The Canadian-Pacific Navigation Company was an important early steamship company that operated steamships on the coast of British Columbia and the Inside Passage of southeast Alaska. The company was founded in 1883 by John Irving

John Irving (steamship captain)

John Irving was a steamship captain in British Columbia, Canada. He began on the Fraser River at the age of 18 and would become one of the most famous and prosperous riverboat captains of the era...

 (1854-1936), a prominent steamboat man, businessman, and politician of early British Columbia. In 1901 the company was purchased by the Canadian Pacific Railway

Canadian Pacific Railway

The Canadian Pacific Railway , formerly also known as CP Rail between 1968 and 1996, is a historic Canadian Class I railway founded in 1881 and now operated by Canadian Pacific Railway Limited, which began operations as legal owner in a corporate restructuring in 2001...

, becoming the steamship division of the CPR.

Ships

The company owned a variety of vessels, including the sternwheeler R.P. Rithet, the old sidewheelers Wilson G. Hunt

Wilson G. Hunt (sidewheeler)

Wilson G. Hunt was a steamboat that ran in the early days of steam navigation on Puget Sound and Sacramento, Fraser, and Columbia Rivers. She was generally known as the Hunt during her years of operation. She had a long career on the west coast of the United States and Canada, and played an...

 and Yosemite

Yosemite (sidewheeler)

The steamboat Yosemite operated for almost fifty years on San Francisco Bay, the Sacramento River, inland coastal waters and the lower Fraser River in British Columbia, and Puget Sound.-Design:...

, and the coastal steamer Willapa.