• Return to Home Page
•      Available Books:
• STEVESTON Cannery Row: An Illustrated History
• Salmon Canning on the Fraser River in the 1890s
• Salmon Canning on the Fraser River in the 1890s (in Japanese)
• A Historical Guide to the Steveston Waterfront
• SUTEBUSUTON: A Japanese Village on the British Columbia Coast
• Watari-Dori (Birds of Passage)

Salmon Canning on the Fraser River in the 1890s

Details: Soft cover. 35 pages including fifteen colour illustrations. Bibliography.

Price: $12.00 CAD / $10.00 USD

Order Form: For Canada / For U.S.

Description: This book describes how salmon were caught and processed in the canneries on the Fraser River in the 1890s. Caucasian and Japanese fishermen caught sockeye salmon in gillnets fished from Columbia River boats. Steam tugboats collected and transported the catch in fish barges to the salmon canneries. In the canneries, salmon were processed in mass production assembly lines, consisting of a series of tables, tanks and manually operated machines. Chinese workers manned the gutting tables, gang knives, salting machines, soldering machines, vent stopping and testing tables, steam retorts and labeling tables. Native women cleaned the carcasses in sliming and washing tanks, and stuffed the fish steaks into cans at the filling tables. A few Caucasian technicians monitored the canning lines, to keep them operating flawlessly without stoppages.

Review: Having the opportunity to read through Salmon Canning on the Fraser River in the 1890s was a welcome change of pace and focus from reviewing the several harrowing books on the Japanese Internment that we've incorporated into our schools' Social Studies 11 curriculum.

Yesaki and Nishimura, with the help of many fine pen and ink and watercolour drawings by Duke Yesaki, give us a clear "how-it-worked" description of a typical cannery located at the mouth of the Fraser River near Steveston. This is not a "political" work, nor an exposé of working conditions or racial tensions. The intended audience is upper elementary (although the information would be of use to high school students researching the early B.C. fishing industry), and the authors' aim is simply to provide a clear picture of how a typical cannery operated.

Each page of text is faced with a full-page illustration documenting the text. The authors drew heavily from an unpublished manuscript in Japanese describing the salmon canning operations at the Inverness Cannery on the Skeena River in 1894, with an accompanying diary for the year 1895 and 1896. Salmon canning begins with a one-page history of the Pacific Coast Cannery and an outline of a typical cannery layout, and then goes on to describe each stage in the canning process, from the collection by gillnet fishermen in company scows to the final varnishing, labeling and boxing of cans. The canning industry was strongly marked by a reliance on skilled human labour over mechanization. Also unique was the multicultural work force - a standard ten-hour work day would see expert Chinese slitters butchering four to five large fish a minute, Native and Japanese women cleaning the fish. Chinese workers cutting up the carcasses and trucking them around and cutting them into can-sized steaks, Native women and girl apprentices filling the cans at the rate of three one-pound cans a minute, and Caucasian workers operating steam retorts and nailing together shipping crates.

For anyone with a "show me" kind of curiosity. Yesaki and Nishimura are up to the challenge. There fs a lot of fascinating detail - from the identification of simple tools such as the peu, to the description of how, to ensure against spoilage, each can ended up going through five separate checks before being finally packed for shipment.

The only drawback of the authors' approach is that they do open the door to the more political kinds of questions I referred to earlier. We end up wanting to know more about the lives of these workers. That information is likely to be found in some of the books listed in the References section, and in other works such as Daphne Marlatt's Steveston recollected. I wouldn't hesitate to use Salmon Canning on the Fraser River in the 1890s in a classroom context, but I would supplement it with further research to find social and personal narratives.

Recommended for students in upper elementary and junior secondary. - Reviewed by Gerald Panio, teacher, Crawford Bay School, SD#8 (Kootenay Lake). Review appeared in THE BOOKMARK, September, 2000, pages 91-92

©2005 Peninsula Publishing / Mojo Web Design