The wharf at Steveston, Richmond (a suburb of Vancouver) is busy. Boats lie anchored along the marina, and the sidewalks in the village are bustling with people. Some stroll past shops and browse at the windows, others wander over to watch the activity on the water. Seagulls flicker past, their plaintive cries sounding above the soft slap of water against the jettys.

One of Steveston's major attractions is the historic Gulf of Georgia Cannery museum but I was skeptical when advised to allow myself at least an hour to go it. Seen from the outside the Cannery looked like a utilitarian warehouse, one of several that line Canada's busiest commercial fishing harbourside quay. Ho-hum.

My information sheet said it was built in 1894 and that after it closed its doors in the '70s, it was designated a national historic site. It now operates under the umbrella of the federally administered Canadian Parks Service and under the auspices of the Gulf of Georgia Cannery Society. it has been open to the public since 1994.

To my mind, a cannery was a place with assembly lines and machinery, a few photos and dry facts and statistics on charts displayed alongside a collection of old artifacts. Worth about 15 to 20 minutes at most. That was what I thought until I stepped inside and found myself drawn into a dynamic, multimedia experience that proved me happily wrong.

Where else can you step onto a huge weigh scale and find out what your value would be if you were a salmon? Or walk through a model fishing trawler and take a look at the crew's living quarters - and (no spoiler here!) snicker at one of its occupants. Or stick your hand into a bucket of bloodied fish entrails which isn't real, but you'd never know the difference except that it doesn't stink.

Smell, in fact, is one of the few sensory experiences you won't have when walking through the Cannery. But even that isn't hard to imagine when you visualize the boats disgorging their cargo at the wide entrance of to the Cannery back in the 1920s, when the entire area was waist-high in fish. The offal—fins, heads, tails and guts— were dumped into the Fraser River and didn't always get swept out to sea, so that at low tide the stench would have been overwhelming.

The workers who lived in adjoining bunkhouses used water drawn from the river for washing, cooking and drinking, so it is small wonder that there were terrible outbreaks of cholera, typhoid and dysentery in the camps. Not surprisingly also, the first hospital in Richmond was built by the Japanese to take care of the sick fishermen and cannery workers.

The sights and sounds of the fishing industry are evoked vividly on an audio-visual screen, and as you walk along the canning lines, sensors trigger sound effects: the clank of machinery, the noise and confusion of everyday working conditions.

In the butchering hall, Chinese workers would skin and gut 16,000 to 20,000 fish a day, sometimes working around the clock (no refridgeration in those days) when the catch was large. They were the only ones who had contracts, (the rest were hourly-paid) and were paid 1 cent for every 1000 cans that went off the production line, earning somewhere between $35 and $50 a month. Which wasn't a bad wage in those days, but of course that was only during the annual season from June to August or September.

In 1946, manual fish butchering was replaced with a mechanical gadget, then known unabashedly as The Iron Chink. It is still on view in the reception area but in deference to politically correct terminology it is now known asThe Iron Butcher, and was, when deployed, capable of cleaning, de-gutting and skinning 60 fish a minute.

Women worked the canning lines ensuring that each can had the requisite quantity of fish and were tightly packed. Not surprisingly many fainted on the job as the conveyor belt went by at dizzying rate. At the far end of the line the cans were stacked into an industrial oven - the final stage before shipping out for distribution.

The oven had another use on weekends when the plant was closed. It was where rambunctious boozed-up revellers, having spent their newly earned wages, were dumped to sleep off their hangovers.

The Cannery offers something for all ages: small hands can open drawers and peek at artifacts, push buttons to watch audio-visual shows, turn cranks and pull aside flaps to reveal secrets of the ocean. At the press of a button, adults will listen to anecdotal accounts, and marvel at the human drama and shared camaraderie of the people who once lived, loved and worked here.

A charming 20 minute film, A Journey Through Time, is an old fisherman's tale as told to his young granddaughter, and plays in the surround-sound Boiler House Theatre within the museum building.

Home