Meet Doug

Retired, but Still Busy

Doug Kydd’s resume reads like the inventory list of a restless northern life. Attendant at BC Ferries. Firefighter. Cab driver. Insurance salesman. Two years as a coroner. President of nearly every sports organization in town at one point or another. The sort of resume that suggests either chronic indecision or a man simply too curious to stay in one lane for very long.

The thing is, Doug doesn’t need a resume anymore.

He’s retired in the way only Prince Rupert people retire, which is to say, not really retired at all. He hikes more trails than men half his age. In winter he plays bridge. In summer he golfs. He volunteers through Rotary and chairs the Prince Rupert Regional Community Foundation, which handed out more than $50,000 this year to local causes. Somewhere in between all that, he still manages to know almost every person who walks through the coffee shop door.

Through ups and Downs, and Rain

Doug arrived in Rupert at fourteen years old. His father was a bush pilot and the family had come west from southern Manitoba. He remembers that first year in town as something bordering on scripture.

“It rained for forty days and forty nights,” he says with a grin. “I’ve been here sixty-one years now and I did the math. I’ve lived through about 550 feet of rain.”

When the pulp mill shut down in the early 2000s, Doug and his wife Jacki considered leaving for Vancouver Island. Plenty of people did. Rupert was bruised then, uncertain of itself, waiting for the next chapter to arrive. But the Kydds stayed. Partly because of the friendships. Partly because of the ocean and mountains. And partly because there are very few places left where a middle-class life still feels possible.

Then, in 2007, the container port opened and the city found its footing again. Another boom. Another reinvention. Rupert has always been good at reinvention.

‘Rupert Nights’ – Because you Never Really Leave

Doug talks about something called “Rupert Nights,” gatherings held in Vancouver, Victoria, Kamloops, Kelowna, Courtenay, Parksville, Calgary where former residents gather for an evening, a few pints and swap stories about the years they spent on the North Coast.

“That’s the thing about Rupert,” Doug says. “People leave, but they never really leave.”

Jacki is no less busy. Every Saturday she meets eight other women at McDonald’s for coffee, conversation, and whatever local news hasn’t yet reached Facebook. Mondays are reserved for Knit and Stitch gatherings that rotate through different homes around town. In Rupert, social calendars don’t fade with age, they simply become more organized.

Spend an hour with Doug and Jacki and you begin to understand something about this place. Prince Rupert isn’t just where people live. For many, it becomes part of their internal geography.