The Tallheo Cannery Inn, acoss the fjord from Bella Coola
(This online exclusive is an offshoot of the Glory holes, Helicopters, and other Fishy Tales–Notes from the Bella Coola Valley article in our Summer 2011 Issue)
On the Water.
We didn’t go crabbing, we went prawning instead. Technically it doesn’t really count as fishing because all we did is haul in the traps Garrett pre-set the day before but dragging 300 feet of salty wet rope tied to a wire cage the size of a truck tire that may or may not be chock full of hundreds of prawns is not easy by any means. We get some, enough for a good meal, but a day on the fjord in North Bentinck Arm is the real catch. The mountain walls are so sheer you can be only dozens of feet of the shore and still hundreds above the ocean floor.
I tried for some cod or snapper, jigging the bottom like a metronome, but to no avail. Then Garrett gunned the engine of his rebuilt boat, “One Day”, and we swung over to the Tallheo Cannery, a bed and breakfast set up in a 100-year-old cannery across the water from the town of Bella Coola.
Before ice and refrigeration revolutionized the commercial fishing game, the Tallheo Cannery employed hundreds of people and operated as a tiny functioning town. It all closed down in the1950s but Garrett and his father, Jim Newkirk, are hand-restoring the 168-acre townsite board by board and nail by nail using salvaged wood and beachcombed logs.
The 1920s bunkhouse is already completed and has 15 guestrooms. The old general store and office has been tidied but is mostly untouched. If the Bella Coola Valley feels like going back in time the Tallheo feels like slicing open the time-space continuum with a seaworthy flux capacitor. It’s like staying in a living museum but with salmon in the stream (Garrett once pulled a Pink out with just his bare hands) wildlife in the yard and two of the best hosts imaginable ready to swap tales around the beach firepit while eating the catch of the day.
Fishing, Sightseeing, relaxing and hot springing email tallheocanneryinn@hotmail.com for more info or hit their website here
