PRINCE RUPERT: As dusk descends, an explosion of violence shatters the tranquility of the world’s largest remaining tract of unspoiled ancient temperate rainforest. The chase is on.
A frantic deer bolts from the woods only meters from where our zodiac floats on the glassy calm estuary waters. On its heels races a sea wolf in a blur of black fur and fangs Nostrils flaring, tongues flapping, predator and prey swim straight toward us, then veer off across the inlet.
Unable to overtake its swifter dinner on the hoof, the exhausted wolf abandons the chase and retreats to the rocky shore. There, it paces back and forth, eying us in frustration as hungry members of its pack howl for updates from deep within BC’s Great Bear Rainforest.
Named for the bears that inhabit its thickly forested islands and inlets - including grizzlies, American black bears and Spirit bears (a black bear born with a recessive gene that produces cream coloured fur) - this vast, mostly uninhabited archipelago twice the size of the Serengeti stretches from the northern tip of Vancouver Island to the Alaska border. It is also home to countless species of birds, marine life and other mammals, including coastal wolves that can hunt salmon from streams like bears and swim like sea otters.
“The Great Bear Rainforest is so remote that it’s one of the few remaining inhabitable parts of the world that is completely black at night on satellite images,” says Kevin Smith, owner and captain of the Maple Leaf, B.C.’s oldest operational tall ship. I’m aboard his 92-foot, two-masted, mahogany lined schooner for a unique weeklong midsummer nautical natural history tour.
It wasn’t until the 1990s that environmentalists coined the name Great Bear Rainforest and began drawing public attention to the devastation logging practises that companies were inflicting on what they then called the Mid-Coast Timber Supply Area. In 2006, an agreement between the BC government and a coalition of conservationists, loggers, hunters, and First Nations established a 400 kilometre long protected coastal area.
This ecological treasure is currently at the center of a fierce struggle between Native and environmental groups and backers of the Northern Gateway Pipelines project, which if approved, would send crude oil tanker traffic regularly passing through its channels.
Today, only a handful of tourist-toting ships like the Maple Leaf operate along the coast of this magnificently rugged, rain swept wilderness, where snowcapped peaks loom over precipitous, forested fjords that plunge into deep dark channel waters.
And what a ship the Maple Leaf is. Originally built in 1904 as a luxury racing yacht by Vancouver timber titan Alexander Maclaren, she began life as the queen of the West Coast sailing scene. Then resurfaced as the most legendary halibut longliner of her time, fishing the brutal Bering Sea for over forty years.
Restored to her original glory in 1986, this maritime marvel has cruised the coast from Bella Bella to Alaska ever since, introducing generations of eco-travellers to one of the world’s last remaining truly wild places. Up here, mist often lingers in the tangy salt air like a primordial stage curtain, occasionally parted by rainbows to reveal a world of untouched natural beauty that Smith lovingly calls “a blueprint for how the world can repair itself.”
During our voyage from Bella Bella to Prince Rupert, some days are blustery, and others gloriously sunny. But we are thankfully spared much of the pelting rain and gale force winds that give this tempestuous stretch of the North Pacific such a stormy reputation.
Each day brings fresh adventures. We take frequent shore excursions, marching through boggy estuaries under the tutelage of the ship’s naturalist, Briony Penn, searching for indigenous plants with names like queen’s cup and dwarf dogwood, paintbrush and devil’s club. There are soaks in hidden natural hot springs, forays in search of ancient petroglyphs, fishing off the Maple Leaf’s stern, and sailing when weather permits. Most popular are evenings on deck spent feasting o