Bonus Features

Richmond, B.C.-- The Fishing Industry in Steveston

Valerie: The Gulf of Georgia Cannery is a National Historic Site. Mark is the manager. We were just seeing some pictures of the people who worked here. I mean, it must have been a sight in its heyday.

Curator: Oh, absolutely. The story of the cannery is the story of the people who used to work here. All these different types of people who came to Steveston and canneries up and down the coast every summer to work. There were First Nations people, Japanese people, Chinese people, Caucasian people, even Sikh people. All came to work at the cannery and they all had different jobs. They were segregated but it was all together and everyone pulling together that could get that salmon into the can.

Valerie: And this was the monster cannery.

Curator: It was. It was called the monster cannery because when it was built in 1894 it was the largest cannery on the coast of British Columbia and it was the Victoria Times Colonist that called it “the monster cannery”.

Valerie: And what, for a couple of months each summer and there were hundreds of tons of salmon that would show up and they’d be hacking them up and putting them into cans?

Curator: Well, and in fact in 1897 two and a half million pounds of salmon were canned in this cannery. So it was a tremendous amount of work, all these people working full out and canning this salmon by hand, if you can imagine.

Valerie: Well, it still sort of feels like it’s a cannery. I mean, it’s an interesting museum because it still feels like it could be used for that. I mean, we’ve got the chill from the Fraser just beneath us.

Curator: Yes, and that’s never going to change because this cannery, it’s still designed to dissapte heat just like it was back in 1894.

Valerie: Now, you talked about people that came from all over the world. Your great-grandfather… ?

Curator: Yes, it was my great-grandfather who came from Japan to Steveston to fish in 1900 and he brought his son with him and my grandfather fished, settled in Steveston, taught my father to fish. He fished until I was about fourteen or fifteen, and I fished with him for awhile and we used something just like this to mark the end of our nets when we were gill netting at night. So the kerosene lantern would mark your net and that would be tied onto this rope and that would mark where your net was and so you would be able to find it in the middle of the night.

Valerie: Do you still fish?

Curator: I don’t fish. I basically live fishing here but it’s the next best thing, I think.

Valerie: Yes, on the beautiful Fraser River. Thank you very much.

Curator: Well, thank you.

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