The salmon canning industry was a racialized and gendered industry. Most of the fishers for the early canneries were First Nations people from coastal villages. By 1900, cannery fishers were mainly of Japanese and European descent. Inside the canneries, workers were primarily Indigenous women and women of Chinese descent. Workers lived in meagre accommodation provided by the canneries, segregated by ‘race’.
Who was working in the canneries? What kind of divisions of labour do you notice? What do you notice about the working conditions for different jobs within the cannery? How does intersectionality fit into this? Are there jobs that are still relatively gendered or racialized today? Is the work being done by different groups of people valued differently? How can you tell?
The Labour History Project pays particular attention to gender in this overview of working conditions in British Columbia’s canneries throughout history.
Click on the picture above to watch a vignette accompanied by Linda Chobotuck’s 1985 song, Canning Salmon, performed by the Vancouver folk group, Fraser Union. Fraser Union sing a modified version of the song and only sing the third verse.
Canning Salmon by Linda Chobotuck – Linda Chobotuck’s lyrics provide an insightful and critical perspective of her experiences as a cannery worker. Here are the complete lyrics for the song for you to review after listening to Fraser Union’s version:
This document from the Gulf of Georgia Cannery National Historic Site contains four stories from the perspectives of different cannery workers.
Read this reflection by Billy Assu from Assu of Cape Mudge from the Canadian Museum of History about the role of Indigenous people in the canning industry over time.
This resource from the Gulf of Georgia Cannery Society contains a history of the canneries with particular attention paid to the roles of different ethnic groups in the canning industry.
This 25-minute film produced by the Gulf of Georgia Cannery Society explores Canada’s West Coast canning industry and how turning points in immigration, global conflicts, economic change, social movements, and technological progress have all affected the fishery’s evolution.
Watch this short 1938 government-sponsored industrial film, The Inside Story. This film shows what was going on inside the canneries at the time, starting with scenes of fishermen dumping salmon into a boat hold and ending with a housewife as a consumer of the modern canned salmon product.
Read this short article from the BC Black History Awareness Society about John S. Deas, the owner of B.C.’s first commercial salmon cannery.
Skim this textbook chapter to learn about the experiences of Indigenous women under settler colonialism. Search for the word ‘canneries’ within the document to find the passage about Indigenous women’s roles in the canning industry.
Skim this chapter of to learn about the rise of a working class in Canadian post-confederation history. Search for the word ‘canneries’ to find the specific passages that relate to the salmon canning industry.
A series of strikes rocked the fishing industry in Steveston, BC in the early 1900s. This story examines the efforts made to unite fishers across racial lines.
Skim this textbook chapter to learn about race, ethnicity, and immigration in post-confederation Canadian history. Search for the word ‘canneries’ to find the specific passage about the salmon canning industry.