North Pacific Cannery Tour

Tuesday, September 3, 2019

Hi Blog!

We got together with our friends Don and Julie Klein last night for a surf and turf potluck dinner. After dinner, we made plans to meet up again at the North Pacific Cannery National Historic Site. The North Pacific Canning Company was formed on November 28, 1888. It had almost 90 years continuous salmon production and fish processing until ending in the late 1970s. The Visitor Center is located in one of the newer building annexes.

We had a few minutes before the tour began, so we walked through the cannery to look out on the Inverness Passage where the Skeena River meets the ocean. This photo is looking upstream to the Skeena River. The Skeena originates high in the coastal mountains of northwestern British Columbia and flows 355 miles to reach the Pacific Ocean. The Skeena is the second largest river in the province, and one of the longest un-dammed rivers in the world. All five species of salmon call the Skeena watershead home.

Salmon canning has been a very important economic force on the West Coast of Canada since the mid to late 19th century. Enterprising individuals built salmon canneries along the coast, numbering over 200 in the industry’s heyday. These canneries were built to exploit the untapped resources of the huge salmon runs on the west coast rivers, and were a powerful force that shaped the history of the coast. On the more isolated northern salmon rivers, canneries were built as self sustaining entities with employee housing, and all of the supplementary activities that enabled the cannery to make a profit for its owners. Salmon canning was an important stimulus to economic development of the West Coast, as it provided jobs as well as a market for goods, and the justification to build infrastructure such as roads and railways.

In these isolated locales, accessible only by boat or rail, there was a need for staff housing to provide lodging for the workers, who would live on site through the canning season. At most of these canneries, labor was divided according to race and culture, with Japanese fishing and net mending, First Nations fishing and working on the cannery line, Chinese on the cannery line and cooking, and Europeans fishing and managing. This multicultural but segregated arrangement is characteristic of the early north coast canneries. North Pacific Cannery has much of its village intact, although all of the First Nations and Chinese houses, as well as most of the Japanese buildings, have been lost through obsolescence and neglect. Pictured below is a small portion of the old fuel dock.

In the early days, all of the labor was done by hand, from netting the salmon to cleaning and butchering, to can-making, to canning. As the 20th century progressed, advances in canning technology would be introduced to save time and work.

Even the fishing nets were upgraded from the old cotton to the newest nylon material. Keeping the nets repaired was a full time job.

As technology changed, so did the appearance of the cannery. Mechanization of the canning process made the Chinese tinsmiths' jobs obsolete, followed by those of the butchers as the machine called the "Iron Butcher" grew in popularity. These machines greatly increased the efficiency of production and saved a good deal of hand labor. This made the Cannery more profitable, but of course resulted in the loss of many jobs -- mostly those of the Chinese who, because of prejudice of the period, were then summarily deported.

Our tour guide had once worked as an industrial machinist. When he is not giving tours, he works on getting the old equipment up and running. Click this link to watch a video of automated fish canning system.

As to be expected, the housing for the European employees was far superior to that of the Chinese and First Nations.

The Japanese boat builders had it a little better than the First Nations and Chinese. They had their very own hot tub!

As we toured the property, we watched a local fisherman put out his net in hopes of catching salmon.  His process still isn't much different from the old gill netting practices of the late 19th Century.

With all the excess fish parts being discarded in the watershed, vermin was a problem. Cats helped keep the vermin to a minimum. They were so valued, they had their own cat houses!

We promised ourselves not to share the above photo with Baxter, our black cat, because we are afraid he will decide he should have his own cat house.  Just like every day is kids' day, our whole RV is the cats' house, so we really don't want him getting ideas.

The lower Skeena River was home to over 26 canneries, starting in 1877 with the Inverness Cannery. In additon to the North Pacific Cannery, only the Cassiar Cannery still has any substantial remaining buildings. Other than these two relatively easily accessible canneries, many of the other canneries are boat-access only and at different stages of decay, with much variation in the extent of their remnants.

After our tour, we drove down Skeena Road to see the remains of the Cassiar Cannery.

Cassiar Cannery is now an Air B&B. It markets itself to sport fisherman offering three restored waterfront heritage houses for nightly rentals. In case you are interested in renting one of these houses, the rail line is still active, and you might consider that those trains run all night. We counted three trains during our two hour tour.

We were disappointed that the Mess Hall Cafe at North Pacific Cannery was closed, since the cook called out sick. So we all had no choice but to look for our lunch elsewhere.

We wished Don and Julie safe travels as they continued on their journey south. We still have a couple days left here in Prince Rupert and hope to do a little more exploring.