June 5, 2025

This is the story of the North Pacific Cannery. Everyone we talked to said it’s a “must see”.

On Tuesday, June 3 Rosa, the office manager here invited us to use her car to drive 7 km south to this National Historic Site. The North Pacific was established in 1889 and is the oldest remaining salmon cannery on the west coast of North America. In it’s early days it employed Chinese, First Nation, Japanese and Europeans. Although they worked long hours side by side their housing was very segregated.

View of the remaining buildings.

Building on right (above) is the net drying shed upstairs.

Down stairs was the machine shop and workshop.

Beatrice in company store.

The huge building with the red roof in the earlier photo is where the processing and canning occurred.

Inside this building they did a great job showing the evolution of all work being done by hand and the slow evolution of mechanization. From off loading the fish to cleaning, gutting, chunking, and canning.

Housing

Fuel shed some distance from the rest of the facility.

And last, the view from the Cannery.