PRINCE RUPERT, B.C. - The renewed bustle on the streets of this North Coast port hints that there may be some truth to Mark Twain's observation about lies, damn lies and statistics.
New census figures released Tuesday by Statistics Canada show Prince Rupert lost more than one tenth of its population in the opening years of the 21st century.
It's among five central and northern B.C. communities that make the top-10 list of Canadian towns and cities with the highest population declines.
Kitimat, developed around Alcan's giant aluminum-smelting operation, saw its population drop 12.6 per cent -- from 10,285 in 2001 to 8,987 in 2006 -- following a 7.6 per cent reduction from 1996 to 2001.
Prince Rupert, still buffeted by the closure of the Skeena Cellulose pulp mill -- the top employer -- and a stagnant fishery, dropped 12.5 per cent from its 2001 population of 14,643 residents, on top of a 12.4 per cent decline in the 2001 census.
Three other largely forest-dependent towns, Quesnel, Terrace and Williams Lake, shrank 7.1 per cent, 6.5 per cent and 3.7 per cent respectively between 2006 and 2001, Statistics Canada reported.
The figures came even as the resource-based economy of the region strengthened.
But the head-count done last May has caught the city on a rebound after more than a decade in the economic doldrums, says Mayor Herb Pond.
"As much as numbers are likely to show a decline between 2001 and 2006, we know that since those numbers were captured we've been going through pretty significant growth,'' says Pond, sitting in Prince Rupert's city hall, a 1938 ex-federal building whose Art Deco design seamlessly incorporates aboriginal motifs.
Prince Rupert's container port is being expanded, a cruise ship terminal is welcoming tourists and the port's grain terminal is busier.
Two wind-farm proposals are taking shape, a wood-pellet shipping facility is opening and a dormant sulphur-export terminal may reopen.
There's even an outside chance Skeena's new Chinese owners may fire up the pulp mill, adding 330 jobs.
The activity has fuelled a construction boom, both commercial and residential as property owners renovate the city's aging homes.
You can still buy a modest home for under $100,000 here but the price of the average family home has climbed 30 per cent in the last couple of years, says real estate agent Clayton Williams.
This week, city council will vote on the first new residential subdivision proposed in 15 years.
The census numbers are a snapshot in time that may not reflect today's reality, says Pond, but they can have real consequences.
On the positive side, if the population dips below 15,000, the B.C. government covers a larger share of policing costs under its funding formula.
But there is a significant down side.
"The fear is now that agencies that rely on those numbers for planning and for funding will be slow to respond to what I think is going to be a very rapidly evolving situation here on the North Coast,'' says Pond.
Pond, a former Canadian Airlines International manager, came here 19 years ago on a transfer from Vancouver and stayed, deciding this sleepy port city was the ideal place to raise his family.
But Prince Rupert's cratering economy forced hundreds to abandon this verdantly beautiful place, where bald eagles seem as common as crows further south.
Pond believes the population, which in the city's heyday was more than 20,000, actually dipped below 10,000 in the late 1990s.
Three jet flights a day once landed at its island airport but now an Air Canada Jazz turboprop thrums its way up from Vancouver twice a day.<
Over in Quesnel, in north-central British Columbia, mover Bill Fowler is doing a brisk business taking people's belongings to Alberta.
"I'm in Alberta probably three times a month with a moving truck,'' says Fowler, who has run his own moving company for 34 years.
But Quesnel Mayor Nat Bello says his community is actually experiencing a mini boom.
It's at the epicentre of the effort to log timber devastated by the massive pine beetle infestation that covers much of central B.C. forests, as well as a renewed interest in mineral exploration.
Still, the B.C. government's latest annual projections foresee at best marginal population growth for large swaths of the north and in many cases stagnation or even decline, by 2031.
The projections are based on fertility and mortality rates and migration. It's the latter that's the biggest variable, driven largely by economic trends and future prospects.
Prince George, the north's urban hub, and the northeast, afloat on a lake of oil and gas investment, seem immune from the trend.
Declines elsewhere have potentially troubling ramifications.
They weaken the municipalities' tax base and make it harder for businesses to stay. Public services, from hospitals to local schools, become harder to justify.
"It's very costly to service some of these smaller communities that are isolated,'' says Ryan Berlin of Vancouver's Urban Development Institute. The demographic makeup also changes, Berlin adds, as young people look for opportunities elsewhere, boosting the average age of a community's remaining residents.
The impact will vary from town to town, he says, and will depend on how well they manage the change.
"Some of these towns and regions in the province are really going to struggle to survive,'' says Berlin.
The impact of northern population shifts on British Columbia as a whole is harder to gauge.
Urbanization is a national trend as Canadians abandon rural living in favour of bigger cities. In British Columbia the favoured destinations are Vancouver, Victoria and the Okanagan Valley, especially Kelowna.
Vancouver and its suburbs account for more than half of the province's 4.1 million residents, not including the mushrooming Fraser Valley cities such as Abbotsford and Mission.
Studies by the Urban Development Institute show Vancouver's prosperity depends largely on the resources extracted from the B.C. hinterland.
But long-term population decline there won't necessarily hurt, says Helmut Pastrick, chief economist for B.C. Credit Union Central.
"Another way to look at it is production in northern B.C. could well be increasing due to greater efficiencies,'' he says.
For instance, the forest industry, the major source of high-paying jobs, has undergone profound technological change in the last three decades.
A wave of mechanisation in logging and automation in the mills slashed thousands of unionized jobs in the 1980s and 1990s.
Now so-called mega-mills are replacing local sawmills and computerization means they need only a fraction of the workers to operate.
Fewer workers translates into improved productivity, says B.C. Economic Development Minister Colin Hansen, but it doesn't have to threaten communities.
"I think the message is that communities have to change and adapt as we go forward,'' he says.
Pond believes Prince Rupert is also on the cusp of prosperity.
But this is a city with a history of dashed hopes.
Founder Charles Melville Hays envisioned Prince Rupert as a northern port to rival Vancouver. But his dreams went down with him on the Titanic in 1912.
Pond says residents have been beaten down by hard times so long that it's taken outsiders to recognize the city's potential.
"It's natural that people, while they want to hope and believe that tomorrow could be better than today, there is a reluctance to kind of invest yourself emotionally there,'' he says.
The danger, says Pond, is that they will miss the boat.
"Now's the time for our local people to be upgrading their skills. There are jobs that are coming and they're real jobs.''
