Gulf of Georgia Cannery

The Gulf of Georgia Cannery is a National Historic Site of Canada located in Steveston village in Richmond, British Columbia.

Built in 1894, the Cannery echoes the days when it was the leading producer of canned salmon in British Columbia. Today it is a fishing museum with interactive exhibits, film, and tours that demonstrate the Cannery's important role in the history of BC's West Coast.

Along the banks of the Lower Fraser River in the boomtown of Steveston, the Gulf of Georgia Cannery opened its doors for business in 1894. The Gulf of Georgia Cannery was the largest cannery in British Columbia until 1902. It was known as the "Monster Cannery" - packing more than 2.5 million cans of salmon in 1897. That was during the free-for-all days of the salmon canning industry and soon the "Monster Cannery" boasted hundreds of workers producing these cans of salmon. Each canning season brought together a diverse mix of workers, usually of First Nations, Chinese, Japanese and European descent. The Gulf of Georgia Cannery was representative of an industry that was one of the province's largest employers and whose work force laboriously churned out one of the province's principal export commodities.

Over the years, the hordes of people manually canning salmon gave way to rows of high-speed machinery. For the Gulf of Georgia Cannery, the price to pay for these advancements would be a diminished role in the canning of salmon, as the last can of sockeye rolled off the production line in 1930. Instead of canning salmon, the Cannery's new role would be as a salmon receiving and trans-shipment point within the large network of canneries being marshalled by its new owner, the Canadian Fishing Company.

The Gulf of Georgia Cannery remained quiet during the 1930s, but with the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe, the Cannery was revitalized by an onslaught of new capital and expansion in anticipation of a new enterprise, namely herring. New machinery and an army of workers produced case after case of canned herring in tomato sauce, the major source of protein for Allied soldiers and civilians struggling overseas during the war. Herring canning became an industry-wide endeavour and alongside it grew the business of herring reduction, that is, the transformation of herring into protein-rich oil and meal for animal feeding purposes.

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Wikipedia