The canning line
Experience over 100 years of cannery history through our manual and mechanized canning lines, learning of the methods, processes and equipment needed to turn fresh west coast salmon into a quality packaged product for an international market.
From Muscles to Motors
Fishing Methods – experience the history of salmon as a resource, learn the difference between trolling, gillnetting and purse seining, and explore developments in machinery that transformed the commercial fishing industry.
Grand Trunk Railroad Society Train Display
Trains were a major form of transportation in the North Coast, connecting communities and canneries, moving employees to the site and product to market from 1914. The road that connects North Pacific to Port Edward and the other canneries was finally built in 1959.
The model train collection took up to 50 years of collector Norman Kinslor's life. Mr Kinslor was an employee of North Pacific Cannery and bequeathed his collection to our museum upon his death. The display is a complete recreation of the layout in Mr. Kinslor's basement. The display next to it was completed later and shows the cannery in relation to the railway.
Just as popular with the adults as with the kids, North Pacific Cannery is proud to house the largest model train display in the region. Insert a loonie to watch the trains in action!
Port Essington
For millennia, the location known as Port Essington was known as Spoksuut or "Autumn Camping Place". In the colder months, Spoksuut provided Kitselas and Kitsumkalum with seafood like cockles, clams and mussels.
With the help of the Ts'msyen of Kitselas and Kitsumkalum and Euro Canadians Robert Cunningham, Peter Herman and Thomas Hankin, by the 1900s, Port Essington had developed into one of the most important commercial and economic centers of the North Coast of BC.
During the height of summer salmon season, the town population grew to 5000, the largest population of any settlement along the coast north of Vancouver, a lively mix of Euro Canadians, Japanese Canadians and Indigenous groups, primarily Kitselas and Kitsumkalum Ts'msyen. There was a hotel, a town hall, the first cold storage plant in the north, dances, churches, concerts, hotels, sawmills, a school and even a red-light district
By the 1940s all of Port Essington's Canneries were inactive and in the 1960s it all burned down in a series of fires. All that's left now is an overgrown cemetery, a long boardwalk and pilings on their last legs.
Memories, stories and memorabilia of Port Essington are on display in the Salt Shed.
Machine Shop & First Nations Net Loft
The First Nations net loft was initially one of three total net lofts on site. This building was built in Port Essington in 1923 and moved to North Pacific Cannery in 1937. After being removed from it's pilings at British American/Boston Cannery, the 45'x100' building was rafted down the Skeena River! A crew of 6 carpenters took almost three weeks to rebuild it.
On the ground floor was a large machine shop with lathes and boat repair stores. A separate area inside the door stored the bluestone (copper sulfate) used to clean the linen nets and later batteries were kept there. Upstairs, the large open loft was used to store nets.
The net loft usually had around 15-20 Indigenous women working on mending nets and served as storage for nets during the winter.
Many memories have also been shared about the dances held in the net lofts
This building is only accessible on the guided tour.
Village Housing
During the canning season, those who fished for and worked at the cannery would live onsite with their families, this allowed families to stay together and lead to many lifelong friendships. Some people also ran stores from their houses, selling things like pop, candy, beadwork, peanuts and Japanese and Chinese goods.
During the winter, the cannery was quiet, with only a handful of people living there. Come spring, however, the boardwalk village became a lively community with several hundred people living and working there. The company had to provide all the systems that give life to a community. Management looked after water, electricity, housing, boardwalks and the store. Electricity was primarily provided by a Pelton water wheel until the 1970s when BC Hydro brought in main electrical services.
Visit a recreation of a First Nations House and them see a diorama of the up to 120 structures that made up the First Nations village in the gift shop.
You can also visit the Manager's House, Net Boss House, Store Keeper's House, Shikitani House and Japanese Bunkhouse all with their own displays and history.
Labour Organizing in the Fishing Industry
Visit the Railman's house and see the stories and memorabilia of the men and women who organized and fought fiercely for fair treatment and wages in the fishing industry.
Following World War Two, most of the workers, fishermen, tendermen and shoreworkers, joined together to form the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union in 1945. Many First Nations fishermen were members of the Native Brotherhood of BC.
Company Store
The centre of village life. Everyone shopped there. It was like a small department store, with and inventory of a thousand different items. The grocery section had every type of tinned vegetables, and, that staple of the north, canned milk. Fresh food was shipped out weekly from Prince Rupert on the train. It was also the post office and butcher shop and even a barber shop! Workers could get advances on their wages with coupons. These were issued in booklets and used in the store like money. Today you can stop by and purchase nostalgic candies.
This building is only accessible on the guided tour.
Japanese Bunkhouse
Also remembered fondly as "The Miki House" for the Miki family who managed the bunkhouse in the 1950s and 1960s. The bunkhouse housed seasonally-employed unmarried Japanese fishermen, boat builders and carpenters at the cannery. In 1910 there were three separate Japanese Bunkhouses but these were demolished by 1949. The side room of the building was a Japanese bathhouse with the women bathing in the afternoons and the men in the evenings, while the bunks were all upstairs.