Steveston, British Columbia

Steveston was originally a small town founded in 1880 by William Herbert Steves near Vancouver, British Columbia. It has since been absorbed into the city of Richmond, British Columbia.

Steveston village is a historic salmon canning centre at the mouth of the South Arm of the Fraser River, on the southwest tip of Lulu Island in Richmond, British Columbia. Since 1945 it has hosted an annual Steveston Salmon Festival on July 1, Canada Day.

The most southwestern tip of this southwestern suburb contains Garry Point Park, the site of the Steveston Fisherman's Memorial.

The village is named for Manoah Steves, who arrived with his family around 1877-1878 from Moncton, New Brunswick via Chatham, Ontario. Born Manoah Steeves, a second cousin of William Steeves, he dropped the second 'e' en route. Manoah and his family were the first white family to settle in the area. Steves' son William Herbert actually developed the townsite, which became Steveston in 1889. Salmon canning began on the river in 1871, with the first major cannery being the Phoenix, developed in 1882 by Marshall English and Samuel Martin; by the 1890s there were 45 canneries, about half at Steveston. Salmon-canning was so much part of the life of Steveston that it was also known as Salmonopolis.

Each summer large numbers of Japanese, Chinese, First Nations, and European fishermen and cannery workers descended on the village, joining a growing year-round settlement. The fishery also supported a significant boatbuilding and shipbuilding industry. Sailing ships from around the world visited the harbour to take on cargoes of canned salmon.

The peak of civic aspirations was pre-World War I, when Steveston was promoted as Salmonopolis, a supposed rival of Vancouver, but canning activity slowly declined and finally ceased in the 1990s. The Gulf of Georgia Cannery, built in 1894 and at one time the largest plant in British Columbia, was reopened as a National Historic Site of Canada in 1994, and remains open today, recently given an award for Canada's best historic site.

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