Anyone that questions why salmon stocks have collapsed just has to read this story about the canneries here on the west coast. Hard to imagine that the sockeye run on the Fraser used to be 16 km long. By 1921 they were pretty much wiped out.
Canneries
Thirty thousand one-pound (454-gram) tin cans were hand-soldered and hand-filled with salmon by workers for Scottish immigrant Alexander Ewen's new enterprise. It took less than 2,000 salmon to fill the 300 cases that launched the B.C. canning industry in the summer of 1871.
Nine years later, Fraser River canned salmon was being eaten out of tins by thousands of factory workers in England. Forty two thousand cases left the cannery and the following year that number tripled.
BC Canneries - Receiving Floor 1913 (BCARS E-05032)
Greed may well have been canners' mantra had they had one. Stories surrounding the canneries in the late 19th century can make a reader gasp for air because of the absolute speed at which the environment was comprised and workers abused. As early as the 1880s cries of stock depletion were heard.
At first it was the least numerous of the five species of salmon - chinook - that was harvested for canning. By 1876, sockeye was deemed the tastiest in a can and it was also the most abundant salmon, especially every four years - a cycle year - when this particular species returned to spawn in the rivers where they originally hatched.
Pulling on the "torture sticks" (oars) and pulling in the salmon were natives, Scandinavians, Greeks, Italians, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Chileans and Hawaiians. After 1893 the Japanese began emigrating and their early history in British Columbia became entangled with salmon as well.
The pioneering Ewen was described as "avaricious, erratic and stubborn, a diehard liberal and a notorious drinker."
In those heady early days Marshall English, a Virginian, built the largest cannery on the river and it seems he liked a drink as much as Ewen, perhaps more. Marshall was "unable to refrain from a good time while the money lasted. He was an infamous drinker who would excuse himself while walking with friends, throw up in a ditch and then resume the conversation without showing any discomfort."
T.E. Ladner, a Cornwall farmer, formed the Delta Canning Co. in 1878 with a Scot, J.A. Laidlaw, at Ladner's Landing. Ladner made his fortune as a teamster in the Caribou; Laidlaw made money working an abandoned mine.
J.H. Todd, a Canadian who established himself in business by selling notions to miners, began Richmond Cannery in 1882. Todd was cheap. "He once attempted to pay two native people a hardtack biscuit each for the arduous task of paddling him upriver to New Westminster." Keen and hard were two other words used to describe the canner.
An American black and expert tinsmith, John Sullivan Deas, took over a cannery built in 1872 by Capt. Edward Stamp near New Westminster, and moved it to Deas Island.
While salmon lined the canners' pockets with gold, fishers grappled with the backbreaking task of hauling aboard sockeye larger, as pictures and films indicate, than today's specimens.
Nets were set from dugout canoes at first, but a more effective flat-bottomed plank skiff, up to six metres long, was mass-produced locally and quickly caught-on. A crew of two, sometimes husband and wife teams, set and pulled the 550-metre nets. The only shelter was a crude tent slung across the bow and a cut-down oilcan was used as a stove. A 12-hour shift earned $2.25 for a fisher and $1 for a boat puller.
With labour and fish to exploit, opening a cannery was irresistible to anyone with capital. By the 1880s canneries were perched like scavengers on every major sockeye run from the Fraser to the Skeena River. It was also a period of consolidation.
The Victoria Canning Company was formed in 1884 by R.P. Rithet, Andrew Welch, Ladner and other investors, merging several canneries from the Fraser to Prince Rupert. In 1891, British engineer Henry Bell-Irving formed the giant Anglo B.C. (A.B.C.) Packing Company.
Two years later, the two firms controlled more than 60 per cent of the production on the Fraser.
Lucky for them the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed in 1887, and a clear path was established for fresh, frozen and canned fish to markets in eastern Canada and the United States. That same year a dozen canneries were working the river, nine more than when the industry began.
Railways changed cannery history in another way as well.
In August 1913 during a peak cycle for salmon, millions of sockeye could be seen making a futile attempt up the Fraser. The sight stretched on for 16 kilometres. Blasting by the Canadian Northern Railway for a route through the Fraser Canyon caused one of the biggest environmental catastrophes in the province. The ensuing landslide at Hell's Gate destroyed the major sockeye runs on the Fraser, runs that would only recover closer to the 21st century.
That disastrous season was also a huge moneymaker for canners. But four years later, another cycle year, the Fraser River's canned pack was 75 per cent below 1913 levels. Undeterred from continuing their virtual license to print money, canners focused on pinks, chum and coho salmon, species that spawned closer to the coast.
Canneries were already dotting the coast when it was clear, by 1921, two cycles after Hell's Gate, the sockeye industry was dead.
Canneries
Thirty thousand one-pound (454-gram) tin cans were hand-soldered and hand-filled with salmon by workers for Scottish immigrant Alexander Ewen's new enterprise. It took less than 2,000 salmon to fill the 300 cases that launched the B.C. canning industry in the summer of 1871.
Nine years later, Fraser River canned salmon was being eaten out of tins by thousands of factory workers in England. Forty two thousand cases left the cannery and the following year that number tripled.
BC Canneries - Receiving Floor 1913 (BCARS E-05032)
Greed may well have been canners' mantra had they had one. Stories surrounding the canneries in the late 19th century can make a reader gasp for air because of the absolute speed at which the environment was comprised and workers abused. As early as the 1880s cries of stock depletion were heard.
At first it was the least numerous of the five species of salmon - chinook - that was harvested for canning. By 1876, sockeye was deemed the tastiest in a can and it was also the most abundant salmon, especially every four years - a cycle year - when this particular species returned to spawn in the rivers where they originally hatched.
Pulling on the "torture sticks" (oars) and pulling in the salmon were natives, Scandinavians, Greeks, Italians, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Chileans and Hawaiians. After 1893 the Japanese began emigrating and their early history in British Columbia became entangled with salmon as well.
The pioneering Ewen was described as "avaricious, erratic and stubborn, a diehard liberal and a notorious drinker."
In those heady early days Marshall English, a Virginian, built the largest cannery on the river and it seems he liked a drink as much as Ewen, perhaps more. Marshall was "unable to refrain from a good time while the money lasted. He was an infamous drinker who would excuse himself while walking with friends, throw up in a ditch and then resume the conversation without showing any discomfort."
T.E. Ladner, a Cornwall farmer, formed the Delta Canning Co. in 1878 with a Scot, J.A. Laidlaw, at Ladner's Landing. Ladner made his fortune as a teamster in the Caribou; Laidlaw made money working an abandoned mine.
J.H. Todd, a Canadian who established himself in business by selling notions to miners, began Richmond Cannery in 1882. Todd was cheap. "He once attempted to pay two native people a hardtack biscuit each for the arduous task of paddling him upriver to New Westminster." Keen and hard were two other words used to describe the canner.
An American black and expert tinsmith, John Sullivan Deas, took over a cannery built in 1872 by Capt. Edward Stamp near New Westminster, and moved it to Deas Island.
While salmon lined the canners' pockets with gold, fishers grappled with the backbreaking task of hauling aboard sockeye larger, as pictures and films indicate, than today's specimens.
Nets were set from dugout canoes at first, but a more effective flat-bottomed plank skiff, up to six metres long, was mass-produced locally and quickly caught-on. A crew of two, sometimes husband and wife teams, set and pulled the 550-metre nets. The only shelter was a crude tent slung across the bow and a cut-down oilcan was used as a stove. A 12-hour shift earned $2.25 for a fisher and $1 for a boat puller.
With labour and fish to exploit, opening a cannery was irresistible to anyone with capital. By the 1880s canneries were perched like scavengers on every major sockeye run from the Fraser to the Skeena River. It was also a period of consolidation.
The Victoria Canning Company was formed in 1884 by R.P. Rithet, Andrew Welch, Ladner and other investors, merging several canneries from the Fraser to Prince Rupert. In 1891, British engineer Henry Bell-Irving formed the giant Anglo B.C. (A.B.C.) Packing Company.
Two years later, the two firms controlled more than 60 per cent of the production on the Fraser.
Lucky for them the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed in 1887, and a clear path was established for fresh, frozen and canned fish to markets in eastern Canada and the United States. That same year a dozen canneries were working the river, nine more than when the industry began.
Railways changed cannery history in another way as well.
In August 1913 during a peak cycle for salmon, millions of sockeye could be seen making a futile attempt up the Fraser. The sight stretched on for 16 kilometres. Blasting by the Canadian Northern Railway for a route through the Fraser Canyon caused one of the biggest environmental catastrophes in the province. The ensuing landslide at Hell's Gate destroyed the major sockeye runs on the Fraser, runs that would only recover closer to the 21st century.
That disastrous season was also a huge moneymaker for canners. But four years later, another cycle year, the Fraser River's canned pack was 75 per cent below 1913 levels. Undeterred from continuing their virtual license to print money, canners focused on pinks, chum and coho salmon, species that spawned closer to the coast.
Canneries were already dotting the coast when it was clear, by 1921, two cycles after Hell's Gate, the sockeye industry was dead.
