always thought of whaling stations as belonging to the 19th century, associating them with “Nantucket sleigh rides” and ladies’ corsets made with whale baleen. But for almost 20 years after the Second World War, as recently as 1967, there was land-based whale processing on Vancouver Island.
Did Betty’s new husband know where he was taking his bride? Was it supposed to be an adventure? What an introduction to Vancouver Island living!
Most excellent read. Nicely leading through the story!
Thanks much!
Interesting article, here is some further historical information on this subject. https://www.northislandgazette.com/community/western-whaling-company-1363324
Thanks Kim for this additional information. It was such a different time then.