Issues

On Lisbon’s Rua Áurea, Portugal Jewels is reviving a fading retail tradition

When a property became available on Lisbon’s Rua Áurea, also known as Golden Street, jeweller siblings Joana and Alexandre Bastos Gomes knew that it was an opportunity that they couldn’t pass up. The historic Baixa district in which it’s located was a fitting place to establish the second outpost of the duo’s business, Portugal Jewels, founded in 2017. “After the 1755 earthquake, this area was rebuilt and its commercial activity reorganised by decree, with goldsmiths concentrated along this avenue,” says Alexandre, whose family has been in the trade for three generations.

For more than 200 years, the premises had been a stamp and seal workshop that once supplied the royal household. Recently, however, the shop had begun to show the marks of time. “The previous owner was getting tired and the shop lacked its original character,” says Joana. “Some older people still came in for stamps but it mostly sold postcards, magnets and suitcases.” The story is a familiar one in Baixa. Once the epicentre of Lisbon’s commercial life, the neighbourhood has been transformed by rising rents and shifting consumer habits. During the past decade, many historic retailers – charming haberdasheries, bookshops and milliners – have shut, replaced by souvenir shops and international franchises. “It’s a difficult balance for the municipality to manage,” says Alexandre. “On the one hand, enterprises need to be economically sustainable. On the other, there must be some form of protection for heritage businesses.”

For Portugal Jewels, the answer has been to preserve the spirit of this historic street through the new shop’s design. The siblings enlisted creative director Ricardo Preto to reimagine the space by evoking Portuguese goldsmithery’s heyday. An illustrator was brought in to create gold lettering on the façade in the style of the original signage. Pieces from antique dealers – desks, china cabinets and even a small oratory – were restored and repurposed as display cabinets for the jewellery (as well as old stamps from the shop’s previous life). The walls were upholstered in floral chita de Alcobaça, a block-printed textile that dates back to the 18th century. “It’s a bit like a grandmother’s home,” says Joana with a smile.

As she shows Monocle around, she holds up a necklace that’s made from filigree gold spheres, a design that’s typical of Viana do Castelo, a town in the country’s north. “Our jewellery is steeped in Portugal’s goldsmithery traditions. It makes sense that our spaces add a new layer to this,” she adds. Portugal Jewels’ first shop, opened in 2025, is a five-minute walk away and follows a similar philosophy. Housed in a former barbershop that was once frequented by the country’s intellectuals, it retains many of the old barber stations and mirrors. “We like to think that we are a good example of how commerce in this part of the city can evolve without destroying the past,” says Alexandre.
portugaljewels.com

‘Ritokei’ is Japan’s well-designed island newspaper connecting remote communities

“What is the purpose of media?” asks Atsuko Isamoto, the 43-year-old editor in chief of Rito Keizai Shimbun (Ritokei). “There are editors who want to make a cool magazine or deliver something interesting to society but, for me, media is ultimately about the world that you want to shape.”

Isamoto – who is from Hita, a landlocked hot-spring town in Japan’s Oita prefecture – launched her remote-island media company in 2010. When we meet, she has just returned from the Izu archipelago and is preparing to visit Osaki Kamijima in Hiroshima prefecture. The latter, in the Seto Inland Sea, is one of Japan’s 14,125 remote islands (of which 417 are inhabited) and the place that inspired Isamoto to establish Ritokei.

“Japan’s identity is built on being an island nation,” she says. “There is incredible diversity: everywhere you look, there are different dialects, industries and climates. Remote islands present the most extreme cases of that diversity.”

Ritokei’s free quarterly newspaper was initially focused on these idiosyncrasies and their allure but Isamoto’s gaze soon turned to people’s everyday lives. For the past decade, every issue of the print edition has explored a single topic, from raising children on an island to the economics of sustaining life in such places, while navigating broader civic challenges, such as disaster resilience, preserving traditional culture and maintaining quality of life. The editorial team aims to present the publication’s 500,000 annual readers with a range of perspectives, rather than seeking out a single answer – giving island residents a platform to share their own experiences.

Design plays a key role. Tomohiro Okazaki, Ritokei’s art director, has shaped the paper’s identity since day one, from the signature logotype to the eye-catching cover graphics that render island motifs, such as lighthouses and sea bream, in vivid colours. It’s a visually striking approach that makes for a publication that demands a closer look, regardless of whether it’s found in an inner-city bookshop, a subtropical hotel suite or one of more than 1,300 stockists across Japan.

New opportunities have arisen since the company’s transition to nonprofit status in 2014, which was made possible by partnerships with villages and businesses that promote regional industry and products. It has enabled a supporter-based model: for as little as ¥1,000 (€5.39) a month, subscribers gain access to the entire back catalogue and receive three copies of every new publication – one for themselves and two to share – growing readership through first-hand, human interactions.

“Making a newspaper for all this time has come at a significant cost,” says Isamoto. “But having something physical has allowed us to forge real connections with people on about 170 inhabited remote islands.”
ritokei.com

The entrepreneur making a quiet city sing: How Indra Kantono is shaking up Singapore’s nightlife

Considering the recent spate of restaurant and bar closures in Singapore, one might conclude that the city-state’s F&B scene has lost its fizz: 1,267 food businesses shuttered between January and April alone. But Indra Kantono begs to differ. The Indonesia-born co-founder of hospitality company Jigger & Pony Group recently launched two successful businesses within six months. First came Pop City, a cocktail bar inspired by contemporary Japan, followed by BOP, billed as Singapore’s first Korean cocktail-dining bar.

Despite opening these spots in quick succession, Kantono never rushes the process. “We start by taking an honest look at the scene and thinking about what we can add to it,” he says. Singapore’s nightlife offering has become increasingly competitive in recent years, partly because the city isn’t constrained by classic bartending styles. Instead, it has found inspiration in Southeast Asian ingredients, Japanese hospitality and European traditions, creating what Kantono describes as “new formats that don’t fit neatly into any category”.

The group has also focused on creating welcoming, living-room-like third places where the drinks are as approachable as the friendly staff. “In an uncertain and divided world, bars are places where we can talk over our differences – at least, for a few hours,” says Kantono. Authenticity matters too. “The concepts need to be rooted in personal experiences,” he says. “For example, Uno Jang, our South Korean creative director, based BOP on his memories of his country’s drinking culture.” Whatever Jigger & Pony Group’s precise formula, it’s working – as one glance at the snaking queue outside BOP will make abundantly clear.
jiggerandponygroup.com

Inside Club 7, the Lisbon members’ club turning hospitality into a competitive sport

Ask anyone who has recently moved to Lisbon where to meet people, close a deal or feel part of something and they will likely say Club 7. Over coffee with Monocle, the lifestyle club’s CEO Carolina Melo Duarte greets passing members by name. Nestled among the greenery of Parque Eduardo VII, a short walk from the buzzy Marquês de Pombal in central Lisbon, the sports club opened in 1997. It started in Portuguese hands, passed to an English investment fund and in 2022 returned to Portuguese ownership when 15 members bought it because they couldn’t bear to watch their club decline. That group has since narrowed to three. 

An €8m renovation by Saraiva e Associados, with interiors by Lisbon firm Andrez & Andrez, has transformed the 29-year-old club into an airy, terracotta-hued space with the scent of green fig drifting through every corridor. There are six tennis courts, seven for padel, a gym, a 25-metre pool and a spa. “We used to mainly train Portuguese players but now our tournaments draw 12 nationalities,” says Luís Bonet, the club’s longest-serving tennis coach.

“We don’t call it a fitness club, sports club or wellness retreat,” says Carolina Melo Duarte, who took over as CEO in 2022. Her team of 140 staff spent the summer reading Will Guidara’s Unreasonable Hospitality, which chronicles lessons in service and leadership. Her aim is to treat every part of a member’s day, from their games on the courts to time cooling off in the café, with the same care that a top hotel might offer. “We put hospitality first,” she adds. Its success shows that, with the right infrastructure, a sports club can be more than just a place to let off steam.
club7.pt

The Eternal City’s oldest gift shop, Savelli Religious, is bringing old-school sensibility to city souvenirs

Cities across the globe are plagued by tourist-trinket shops hawking mass-produced plastic memorabilia. But step away from the madding crowd on St Peter’s Square in Rome and you’ll find a souvenir shop that has the art of tasteful keepsake curation down to a science. Founded in 1898, Savelli Religious is a fourth-generation, family-run emporium that has catered to everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio to pilgrims journeying to the Vatican.

“Those who come to us are looking for something that they can’t find just by shopping around,” says Alessandra Savelli, the current custodian and great-granddaughter of the shop’s founder (and former Palatine Guard), Lorenzo Savelli. Inside, objects from legacy Italian suppliers line the shelves and rosaries made from shimmering Murano glass sit alongside silver angel pendants and carved wooden crucifixes. Upstairs, a mosaic gallery offers depictions of Rome’s iconic sites, as well as the opportunity to commission a custom-made piece.

When Monocle visits, Alessandra’s 29-year-old daughter Giorgia is on duty, stopping to talk with employees as we walk through the shop. The long-term plan is for Giorgia and her two sisters – the fifth generation of the family – to take over the business. “People come here and feel welcomed, as though they were at home,” says Giorgia. “We are not just a family with the name Savelli. This shop represents everything that we have built together.”
savellireligious.com

Rome City Guide
Few cities pack a punch like Rome, with its breathtaking beauty and illustrious cultural heritage attracting millions of tourists each year. But to truly uncover its charms, you have to head to the Italian capital’s less-frequented corners. Find out how by reading our City Guide, one of more than 30 profiles of destinations around the world.

As premium labels return to print, Swiss manufacturer Sonderegger leaves quite the impression

“You wouldn’t print an email event invitation and frame it on your wall,” says Bruno Sonderegger. “But if you receive a well-made physical one and it later reminds you of some good times that you had, you might keep it.” This sums up the core mission of Bruno’s family-run business. Established by his father, Ernst, in 1966, Sonderegger is a Swiss packaging manufacturer based in Bronschhofen, a small town about an hour’s drive east of Zürich.

“Our basic materials are paper and cardboard,” says Bruno, walking Monocle across the factory floor, past whirring machines spitting out boxes with precisely cut 45-degree corners. There are also filing cabinets stacked with magnesium and brass cutting dies. “Our portfolio includes everything from packaging for products to brand communication and gifts. We’re about trying to develop things that you haven’t seen before.” The second-generation owner has built a reputation for the use of innovative techniques – unique laser engraving and foil stamping on surfaces, bespoke box-folding systems (including cubes that open from the bottom) and more. It’s work that feels particularly relevant at a time when many brands still see digital experiences as the most important way of communicating – it’s easy to track the reach and effectiveness of a marketing email or a pop-up ad on a website. However, a recent report surveying about 6,000 European and Turkish consumers showed that physical packaging is increasingly becoming a deciding factor when it comes to customers’ brand loyalty. “Premium watch brands have told us, ‘We do all of our communication digitally’ – but I challenge them to show me a luxury email,” says Bruno. “When you have a physical product, you can say within a second, ‘This is premium’ – or not.”

Sonderegger started out printing X-ray envelopes – physical storage pockets used in clinics. “My father produced his own machine to get them made automatically,” says Bruno. “After two years of working together, I said to my dad, ‘We need to find a new strategy to survive because these X-rays will disappear.’” With the company’s departure from that line of business – a shift that Bruno oversaw – Sonderegger’s client list moved from hospitals and medical facilities to fashion brands such as Hermès International, watchmakers including Switzerland’s Richard Mille and banks like the Liechtenstein Global Trust. The company’s success is proof that brands are waking up to the importance of physical packaging for positioning and communication.

Bruno’s son, Dimitri, joined Sonderegger a decade ago. “When you’re spending money on print, you want to make sure that it will give you a return on investment,” he says. “So, if you’re a luxury brand like Hermès and you send an invitation, you want people to receive it and show it to their team in the office and say, ‘Look what I got.’” Working with high-end clients means that expectations are always high. “There are so many projects that we can’t show on our website because we have signed NDAs,” says Dimitri, before telling Monocle about one that he can talk about: packaging for Swiss passports, which were created for the Federal Office of Police in 2022. “We made bespoke boxes to hold several passports, which were sent to Swiss embassies all over the world to showcase their security elements – and encourage other countries to come to Switzerland to get their own passports produced. It was an advertising tool for the nation.”

Such jobs for the state sit alongside requests to produce invitations for royal weddings, commissions from the International Olympic Committee (Sonderegger made pin boxes for the Milan Cortina Games), among others.

“The CEO of Omega asked us for special packaging for a candle, with a box and a lid made from a single piece of cardboard,” says Dimitri. “We had just purchased a new machine and asked the technician whether it would be possible to produce such a thing. He said, ‘No – if it’s not in the handbook, then it can’t do it.’ The technician returned the next day and saw us lying under the machine, cutting pieces out of it. We modified it to make that candle packaging possible.”

Sonderegger has more machines than employees, with some devices only running a couple of times a year. “That gives us the ability to do things that others would say they can only achieve by hand,” says Bruno. During our tour of the factory, we walk past devices capable of automatically folding boxes and multiple machines that press thin layers of foil onto dies and then paper or card, creating shiny or textured designs. The old X-ray-envelope maker is now used for producing vinyl sleeves. Bruno stops and points to a machine that resembles a 1980s science-fiction film prop. “I bought that one from Orell Füssli, which handles the security printing and production process for the Swiss currency,” he says. “They made the CHF20 bill on this. You can still see the marks left from the film for the notes on the iron plate.”

Despite the complexity of Sonderegger’s work, Dimitri says that what matters most is making simple and authentic physical products. “We don’t need to have five hot foils and seven laser engravings on a box or invitation,” he explains. “We need the product to be focused and transparent.” Every Sonderegger client can opt for a number of bespoke materials – from coloured paper and foils to counter plates (a metal surface placed against the raw materials during cutting, embossing or foiling) – custom-made for each project. Much of it is stored in the site’s neatly ordered archives. “Packaging reflects what’s behind a product and an invitation reflects what’s behind a brand,” says Dimitri. “It’s not decoration. It’s honesty. If I receive a letter with a handwritten address on it, I might think, ‘Wow!’ It’s a show of respect for the customer. It says, ‘I took my time and thought about you.’”

The Commute: Clock in to work with Wilhelm Schmid, CEO of A Lange & Söhne

It’s on his 40-minute commute to work that Wilhelm Schmid, the CEO of A Lange & Söhne, finds time to unwind. Since taking the helm of the Richemont-owned horological house in 2011, Schmid has overseen the expansion of its products and global retail presence. He is also a collector of classic cars. When Monocle accompanies him on his daily journey from Dresden to the company’s HQ in the small town of Glashütte in Saxony, his choice of wheels is a 1957 AC Ace Bristol.

Are you an early bird or a late riser?
I wake up at about 06.00. In the summer, this is easier, thanks to the daylight. In the winter, it might take me 30 minutes longer. But I’m an early-morning person. It’s when I exercise and go swimming. I wake up before my alarm sounds, though I make sure to set it, just in case.

What do you wish that you had more time to do in the mornings?
I would love to walk my dog but I don’t have the extra hour to squeeze it in, so my wife, Yvonne, does it. He’s the best dog on the planet, a mixed breed. We got him from a shelter when he was six months old. He’s a naughty little boy but I wouldn’t trade him for any other dog. His name is Baloo, like the bear in The Jungle Book.

Speaking of time, what watch do you strap on?
As the CEO of A Lange & Söhne, I know what’s in the pipeline, so I can’t tell you what watch I’m wearing because everyone would know what we’re launching. It’s one of the perks of being a CEO: you see early design sketches but it’s still a special moment when you wear a new watch for the first time. I have small wrists, so I’m a good guinea pig, particularly when it comes to testing whether the bigger models are comfortable.

Once you’re out the door, what does the rest of your morning look like?
When there’s no salt on the road or it’s not raining too heavily, I drive one of my classic cars. I have six and try to use them all. Cars don’t get better if you don’t drive them. It’s the same with watches. It’s also a digital detox because you can’t use a phone when you’re on the road. There’s not a lot of safety features in these vehicles, so you have to stay vigilant. They only do what you tell them to do; there’s no assistance. I use the commute to calm down. It gives me 40 minutes of breathing time, depending on the traffic. The first 7km go through Dresden but, after that, there are no traffic lights – only little countryside roads up a hill and then down to Glashütte.

Do you ever get nervous driving classic cars?
The first scratch always hurts but you have to accept that you will collect some dents from flying stones or insects. So far, nobody has crashed into my cars or damaged them while parking. People are careful around classic cars.

From transitional jackets to practical totes, here are sharp new picks from The Monocle Shop

Get ready for the change in weather with our seasonal selection from the Monocle range.

Moleskin coach jacket and trousers by Monocle
€380 and €280

Made in Portugal from cotton-wool moleskin woven in Lombardy, this set combines a boxy, lightly padded coach jacket with trousers. Finished with contrasting cotton lining, the jacket has a boxy fit, while the trousers have a relaxed look that’s suited to year-round wear.

Colour: Tan or navy
Made in: Portugal
View in The Monocle Shop

Holdall bag by Bags in Progress × Monocle
€240

Designed by New York label Bags in Progress, this holdall comes with a military-spec nylon webbing shoulder strap and handles. The colour-block combination was developed exclusively for Monocle. Featuring four pockets, a detachable and adjustable shoulder strap, and a three-snap closure.

Colour: Navy/green
Made in: USA
View in The Monocle Shop

Cotton ribbed socks by Monocle
€15

These cotton socks have been made exclusively for Monocle in Portugal. Mid-calf length and available in green, yellow and navy, each pair has a rib-knit finish with a contrast detail. Don’t miss the Monocle logo on the sole.

Colour: Blue
Made in: Portugal
View in The Monocle Shop

Loopwheel crewneck by Monocle
€195

Designed in house by the Monocle team, this pure-cotton crewneck uses heavy terry fabric knitted on loopwheel machines in Japan’s Wakayama prefecture. Made in Tokyo, the sweatshirt features ribbed cuffs and neck trim, and is available in navy or yellow.

Colour: Taupe
Made in: Japan
View in The Monocle Shop

Lambswool stripe scarf by Wallace & Sewell × Monocle
€90

The pure merino lambswool used to craft this striped scarf is washed and milled at finishers in Yorkshire and Scotland, before being woven at a family-run mill in Lancashire by design studio Wallace Sewell’s in-house team. Available in a colour palette developed exclusively for Monocle.

Colour: Persian blue or moss green
Made in: UK
View in The Monocle Shop

Cotton twill caps by Monocle
€70

Top off your look with this versatile hat. Made in California from cotton twill, this signature cap features embroidered Monocle branding on the front and a tonal logo on the rear. It can be worn for everything from a walk through the city to a round of golf.

Colour: Dark olive or golden brown
Made in: USA
View in The Monocle Shop

Carry-all tote by Bags in Progress × Monocle
€195

Like the holdall bag, this US-made carry-all tote from Bags in Progress comes with military-spec nylon webbing handles. Crafted from durable, water-repellent nylon canvas, it’s also a Monocle exclusive. Featuring five pockets, a detachable and adjustable shoulder strap.

Colour: Navy/green
Made in: USA
View in The Monocle Shop

Styling: Kyoko Tamoto

‘It’s a kind of magic’: Australian music group The Avalanches share their secret to a perfect sample

The Avalanches occupy a rarefied position in the pantheon of pop music. The Australian group, now consisting of Tony di Blasi, Robbie Chater and Andy Szekeres, isn’t prolific, rarely writes hit singles and doesn’t get entangled in celebrity spats or affairs with fellow musicians – but it does make monumental albums full of uncanny melodies and surreal diversions that are almost universally admired.

Its debut album, Since I Left You (2000), was a dizzying cocktail of nagging earworms and the inspection of strange emotional territory, realised by bringing together more than 3,000 samples from commercials, old songs and found sounds. The record sold 600,000 copies and turned The Avalanches into unlikely stars. And then came the “difficult second album”. Wildflower took 16 years to arrive but mapped new terrain and featured singers, not just samples. It was beautiful.

Its follow-up, We Will Always Love You, was released in 2020 and now the self-described “sampologists” (“Oh, God, sorry about that,” they say) are back with a fourth album. No Bad Memories links “real” music with the jingles and sound designs associated with the technology of the past 40 years: CD players, mobile (but not smart) phones, floppy-disc drives, modems, the shimmering noise of a just-switched-on Canon digital camera. The Avalanches hear tenderness in these sounds, made by machines that still carry our memories, somewhere in a drawer in our house, lifeless. But the new album – on which the group enlisted the talents of Jamie XX, Karen O and Portraits of Tracy, among others – is full of life. Oh, and there are some samples too. The Avalanches write and record as a trio but Di Blasi and Chater are the founding, touring and talking heads. Here, they tell Monocle about memory, melody and the magic of deadlines.

‘No Bad Memories’ is a kind of concept album about internet nostalgia and the sounds of machines. How did you begin creating it?
Robbie Chater: We’re always writing and sampling. Some songs started in the usual Avalanches way, with no theme. We find a beautiful sample that evokes a certain feeling and we try to make a song from it. The very nature of sampling is to explore the memory and meaning inherent in an old piece of music. Then we began wondering about the devices on which we store our memories and the sounds that they make when loading or starting up, and that was a wonderful rabbit hole to fall down.

So I’m not weird for loving the sound of the CD player closing its drawer and reading the disc?
RC: No way. And that’s exactly it – that’s our world. The internet is capable of being a wonderful archive, with catalogues of start-up sounds and disc noises. There are so many beautiful tangents: the way that Brian Eno made the Windows 95 start-up sound on an Apple computer, or the Nokia sound that we put in a song. It’s endless. And then we began making our own start-up sounds, jingles and audio logos to mix in. It was a lot of fun.

Tony di Blasi: In the past, switching on your computer and logging on to a website or early social media was a choice. Things weren’t always on, like they are now. The patience required to wait for a dial-up modem to kick in or for an image to load, let alone a song, was a choice and a commitment.

Does your writing process involve making an edifice of music, samples and sounds, then chipping away to reveal the sculpture?
RC: That’s absolutely it. Tony made a number of 30-minute sound collages to which we would then add more traditional songs. It becomes this huge thing but we need the freedom to make stuff. And then, of course, finishing it becomes incredibly hard – which bit goes here; which bleep goes there?

How do you know when it’s finished?
TDB: When someone tells you that you have a deadline. And on that day, you have to send everything in. And it’s been a bastard to finish but if that date wasn’t there, it would remain unfinished – forever!

RC: Yeah, that happened to us after the first album. It took us 16 years to follow it up. That was a trying time in many ways, so now we try to embrace deadlines. It’s tough to get far enough away from something that you’re working on to be able to judge it. At that point, my favourite sounds are when I go for a walk and just listen to the birds and people chatting in the street, the rumble of life, you know?

TDB: He’s saying silence is golden when we’re trying to promote a new album. Brilliant.

Finally, let’s go back to your original love of samples. Is there a song that represents your Proustian madeleine?
RC: Well, when we were thinking of samples to make our first album, we were buying old records from the bargain bin in record shops in Melbourne – easy-listening stuff that had come from the US in the 1950s and 1960s. So that texture was in those LPs.

TDB: There was also a Big Audio Dynamite record that was a hit in Australia when I was at school. And then Art of Noise were making odd pop records full of weird stuff and my brain was, like, “Whoa, that’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard!” Sampling is an art form that’s so close to our hearts.

RC: It’s a sort of alchemy, the crash of combining two sounds that aren’t meant to go together. I don’t know what it is. Actually, I know exactly what it is – it’s a kind of magic.

‘No Bad Memories’ is released on 16 October.

How Prince Rupert became central to Canada dodging a trade-war bullet

Porpoises and bald eagles greet the GSL Lydia as the 350-metre-long container ship glides into Prince Rupert Harbour in British Columbia after a 12-day journey from Yokohama. It makes an 180-degree turn, then pulls up to a terminal where cranes are waiting to lift its cargo onto trucks or railcars. Until recently, containers would often go back empty. North American consumers have long been eager to buy Asian goods but Canada hasn’t been exporting across the Pacific with the same gusto. Sending raw materials to its southern neighbour, the world’s largest economy, has simply been easier. But a year and a half of belligerence from Washington has damaged the once ironclad relationship between the US and Canada, causing the latter’s prime minister, Mark Carney, to pivot his country’s trade policy towards global diversification. For Ottawa’s current leadership, the race is on to end the nation’s reliance on America.

New facilities for exporting commodities and propane are now arriving at Prince Rupert. The GSL Lydia docks alongside a sliver of port infrastructure that runs for 800 metres. Barely a blemish on this landscape, the container terminal hugs a stretch of coastal rainforest where British Columbia drifts into southeast Alaska. But this remote area, with a population of just 13,000, is the linchpin of Canada’s economic strategy to cultivate new trading partners and build closer diplomatic relations with fellow middle powers.

“We have had a tendency in the past to chart bold new foreign policies without substance behind them,” says David Perry, the president and CEO of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. “Making a meaningful contribution to a country’s food security or keeping its lights on is something substantial that you can anchor a relationship around.” However, Canada is also discovering how difficult it is to have a virtuous foreign policy and thrive in a fractious world.

On the day that Monocle boards a De Havilland Dash 8 plane for the sole Air Canada flight from Vancouver to Prince Rupert, the White House announces 50 per cent tariffs on a range of Canadian goods. The latest broadside against a neighbour that Donald Trump has needled as the “51st state” is likely a high-stakes tactic in the ongoing renegotiation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (which replaced Nafta in 2018). The move elicits a fresh round of harsh words – at least, by Canadian standards. Trump is “clearly a bully”, says British Columbia’s premier, David Eby, during an annual meeting of provincial leaders, vowing that there’s “not a chance in hell” that Kentucky bourbon or California cabernet will be returning to his territory’s liquor stores any time soon. A US-Canada trade war has also scuttled a planned opening ceremony for the Gordie Howe International Bridge. The long-awaited crossing between the city of Windsor in Ontario and Detroit, Michigan – named after a Canadian ice-hockey player who made his career on a US team and designed to improve trade flows – couldn’t have come at a worse time.

These rocky relations, however, could be welcome news for the Port Authority of Prince Rupert, which has been tasked with ensuring that Canada’s most geographically favoured Pacific port is ready for a future in which exports increasingly head west, rather than south. “I don’t focus on soundbites,” says its CEO, Kurt Slocombe. “I focus on what countries need from a stable trading partner.” Originally from Vancouver, Slocombe moved his family to Prince Rupert, Canada’s rainiest city, in 2007 to open the Fairview Container Terminal. But why offload cargo almost 500 nautical miles from Vancouver, a west-coast metropolis with a major international airport?

Railroad baron Charles Melville Hays would probably have said it was destiny. In 1905 he determined that this deep, ice-free harbour promised the quickest shipping route from North America to Asia, while offering the flattest rail route through the Rockies to a western terminus. Prince Rupert’s pre-eminent booster perished aboard the Titanic in 1912. Two years later, the first train from Winnipeg arrived but Hays’s vision of a “metropolis of the north” didn’t come to pass.

Instead, the town grew more modestly, focusing on fishing and logging. During the Second World War, it served as a logistics hub. By 2001, commercial fishing had collapsed and a pulp mill closed. From a peak population of 18,000, Prince Rupert lost a quarter of its residents. The shift from halibut and lumber to containers was a gamble but also the realisation of Hays’s vision, almost a century after he scoured Canada’s coastline for a suitable Pacific port.

The bespectacled Slocombe is mild-mannered and prone to understatement. He has been here from the get-go: first at the container terminal, now at the port authority. Over the past two decades, he has watched both the port and the town grow slowly but surely. Canada’s northern communities can often feel neglected but here there’s a sense of optimism and prosperity in the air. Monocle visits a new longshoremen’s union hall and strolls past a sleek detachment for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. New trucks and SUVs are parked outside a well-stocked grocery shop, with abundant fresh produce on display – a rare sight in most remote pockets of Canada. The bar and restaurant at Crest, the town’s best lodging, are packed on a Monday night.

How much the longshoremen will move in the coming years depends on the success of Carney’s globetrotting during his first year in office. His four-day trip to China in January, the first by a Canadian leader in almost a decade, pointedly included a stop in Prince Rupert en route. He has also been to India, Japan and Saudi Arabia this year on trade-focused trips.

While the prime minister was making his rounds, construction workers 5km south of the container terminal were toiling in the rain to build Canxport, a CA$750m (€468m) facility designed to make it easy to move exports into containers for shipment overseas. Carney might be returning to Prince Rupert in late August to formally inaugurate it.

Monocle hops in a Ford F-150 Lightning for a spin around Ridley Island, a port-authority-owned hive of industrial activity. In addition to Canxport, a CA$1.35bn (€842m) project named the Ridley Island Energy Export Facility will help to unleash a flood of Canadian raw materials onto global markets. When it becomes active at the end of this year, it will welcome tankers destined for countries such as China, Japan and South Korea that rely on liquefied petroleum gas (of which Canada is a leading global producer) to power homes and industry.

In the meantime, customers can already make orders for another, less glamorous Canadian export: polyurethane pellets. Their exporter is Montréal-based Ray-Mont Logistics, for which our guide, Ryan Storry, is the local terminal manager. “I’m in charge of this jigsaw puzzle,” he says, gesturing at the choreographed chaos of cranes and containers. Inside a huge, white-domed building, an army of vacuum pipes suck pellets from hopper cars, before soaring five storeys to fill 25kg bags with tiny plastic beads, then stacking them on pallets. Ray-Mont’s Vancouver-based automation expert Luca Villa is troubleshooting the state-of-the-art equipment, which has reduced railcar unloading times from four hours to one, ensuring that Canxport is running at full steam before a potential prime ministerial visit.

Prince Rupert’s new export investments are just the prow of the ship for Canada’s Indo-Pacific trade ambitions. While projects such as Canxport faced traditional regulatory and permitting hurdles that took years to overcome, many of the flurry of new proposals are from Carney’s Major Projects Office, which promises to cut red tape and expedite construction. “The government of Canada is working at a pace we have never seen before,” says Slocombe.

Inevitably, there are detractors: the full-steam-ahead trade strategy, much of it powered by fossil-fuel-based commodities, jars with the image of a country that until recently prided itself on its green credentials. As former prime minister Justin Trudeau said in 2016, “My predecessor wanted you to know Canada for its resources. I want you to know Canadians for our resourcefulness.”

Under his successor, a fellow member of the Liberal Party, the pendulum has swung back in the other direction. Though Carney has maintained a ban on oil tankers in northern BC waters such as Prince Rupert, there has been enough of a U-turn to cause the environment and climate change minister, Steven Guilbeault, to resign from his cabinet. But dissent in the Liberal ranks is unlikely to cost Carney much political capital, says Heather Exner-Pirot of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an Ottawa-based conservative think tank. “Elbows up has become more important than environmental purity,” she says.

The economic underpinnings of this Canada-strong foreign policy seem to have also become more important than holding the line on human rights. With the exception of his March trip to Japan, Carney’s trade-focused tours have been to nations where, until recently, the maple leaf was flora non grata. The 2018 arrest of Chinese telecom executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver angered Beijing; yet the Canadian prime minister made a point of visiting the city in January to meet Xi Jinping. New Delhi and Ottawa withdrew their respective high commissioners in 2023 following the assassination of a Sikh separatist leader in British Columbia; in February, Carney talked business with Narendra Modi in Mumbai. “Whereas Canada led with its values for those 10 years [under Trudeau], now it’s leading with its interests,” says Exner-Pirot. “We are in an era of realism and pragmatism.”