I’m interested in hearing a few “yarns” about Prince Rupert. You know, the kinds of stories that are fun to tell while sipping a few beers with your friends around a campfire or in a bar somewhere.
Here’s one example. It’s not entirely a Prince Rupert story, because it involves another town, but it should give you an idea. This happened to me about 10-15 years ago when I was working at the seaplane base in Seal Cove. Our dispatcher/cashier got a call from some guy in one of the villages (I think it was Port Simpson) who had ordered a bucket of KFC chicken and a flat of beer. It was coming by taxi, and we were asked to pay the cab driver for it and put it on a plane as cargo, which was a common practice back then. The person on the other end would pay for everything there.
So the stuff arrives at the terminal, and I’m getting ready to load it on the plane when we get another call from the guy. He said that it turns out he doesn’t have enough money to pay for everything, and we’re not to put the stuff on the plane. Great. So now we’re left holding the bag (or should I say bucket), so to speak.
About 20 minutes later, the plane takes off, which also happens to be the last scheduled flight of the evening. Just as the plane’s out in the cove and getting up speed. we get another call from the guy, saying that he’s going to pay for everything with his credit card, and to put the chicken and beer on the plane.
Of course, when we tell him that the last plane’s already taken off, he’s not too happy. But I guess he really wanted that chicken and beer, because he then asks to charter a plane to take it out to him. I don’t remember exactly how much a charter to Port Simpson cost, but I know it’s not cheap.
All that trouble for a bucket of chicken and a flat of beer?
I call bullshit on that one, only because nobody ever hears the passenger say it. It’s always a friend, and when you ask that friend, they say it was another friend. Classic urban legend, I’d say.
I’ve heard it about 5 times now, all attributed to different people who “heard it” – and they all describe the passenger differently: Southern woman, Texan man, Yankee man, etc…
It has classic urban legend elements:
It’s always a “friend of a friend” who heard it (no matter how much your friend insists it was his friend who heard it, if you ask his friend, he will will tell you that no, it wasn’t me, it was my friend.
People insist it must be true, even without direct evidence.
It’s funny, and targets a specific group to make us feel superior.
It’s like a joke that was transformed into a real life event.
Man, I should never have done that urban folklore course.
Here’s a link that attributes the exact same story to Dawson City:
here is one that I know. It was durring world war 2 and a plane with an atomic bomb was in distress. it was told to drop its bomb in heckate straight, it did and then flew up to or near kispiox crashed in to a mountin , every one jump out at royal princess island. the atomic bomb is on the bottom just a 100 miles or so from rupert.
here is a link i found about it. http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=1676
[quote=“Soggy”]Heard from a cruise ship passenger as he was disembarking:
“Ah didn’t know you’all had so many Mexicans heaya.”[/quote]
Yeah, I’ve heard similar “stories” about people seeing American cruise ship passengers way back when coming off the ship in the middle of summer bundled up in fur coats thinking that it was going to be like the North Pole.
Aquaintances of mine were on their honeymoon on a Vancouver to Alaska cruise, and it WAS an “only in Prince Rupert” story, because they and two other people from Rupert were the only ones walking around in a t shirt and shorts. Everyone else had jackets on.
Well, I checked and this is a first-hand story, with Mike Calli as witness. I could be that the tourist had also heard the story and had them on. I had one detail wrong though. They were selling tickets on a Jaguar in front of Safeway when the incident took place.
A slow pitch team goes upto Telkwa for a tournament. A group from the team goes into the liqour store in smithers. They each put a 60lber and a 15 pack on the counter, and the clerk says, “You guys must be from rupert!”
I have a story. We called a cab very late. Bootlegger late. The cabby picked us up and we asked him to take us to a LOCAL bootlegger.
So he drives us off, and only about 20 feet, backs up. Opends his trunk and says what kind of beer ya want. So, we tell him what kind and we ask how much. Ahh just 20 bucks is ok. Holy shit, only 20 bucks. So we bought two of course. We ask him when did he start selling beer? He tells us he is not a bootlegger, he is just trying to make money back from a few fellas that owed him money for a cab trip. His trunk was FULL of beer to the gills. The guys did not have enough cash to pay him so he took off with all the beer and started selling them for a cheap price.
