By Tatyana Beck, with content adapted from Fish Tales: Cannery Community Cooking, Past and Present, a Gulf of Georgia Cannery Society publication

In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, the fishing and salmon canning industries on the West Coast of British Columbia (BC) were powered by a diverse workforce of Indigenous communities, European settlers, and international labourers primarily hailing from Japan and China. This multicultural working community was in turn powered by salmon.

The communities that fished the Fraser River and laboured for the expanding number of canneries along the BC coast were operating in the province at a time when Pacific salmon was particularly abundant, fresh, and accessible. The canneries along the Coast, which opened as early as the 1870s, were built at the mouth of the Fraser River, where they had access  to a seemingly endless supply of fat, fully-grown salmon as the fish made their way from the ocean towards their freshwater spawning grounds each summer and autumn.

Known colloquially as “Salmonopolis”, the village of Steveston, BC was a major player within the history of these industries. By 1890, Steveston was home to a total of 15 operating canneries,the largest of which was the Gulf of Georgia Cannery. For the communities living and working in Steveston, fish and seafood weren’t just a job – they were inseparable from the sights, smells, and taste of everyday life.

In Steveston, like the rest of the Coast, the first cannery workers came from the local Indigenous communities. Indigenous groups were the first fishers of the Fraser River, as well as the original knowledge-keepers who taught European settlers how to find and fish Pacific salmon. Traditional Indigenous fishing focused on collecting enough fish to feed community members during the spring and summer, and to be smoked, dried, or candied for winter preservation or seasonal trade. 

The arrival of European businessmen to Steveston, alongside the newly-invented process of commercial canning, brought rapid change. The industry grew, and cannery work attracted labourers from around the world. Along the West Coast, the Japanese community had a significant presence and brought tremendous fishing expertise with them. Chinese labourers, some already in BC to build the Canadian Pacific Railway, supplied seasonal labour in a variety of manual positions. Together with a range of European immigrant communities and early Indigenous workers, these communities formed the workforce that helped the business of salmon canning and exporting flourish. The Fraser River’s abundant marine populations became an economic tool, exported by sea to buyers primarily in England.

But wait: if the hundreds of thousands of cans of salmon that the canneries produced were being sent across the world to England, then how was salmon the food that powered the Cannery’s workforce? What, exactly, were they eating?

In 20th century Steveston the reality was this: when the river has a seemingly never-ending supply, even the canneries might turn away your catch. Even after selling what the canneries rejected, leaving gifts for your friends and neighbours, and stocking your pantry with self-canned product for the winters, there would still be more fish waiting for you to use. If you were a fisher, docked for the night and in need of dinner, what would’ve been simpler than taking a fish right out of your boat to whip something up for you and your crew? With such abundance, Steveston residents would make use of whatever leftover fish they had on hand, adapting traditional recipes to fit with the resources the River had given them.

There was one notable exception: Indigenous communities, who had been the earliest workers at many West Coast canneries, were soon heavily policed and restricted from partaking in traditional fishing practices or accessing salmon for their communities in favour of those very same canneries.

At the canneries, seasonal workers typically lived in bunkhouses segregated by race and gender, or in communal housing with a contracted cook supplying meals. Supplies often included the national foods of the workers, such as salted eggs, bean cakes, and bamboo shoots for Chinese bunkhouses. This community would certainly have made use of fresh or canned local fish in addition to the pork and chicken they were supplied. 

Commercial fisherman Butch Sakiyama remembers bringing the fish he’d caught that the canneries had rejected to the bunkhouses to be turned into meals for himself and the other fishers : “[…] the ladies would cut it up, salt it or cook it, and the next day, next thing you know they got teriyaki salmon. And the ladies would go up there and grow their own veggies, […] and have meals ready for us”.

With diverse communities working and living in such close proximity, there were opportunities not only to adapt one’s own cultural recipes, but to learn and share recipes with one another. Commercial fisher and Coast Salish/Sahtu-Dené cultural worker Rosemary Georgeson recounts how she and her father shared jibu, a seafood hot pot, with Japanese-Canadian fishers they encountered one night after she gave them some of the fillets from her family’s boat. “[…] they bring me and dad over and they start making this sauce on the grill, adding in slivered onions and carrots, and then the slivered fish. We ate together and they spent about two hours talking with my dad.”

The Gorgeson’s story is just one of the many tales included in the Gulf of Georgia Cannery National Historic Site’s Fish Tales feature exhibit (2023-2025), which explored coastal BC residents’ deep ties to fish and seafood as a dietary staple, source of community connection, and a way of life. The legacy project created from this exhibit, the newly-published Cannery community recipe book Fish Tales: Cannery Community Cooking, Past and Present collects the “fish tales” shared by Steveston’s present community members, fishing communities, and museum audiences and connects them to the past experiences, interviews, recipes, and eating traditions of Steveston’s past.

This article is only a taste of what can be found in the Society’s new publication. Fish Tales: Cannery Community Cooking, Past and Present is now available at the Gulf of Georgia Cannery National Historic Site in Steveston, BC, or through our online gift shop at https://thecannerystore.square.site/s/shop. 

References: 

Fish Tales: Cannery Community Cooking, Past and Present. Vancouver, BC: Gulf of Georgia Cannery Society, 2026.

The Monster Cannery: The History of the Gulf of Georgia Cannery. Vancouver, BC: Gulf of Georgia Cannery Society, 2011.

Tatyana Beck is a heritage and cultural resource management professional and current Curatorial Program Manager at the Gulf of Georgia Cannery National Historic Site. With over five years of experience in museum programming and interpretive writing and many more in cultural and event work, Tatyana finds joy in using storytelling to create connection and bring new and hidden perspectives to audiences of all ages. Fish Tales: Cannery Community Cooking, Past and Present is her first official publication.

The Gulf of Georgia Cannery Society honours the importance of Canada’s West Coast fishing history by sharing stories of the fishing industry and fishing communities through exhibitions, collections, programs, and events. In addition to operating the Gulf of Georgia Cannery National Historic Site, the Society works to achieve its mission through other activities such as creating annual feature exhibitions related to fishing history and producing community events. www.gulfofgeorgiacannery.org