Spokeshute: Skeena River Memory

Eileen Goltz is Public Documents Librarian at Laurentian University.

Spokeshute, on the British Columbia coast, became the site of Robert
Cunningham’s trading post, Port Essington, in 1871. By 1893, when he
registered a town site plan with the provincial government, Cunningham
had expanded his operations to include a salmon cannery, a sawmill, and
a profitable retail business. These enterprises, plus the canneries
owned by other entrepreneurs, provided employment for a population that
expanded from 200 in the winter to over 1000 in the summer. Cannery
closings during the 1940s eliminated employment, people moved away, and
Port Essington, sometimes called Spokeshute, declined. A series of
destructive fires, in the 1960s, destroyed the town.

Harris reminisces with affection about his family and the community
life that existed in the frontier town from its earliest days to its
final destruction in 1965, and he shares with the reader the experiences
of the family after it moved from Spokeshute.

The book is organized topically and chronologically around the Harris
family. Although the family moved from Spokeshute when the author was
13, his memories of a childhood spent in the community provide the basis
of the book. He has also used as sources his mother’s diaries,
articles she and others have written on Spokeshute, and books on various
aspects of the history of British Columbia.

This is local history of the finest sort. Harris writes well, and has
illustrated the book with his own sketches and with photographs.