Discovery Channel focuses its cameras on Prince Rupert

They didn’t send Jay and the recently departed Natasha out on a fact finding mission, but a producer and her camera man have been exploring the Container port site the last few days all part of future episode of the Daily Planet on the Discovery Channel.

The cable channel’s investigative team spent a few days looking over the site and examining the impact that the port will have not only on Prince Rupert but all of Western Canada. It’s expected that the program will air sometime in the week of March 12-17.

The Daily News caught up with the duo during their workday on the job site, publishing some of their findings in Thursday’s paper.

TV CREW IN TOWN TO DISCOVER PORT’S MAGIC
Discovery Channel out to document project
By Leanne Ritchie
The Daily News
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Page five

A Producer with the Discovery Channel’s Daily Planet television show got into the nitty gritty of transportation at the muddy site of the Fairview Container Terminal earlier this week.

“From our side, we like to see how things are done, so we got down and dirty, I was there Saturday in the rain with mud up to the back of my knees,” said Carol McGrath, producer with the Daily Planet.

McGrath and her camera man were in town to shoot construction of North America’s new container terminal, with a focus on how they will move the containers off the enormous “Post Panamax” sized vessels with three hundred foot high cranes and load them onto rail cars.

It’s amazing to see what they are doing to accommodate these massive container ships – which are the way transportation is going,” she said.

The Port of Prince Rupert, CN Rail and Maher Terminals are currently building Phase 1 of a container terminal that will be able to handle 500,000 TEU’s (average sized containers) annually. The terminal will be able to handle a large number of containers and enormous football field-sized ships at a very compact facility.

The science behind the project – boats, trains and automobiles – is what interested the producers, said McGrath.

“They are going to bring three massive cranes in from Shanghai to reach across the 22 containers and pick them up,” she said. “They’ve consulted CN and other ports to design this best they can.

“It’s a science magazine show, from the lab to the living room kind of stuff,” she said.

Co-host, science popularizer, author and broadcaster Jay Ingram and co-host, science producer and presenter Natasha Stillwell from the UK, demystify the mysteries of science.

“We wanted to do a special on the West, so a few of us are here to doing stories all over the province of British Columbia,” she said.

McGrath has been shooting stories in Vancouver, Prince George and Prince Rupert. The crew arrived Friday after driving up from Prince George, spent the day shooting Saturday, spent Sunday in Terrace with her cameraman’s family and then were shooting in Prince Rupert again on Monday.

“Before we came out here I was talking about some of the stories we were looking at (with the producer) and she said what about that port in Prince Rupert,” said McGrath.

“So I googled Prince Rupert Port and thought “wow this is really cool what they’re doing out there in Prince Rupert,” said McGrath.

She described the project as very interesting, especially with the aspirations to build the northern economy.

“It could bring a lot of good economy to the North, I think it’s a good plan,” she said.

Particularly fascinating for McGrath were the cranes.

“Those cranes are going to be 300 feet high. I’ve been on some high cranes but that is high. The cranes out there now are 200, so add another 100 feet on that,” she said.

“I’ve seen those fellows who sit up there, with the glass floors lifting the containers there, being at the very top of the booth… that would be interesting.:

The series will air March 12 to 17.

“We don’t’ what specific day but the whole week is devoted to the West,” she said.