Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kitsault, Canada’s $50M 1980s ghost town

justinmcelroy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 197 posts

Re: Kitsault, Canada’s $50M 1980s ghost town

#41

Post by cgh »

upupandup wrote: post #7

BC in the 80s, 90s seemed like completely different worlds compared to today. Vancouver especially seemed to have peaked early 2000s before the housing bubble took off. Rainforest Cafe, Playdium, Indy 500, Vancouver Grizzlies, Canucks. It had so much going for it. What was once a fun, soulful city is now something completely different.

The Achilles heel of Vancouver was the insane liquor licensing, which lead to the moniker of "No Fun City". That's what you get when your city is founded by a bunch of Scottish Calvinists.

But otherwise, I have great memories of my early 20s seeing bands at the Niagara Hotel and hanging out three nights a week at the Ivanhoe while paying $500 a month for a decent studio in the West End. Commercial Drive was in full swing as a sort of '90s Haight-Ashbury. Now all those places are gone and the city feels sleek and generic, like a cut-rate Hong Kong.

Re: Kitsault, Canada’s $50M 1980s ghost town

#42

Post by scythe »

cj wrote: post #9
treespace8 wrote: post #2

I can see why it's being taken care of. A town with Tide Water access on Canada's west coast could be very very valuable.

(At the risk of sounding uninformed) - why?

Due to spherical geometry, Prince Rupert is closer to Asia than any other reasonable North American port (sorry, Skagway) south of Anchorage. Kitsault is just up the inlet, and much easier to reach (crossing the Coast Mountains sunk Prince Rupert). It also happens to be easier (lower) to cross the Rockies (CA-16) when you're north of Prince George, so Kitsault could possibly have better access to Chicago than does, say, Seattle (I'm not certain here).

However, the col to access Kitsault from the BC central valley is still about half a mile high, so you would need to build a tunnel to get decent rail freight capacity. It would be a short one, easier than tunneling to Stewart/Hyder. Also, the inlet is only about 1800 feet wide, which could be difficult to navigate considering the high frequency of inclement weather in the area.

Re: Kitsault, Canada’s $50M 1980s ghost town

#43

Post by rr888 »

Looking at the map I only just noticed how small the BC coastline is and how Alaska takes most of it. Looks like it goes back to agreement between England and Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Saint_Petersburg_(18...

And there were never more than 700 Russians in Alaska. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_America#Sale_of_Alaska...

Re: Kitsault, Canada’s $50M 1980s ghost town

#45

Post by jjulius »

walrus01 wrote: post #39
patentatt wrote: post #31

Out of curiosity I looked it up on a map [1]. It appears two of the closest settlements [2],[3] are also ghost towns or otherwise pretty much abandoned. Kind of nice to know there are habitable but uninhabited places left in the world. [1] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=Kitsault+%2C+BC&ia=web&iaxm... [2] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Arm,_British_Columbia [3] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Anyox

If one looks at the area of the Discovery Islands and other places in BC there is a lot of uninhabited area. If you go north on the island highway from Nanaimo BC on Vancouver Island the population density and town size starts getting small pretty quick. BC is huge .

Hell, go take a look at the Northern Territories and almost all of Northern Canada. You can even Street View the entire drive from Dawson City in the Yukon to Tukoyatuk, basically as far north as you can go. It's beautiful and eeeeeeempty.

Edit: I suppose I missed the part about a locale being "habitable but uninhabited". The Northern Territories aren't very inhabitable, but I still find the vastness absolutely fascinating at any rate.

Re: Kitsault, Canada’s $50M 1980s ghost town

#47

Post by HeckFeck »

Imagine if it was preserved as a historic model town, much like the Cultra Folk Museum, but for the 1980s instead of the 1940s. Some photos of that museum here:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cultra+folk+museum+geograph&t=fpas...

It won't be long before the 1980s are as remote as the 40s were, and we wonder what life was like in a slightly more innocent time before the web and 9/11.

Also I am surprised that it hasn't featured in any 1980s films or series.

Re: Kitsault, Canada’s $50M 1980s ghost town

#48

Post by jabbany »

Interesting. Would love to visit some day, possibly during a trip to northern BC.

One thought I had after looking at the pictures is that... it really doesn't look that old/historic. I live in the PNW right now and a lot of the houses and public infrastructure still look just like this! Heck, I live in a '80s house that's still in original condition just like in the pictures...

Post reply on HN