Ok, ok, that is being a bit dramatic, but seriously, if you get this done, your life will be blurry for a good 2-3 hours. You will pretty much be useless. This is a vital piece of information that perhaps the bloody optometrist should TELL YOU when you make an appointment to get your eyes checked. Especially when you tell her you haven't had your eyes checked in well over 10 years. Alas, she did not, so I found myself floundering at approximately 9:45am last Friday in the optometrist office feeling like I was underwater without a scuba mask.
This would not have been a big deal except a) I was supposed to be working and b) I was supposed to drive out to the North Pacific Cannery in Port Edward for a meeting. This is about a 20 minute drive away and I couldn't clearly make out the wall 4 feet across the office from me, let alone safely operate a vehicle.
Crap.
Very luckily, I had the wonderful Tess working with me last week, so as I flew back into the office (in a similar flourish of chaos and swearing as I had left as I'd actually completely forgotten about the eye appointment in the first place until they called wondering where the hell I was), I was able to toss her my keys and we hit the road. That was after she had stopped laughing at me because apparently SHE KNEW this was going to happen and also had not warned me about my imminent blindness
We arrived at the cannery to meet with the manager there, who is organizing a community event later this spring. Luckily we are new friends, so I was able to explain the reason I looked like I was as high as a kite and also why I needed to wear my sunnies even in the dark and shadowy buildings.
The North Pacific Cannery is a super cool place. It opened in 1889 and was once the foremost packer of sockeye salmon in the world. Unlike many canneries on our coast which have since fallen to ruin, the North Pacific Cannery has been preserved as a National Historic Site to exhibit and interpret the history of this once pivotal industry in British Columbia. Check out their site here.
Now I am quite certain that I will visit this place many more times during my time up here- so I will save more stories of its history until then. What I will share with you is the few phone-photos I shot whilst stumbling around in my blurry haze. To be very honest, I couldn't see my screen at all, so I was snapping photos totally blind and really just took them as a record to check back on later (just to make sure the whole scene wasn't a total dream). Therefore, what I saw looked nothing like this at all and looked more like a blurred watercolour Monet, but either way, it's a very picturesque place.
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