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Coastal Canneries of British Columbia |
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Fishing has always played a key role in British
Columbia. The First Nations people along the
teeming coastline and abundant rivers fished the Chinook and the
Sockeye, the Coho and the Chum. As European
explorers and settlers moved in along the
coastline, they too found the fish stock to be
seemingly inexhaustible. As the demand for fish
grew worldwide, many entrepreneurs saw a
valuable resource in the salt waters. The
question was: how could they get it to market?
Around 1870, a new process was being pioneered
in Eastern Canada and the United States. People
were beginning to preserve food by canning it.
It was only a matter of time before this new
process moved into British Columbia.
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Commercial canning operations grew from about 9
in 1880 to 64 in 1900. Before 1920, it was
estimated that there were 132 canneries
constructed in British Columbia along the
Pacific Coast. In total, there were 223 known
and documented sites. With a high international
demand for canned salmon, it seemed like this
industry would never end. |
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With corporate mergers, buyouts, and
consolidations which started in the heydays of
the early 1900’s to the massive consolidations
by BC Packers in the 1940’s and 1950’s, as well
as technological advances in fishing and canning
which caused many of the jobs in the canneries
to become obsolete, the canning industry shrunk
to the few factories which are left today.
The canning communities played a large role in
the development of British Columbia, and while
many communities turned into deserted ghost
towns, others changed their economic focus and
were able to survive. Let’s take a look at a
typical cannery town. |
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Canneries were found on the mouths of many of
the inlets puncturing the BC coastline. Due to
their remoteness, they had to support as many as
2000 to 10,000 people from May through to
September, as workers brought their families
with them. Men worked the fishing line. Women
worked the canning line. Children were probably
put to work helping their parents either on the
line or at the home. |
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During the early years of the canning industry,
everything was done by hand, from the making and
the filling of the cans to gluing on the labels
at the end. There needed to be a large area to
house all the equipment and housing which was
necessary. Each cannery needed a supply of
fresh, clean water for the canning process, and
was usually located on or near an estuary or the
mouth of a river or stream. Each cannery
consisted of a cleaning house, or a gut shed,
filling room, soldering department, cooking
bathroom and storage warehouse. Other buildings
included a net and boat service building,
boiler house, blacksmith shop, machine shop,
can making plant and box factory.
Administrative buildings included the cannery
office, store, post office, and mess house.
These buildings were connected by a series of
boardwalks linking houses and offices together. |
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Housing remained separate along racial lines,
which was common at that time. Small one or two
room cabins held First Nation’s workers and
their families, while separate bunkhouses held
Chinese, Japanese, and European workers. The cannery manager and his staff had
housing away from the general work population.
For the most part, plants were isolated, and
contact with the outside world was limited
to boat access, with steamships, tugs, and
other boats visiting and delivering supplies
sporadically. Medical emergencies were dealt
with, for the most part, by fellow employees
with limited first aid knowledge.
Entertainment was what you could make
yourself, at least, until the radio became
widely available. People would head to the
centre of town, which were the general store
and the post office to participate in social
activities and sports. |
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Example of an old cannery |
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Some cannery
towns were large enough to support a church or a
school. However, as a working day was normally
10 to 12 hours, there was not much time for
socializing. Many former workers remember those
days with fondness. One elder “remembers sitting
on the dock of Rivers Inlet Cannery in the
evening as a small child, looking out at the
twinkling of the water, seeing hundreds of
lanterns- a floating city of lights.”
Those memories are all that remain of many of
those canneries. More than eighty percent of the
223 canneries that existed in the early 1900’s
are abandoned, burnt down, or reclaimed by the
surrounding forest. Sometimes you can’t even
tell that they ever existed. Gone forever are
cannery towns like Seaside, Longview, Vancouver Bay, St.
Vincent Bay, Bliss Landing, Roy, Shoal Bay. Toba
Inlet, Forward Harbour, Butedale, Port
Essington, and Boswell. The waters around these
areas are silent again, the waves crashing onto a deserted
shore. |
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