My first day in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, was all about the water. My wife and I woke early to catch a tour boat going north to the Khutzeymateen Inlet, now a grizzly bear sanctuary. I don't how many kilometers we traveled, but the journey to the Khutzeymateen took two hours; all told we were on the water six hours.

I spent my next two days in enchanting Prince Rupert visiting local tourist sites and interviewing people for a magazine assignment, but in my free time I found myself looking out over the harbor, gazing at uninhabited forested lands on the far shore, snowcapped mountains, wooded islands — curious about what was out there.

Prince Rupert was incorporated in 1910 on Kaien Island, just off British Columbia's Pacific coast about 90 miles south of Ketchikan, Alaska. It pleasantly situated in a land of fjords and inner passages. The British Columbia and Alaska ferries make port at Prince Rupert and for the past four years cruise ships as well. In its earlier years, Prince Rupert was the halibut capital of the world and canneries dotted the Pacific coast landscape for hundreds of miles. When the fish stocks dropped, the canneries closed, but many small fishing vessels still sail from Prince Rupert.

Tourists come to the island to see the grizzlies and other land wildlife in the region, or go whale watching during the summer months.

The waterways and islands of the inner passageways are definitely a kind of siren song and as I stared at the harbor and all the boat traffic moving around, I wondered about the nearby lands.

One evening, I found myself talking to Bruce Wishart about my sense of missing something in my visit to Prince Rupert. He came up with an unusual recommendation. Wishart, who was executive director of Tourism Prince Rupert, suggested something completely different, a visit to Lucy Island, once home to a famous lighthouse. Although I was game, I wasn't sure why he came up with that suggestion. As it turned out, Lucy Island was the real-life model for Lizzie Island, the locale of Iain Lawrence's well-known, young-adult novel, "The Lightkeeper's Daughter. "

"Why would Lawrence be writing about some island near Prince Rupert," I asked.

"Lawrence at one time lived in Prince Rupert," Wishart said.

As Lawrence once noted in an interview: "The first time I sailed to Lucy Island, there was a lightkeeper and his family living there. The last time, their house was just a stub of foundations poking up from burned and bulldozed ruins."

The very next day, Wishart gave me a call. "I've arranged for Seashore Charters, a local tour company, to take you to Lucy Island. You'll be going in an open skiff, so dress warm."

Although it was the month of June, the weather in Prince Rupert was variable, sunshine to stormy and back again in a matter of minutes. On the water, however, even these bets are off because winds gusting across the cold ocean waters can easily frost passengers in small, unprotected watercraft.

"I don't like the weather," were the first words Charley Auckland, our First Nation guide and water pilot, uttered to my wife and I as we stepped onto his small boat. We were lucky at first because in the harbor, the weather was gray and threatening, but once we sailed our way past Digby Island and then Metlakata, the village where Charley lived, the sun broke through.

Inside these narrow channels between islands great and small, the water was relatively placid, but Lucy Island was more than a mile away across a great expanse of open water. Auckland throttled up and we started heading due west. The tiny skiff began to bounce scarily as the wind swirled and cross-currents produced sharp dips and troughs. Water splashed across the boat, dampening our faces. "It's too dangerous," said Auckland, and with Lucy Island in sight, Auckland turned the boat around.

In "The Lightkeeper's Daughter, " Lawrence writes: "It's the sea, not the ship, that appears to be moving. It bursts on the bow and roars down the sides in tumbling foam. It carries rafts of torn kelp and logs that tilt through the waves. Seagulls and auklets skitter away."

Charley Auckland didn't want us to be disappointed. "Any requests?" he asked. I pointed to a nearby island. It was low tide and a rocky beach was drying in the sunshine. "Can we go there?" Auckland didn't answer but he did swing the boat in the direction of Tugwell Island, where a rocky shoreline rose quickly to higher land and bleached logs cluttered the flats. Beyond grew a thick forest home, to a small herd for of tenacious deer. Hiking the beach we only saw waterfowl and one proud eaglet sitting insouciantly on exposed rock. After about 20 minutes of picture-taking, Auckland steered his boat across the channel to Pike Island, where a First Nation longhouse was rebuilt and visitors are introduced to the oldest culture on North America's Pacific lands.

No other visitors were there and Auckland, who also did all the maintenance on Pike Island, gave us a quick tour. "I was just here yesterday," he said, "and I spotted a wolf on the beach." Ah, 24-hours too late. I've never seen a wolf in the wild and would have loved to have seen the beast.

I had to settle for some ancient petroglyphs, which were thrilling in a different way. After a short hike and more picture-taking, we reboarded our skiff and headed back to Prince Rupert. Unlike Elizabeth "Squid" McCrea, who returned to Lizzie Island, I never made it to Lucy Island. But, to have had the opportunity to explore other islands in the inner passageway was my own, real adventure.

IF YOU GO

Tour companies: The two main wildlife viewing companies working out of Prince Rupert are Prince Rupert Adventure Tours (www.westcoastlaunch.com) and Seashore Charters (www.seashorecharters.com).

Accommodations: Andrees B&B (andreesbb@citytel.net); Crest Hotel (www.cresthotel.bc.ca).

Steve Bergsman is a freelance travel writer. To find out more about Steve Bergsman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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