People uprooted from Prince Rupert / Seal Cove (211)

Prince Rupert is located on Kaien Island, at the mouth of the Skeena River, facing Haida Gwaii and south of what is now the Alaska Panhandle. With its abundant marine life, salmon runs, and temperate rainforest, Kaien Island is the heart of the traditional territory of the Tsimshian First Nation. Small non-Indigenous halibut fisheries operated in the area in the late nineteenth century. Prince Rupert was selected in 1906 to be the coastal terminus of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (GTP, later folded into the Canadian National Railway), which led to it becoming a major port city. In 1906, the BC Tie and Timber Company built a sawmill at Seal Cove, which provided the first electricity for Prince Rupert. In 1910 (the year Prince Rupert was incorporated as a city), the Canadian Fish & Cold Storage Company built a fish curing and refrigeration plant, which became a clam canning plant in 1926. Prince Rupertʼs deep port and strategic location made it a major shipbuilding centre and transportation hub during the Second World War.

Japanese Canadians worked across many sectors and were prominent in the downtown core as tailors, barbers, grocers, and hotel and restaurant owners. Many of the downtown structures were multiple-storey, mixed-use buildings, with families often residing above their businesses, as was the case with the Dominion Hotel and Café (1915). At least three boatbuilding operations were owned by Japanese Canadians: the Masumoto Shipyard, Suehiro Boat Works, and Kumetaro Tsumura’s Kiy Boat Works.

In November 1918, the Japanese Mission moved from Port Essington to Prince Rupert, first occupying a storefront in the Rand Block (540 West 6th Avenue) before relocating to a new mission building at Tatlow Street and West 6th Avenue, known as the “Japanese Mission” or “church hall.” The Prince Rupert Japanese Association, which had about fifty members before closing in 1941, also owned rental properties in the city.