Cruising to Alaska

Contemporary Review, Jan, 2003 by James Allan Evans

The Norwegian Wind, with 1,742 passengers on board, pulled away from the pier and headed out of Vancouver harbour about 7 p.m. It was the end of April and daylight was beginning to fade. But as we passed under the Lions' Gate Bridge out of the harbour, there was a rainbow over the ship's bow: a good omen for the week ahead. Next day, at the captain's champagne party, we were introduced to the ship's officers. The captain was Norwegian, but the rest came from Costa Rica, Morocco, South Africa and Britain. The Norwegian Wind featured free-style dining. There were no sittings; passengers came to one of the ship's restaurants when they felt like it, and if a table was available, they took it. The attendants were even more multinational than the ship's officers. A waitress from Romania told us that her father had been killed under the Communist regime and she had been raised by her mother who worked hard so that her daughter wanted for nothing. It was now time to repay. One tour with Norwegian Cruise Line will all ow her to buy an apartment in Romania for her mother and herself. A second tour will pay for another apartment which she will rent, and the rental income along with a job in the post office paying $50.00 a month would be enough to get by. Capitalism had not brought Romanians an easy life, she said. You might see two parents working hard for a living, and yet their children would beg for food in the streets.

How had she found her job, my wife asked a hairdresser in the Norwegian Wind's salon. She was Filipino, and had been a hairdresser in the Peninsula Hotel in Manila before she went to sea. She saw an advertisement in a Manila newspaper. She was interviewed on a Monday, and on the following Wednesday, she was on board ship. She liked her job. Accommodations on shipboard were good, language training was available, there was time off, and there was money to be made.

We reached Juneau about 5 p.m. on 1 May. The weather was mild with a hint of rain. Juneau is accessible only by air or by ship, but it is the Alaska State capital, and its most impressive edifice is the governor's mansion, a Greek Revival structure which was built for $46 million, according to a plaque sited outside the fence that surrounded it. Two rhododendrons were about to bloom in the governor's garden, which looked as if it had survived a hard winter. At the beginning of May, spring was still a recent arrival here.

Not far away, up Franklin Street, was St. Nicholas' Russian Orthodox church, which is badly in need of repair, but inside it, the priest was holding a choir practice and his welcome was warm. Next door was a Roman Catholic church in good repair. There were signs in windows along the street announcing The Trojan Women by Euripides, produced by a local theatre group. I picked up a copy of the Juneau Empire (The Voice of Alaska since 1912) which reported that the arrival of the Norwegian Sky only the day before the Norwegian Wind had opened the tourist season. Tourists who got bargain fares at the beginning and end of the season were poor tippers, the paper reported.