Don Krusel likes to tell newcomers to Prince Rupert just how dire things were for the north coast B.C. city 10 years ago.

"The unemployment rate... was over 13 per cent," he recalled. "The pulp mill, which was the mainstay of the economy, had just gone into receivership. Down on the waterfront, the longshore labour, there were less than 80 people working here." 

Today, he boasts, there are over 900 of those jobs, and the city's new economic mainstay is the port itself.

That's in no small part thanks to Krusel who, as CEO and president of the Prince Rupert Port Authority, has been a major driver of "Project Silk": a plan to create a world-class container port on Prince Rupert's waterfront, welcoming goods from overseas markets destined for consumers in Canada and the United States.

This was excerpted from the 29 August 2017 edition of CBC News.