Port Essington

First an autumn camping place (Spoksuut) for the Ts’msyen then a bustling gold rush era summer town, with a cannery, Port Essington is currently a ghost town.

ABOUT PORT ESSINGTON

For millennia, the location known as Port Essington was known as Spoksuut* or "Autumn Camping Place". In the colder months, Spoksuut provided Kitselas and Kitsumkalum with seafood like cockles, clams and mussels.

With the help of the Ts'msyen of Kitselas and Kitsumkalum and Euro Canadians Robert Cunningham and Thomas Hankin, by the 1900s, Port Essington had developed into one of the most important commercial and economic centers of the North Coast of BC.

During the height of summer salmon season, the town population grew to 5000, the largest population of any settlement along the coast north of Vancouver, a lively mix of Euro Canadians, Japanese Canadians and Indigenous groups, primarily Kitselas and Kitsumkalum Ts'msyen. There was a hotel, a town hall, the first cold storage plant in the north, dances, churches, concerts, hotels, sawmills, a school and even a red-light district

By the 1940s all of Port Essingtons Canneries were inactive and in the 1960s it all burned down in a series of fires. All that's left now is an overgrown cemetery, a long boardwalk and pilings on their last legs.

But a brighter future could be ahead as the Kitselas Final Agreement or Treaty is in stage 5 of 6 of the BC Treaty Commission's Treaty negotiations process as of 2024 to divide the Port Essington Indian Reserve in half to Kitselas and Kitsumkalum with goals of restoration and remediation of the land to be developed as a heritage/nature reserve and private land for Kitselas and Kitsumkalum exclusive use.

SCENT NOTES

Notes of foliage, cut grass, tea, rose, cinnamon and iris bring back the memories of this once bustling community while notes of smokey cypriol, pinewood and cedar evoke more recent memories.

LEARN MORE

To learn more about Port Essington/Spoksuut and plans for the future from the Ts'msyen of Kitselas, click here.

To see footage of Port Essington taken by Bart Hedstrom in 1960 before every building burned down, click here.

To read about what it was like to grow up at Port Essington as Euro Canadians, David Vick has shared his family memories and photos here.

There is also a Port Essington in Northern Australia. Both were named after British Vice-Admiral Sir William Essington.

NOTE

*There are multiple spellings of Spoksuut, including Spaksuut, Spa Xksuutks, Spkshuut, Spokeshute and Spokeshoot and all are valid to different groups. We have decided to go with the Spoksuut spelling as it is what is used in the Kitselas Treaty documents.