Porcher Island - History

History

Porcher Island is named after Edwin Augustus Porcher, RN (1821–1878), who served as Commander of HMS Sparrowhawk at Esquimalt Naval Base, Vancouver Island, from the spring of 1865 until he returned to England in the fall of 1868. While serving with the North Pacific Squadron, Commander Porcher made four summertime voyages to the North Coast of British Columbia; in 1866, 1867 and twice in 1868. The route of the Inside Passage that the Sparrowhawk took from Esquimalt to the Hudson’s Bay Company trading post at Fort Simpson (the Tsimshian village of Lax Kw'alaams) would have passed close by the island in Chatham Sound that now bears the Commander’s name.

HMS Sparrowhawk was launched in March, 1856 at Limehouse, England and served at various stations in the Far East. By the spring of 1865, she was a converted, three-masted barque of the Wanderer Class, equipped for sail or steam. The 200-foot vessel carried five guns and a complement of 90 officers and men. She was sold in 1872 and was eventually lost in a typhoon. Porcher Island was named by Captain Daniel Pender in 1867.

With the exception of a brief influx of homesteaders in the wake of Prince Rupert being chosen as the terminus of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway in 1906, Porcher Island has always been sparsely populated. The island’s relative isolation, combined with wet, cool summers and severe winters, has discouraged many of those who sought to make Porcher Island their permanent home. Nonetheless, three small settlements that were established during the 20th century still boast a few inhabitants today. These settlements are to be found at Hunts Inlet (formerly Jap Inlet) and at Humpback Bay, both on the island’s northernmost tip, and at Oona River, which flows into Ogden Channel at the island’s eastern edge.

Hunts Inlet is a collection of older buildings grouped around a government dock, with the more recent addition of a number of vacation homes built by Prince Rupert residents.

Humpback Bay is the site of the former Porcher Island Cannery, now derelict. The salmon cannery was originally built by the Chatham Sound Fishing and Packing Company in 1928, but operated for only four years before closing at the end of the 1932 salmon season. The site was later purchased by the Canadian Fishing Company and used as a summer gillnet station until 1968, when gillnet operations were transferred to North Pacific Cannery. Humpback Bay continued to serve as a net storage facility until the 1980s, when the Crown lease was sold to private interests.

With 30 or so permanent residents, Oona River currently has the largest population of the three surviving Porcher Island settlements. Situated at the northern end of Ogden Channel, Oona River was originally settled by Scandinavian immigrants in the years before and after the First World War. The village has long been a source of wooden boats for the B.C. salmon fishing industry. Scores of these sturdy, seaworthy vessels were hand-built from red and yellow cedar by early settlers and their descendants, and some can still be seen in use today. The Oona River Salmon Enhancement Project, first established some 25 years ago, continues to rebuild threatened coho salmon stocks in the Porcher Island area.