a few low-rise apartments, the school, and a cluster of homes—have succumbed to the tenacious reclamation program of the rain forest. The aesthetic of abandonment is reminiscent of Chernobyl. Rotted homes covered in lichens and moss. Foliage punching through the buckling pavement of old tennis courts. Forests of berry bushes growing into porches and doorways. A mostly unseen legacy of pollution also adheres to the place. For decades, the pulp mill spewed a cocktail of toxins into the air and water, including dioxins, PCPs, nitrogen oxides, and heavy metals. Crabs and prawns caught in the ocean closest to town are reportedly often deformed. The few fishing enthusiasts in town head far out into the inlet.
To be fair, a spark of life remains within the festering ruins. Since the town was shuttered, a handful of people have come to live here, and they love the place; their numbers triple or quadruple in summer when boaters moor in town for days at a time. A few historic buildings have survived with their dignity intact. And the old hydroelectric dam still generates power—not only for Ocean Falls but for Bella Bella and Denny Island, too.
For all its drawbacks Ocean Falls manages to cling on, sustained by an enduring nostalgia, the beauty of the surrounding mountains, and the promise of an unhurried existence devoid of officialdom’s nettlesome interference.
It’s appropriate, even poetic, that my first experience of rain in the Great Bear Rainforest on this trip comes on my first full day in Ocean Falls. It lasts only twenty minutes—in marked contrast to the weeklong downpours that took place during the town’s golden age. But it’s enough to tear me away from my breakfast in the dining room of Darke Waters, the lodge where I’m staying. Through the window, I watch raindrops the size of gum balls lash the asphalt. The mountains and their wraiths of cloud, visible earlier that morning, are blotted out in the bland, impenetrable gray of precipitation.
There are a few others staying at Darke Waters. The Oregon couple from the ferry sit at the back of the dining room. At another table are four rugged-looking middle-aged men in construction gear, laborers from out of town who are in Ocean Falls to make repairs to broken sections of the dam.
Turning pancakes and strips of bacon, maestro-like, in the fully exposed kitchen is Rob Darke—a co-owner of the lodge. A forty-nine-year-old former ski-hill manager from Grande Prairie, Alberta, he has an eighties rocker look and a tendency to cackle at his own jokes.
“We’re finally back to some decent weather around here,” Rob says, leaving the kitchen with a breakfast plate in his hand to sit at my table. “Terrible with all that sunshine. Hahahaha!“
Rob’s wife and business partner, Corrina Darke, wipes down a nearby table.
“I’ll take the sun any day,” Corrina says. “The last thing we need is to get depressed around here.”
Corrina, formerly, was a graphic designer with the Grande Prairie Herald Tribune newspaper. When she was laid off after thirty years of service, Rob, a fishing fanatic, convinced her to support him in his dream of owning a fishing lodge. Both had grown tired of life in Grande Prairie, a predominantly white, working-class community ridden with crime and recently dubbed “the most dangerous city in Canada.” A simple Google search was all it took to find the property, which, to their surprise, had sat idle on the market for several months. The twenty-three-room, two-story European-style chalet had been built in the mid-1940s as a women’s dormitory. Following a few other incarnations, the building became a lodge once the mill closed down. It remained one of the most intact structures in town. The Darkes purchased it for just over $100,000.
It’s the couple’s second season of operation. The lodge is still a work in progress—and running it has come with a steep learning curve. Renovations continue, and there still aren’t many guests. But the place is in working order and is slowly accruing charms. Framed nautical charts, old black-and-white photos, and drawings of locomotives hang in the hallways and rooms. Vintage knickknacks looted from the ghost town and placed in the rooms lend the lodge a retro feel.
Suddenly, a bespectacled woman in her sixties saunters into the dining room. She says hello to us, pours herself a coffee, and sits at our table. Corrina introduces her to me as Glenna, before adding proudly: “She’s one of the original residents of Ocean Falls.”
The woman smirks. “I’m the longest resident here.”
“How long is longest?” I