Prince Rupert

Prince Rupert is a port city in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Its location is on Kaien Island near the Alaskan panhandle. It is the land, air, and water transportation hub of British Columbia's North Coast, and has a population of 12,220 people as of 2016.

Prince Rupert replaced Port Simpson as the choice for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (GTP) western terminus. It also replaced Port Essington, 29 kilometres (18 mi) away on the southern bank of the Skeena River, as the business centre for the North Coast.

The GTP purchased the 14,000-acre First Nations reserve, and received a 10,000-acre grant from the BC government. A post office was established on November 23, 1906. Surveys and clearing, that commenced in that year, preceded the laying out of the 2,000-acre town site. A $200,000 provincial grant financed plank sidewalks, roads, sewers and water mains. Kaien Island, which comprised damp muskeg overlaying a solid rock foothill, proved expensive both for developing the land for railway and town use.

By 1909, the town possessed 4 grocery, 2 hardware, 2 men's clothing, a furniture, and several fruit and cigar stores, a wholesale drygoods outlet, a wholesale/retail butcher, 2 banks, the GTP hotel and annex, and numerous lodging houses and restaurants. The first lot sales that year created a bidding war.

Prince Rupert was incorporated on March 10, 1910. Although he never visited Canada, it was named after Prince Rupert of the Rhine, the first Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, as the result of a nation-wide competition held by the Grand Trunk Railway, the prize for which was $250.

With the collapse of the real estate boom in 1912, and World War I, much of the company's land remained unsold. Charles Melville Hays, president of the GTP, whose business plan made little sense, was primarily responsible for the bankruptcy of the company, and the establishment of a town that would take decades to achieve even a small fraction of the promises touted. Mount Hays, the larger of two mountains on Kaien Island, is named in his honour, as is a local high school, Charles Hays Secondary School. The train station, a listed historic place, replaced the temporary building in 1922.