HISTORY OF BC

The English Bay Cannery

The English Bay Canning Company Ltd. was formed as a general fisheries company in May 1898 with five subscribers with 20 shares each: Charles Samuel Windsor, John Joseph Crane, and W.H. McDonald listed as canners and Robert Mee and Peter Righter as locomotive engineers.

The English Bay Cannery was built in 1898 by the Malcolm, Cannon & Company between the foot of Bayswater Street and Trutch Street just off Point Grey Road on the Kitsilano waterfront.

In the first year of operation in the 1898 season, they held 20 fishing licences that resulted in 3282 cases(379,536 1-pound cans of salmon). After 1 year of operation, a resolution was passed in February 1899 to eliminate the association of the company. By November of that year, United Canneries of B.C. was formed. The ownership of the company changed substantially. While Crane, Righter, and Mee still held 20 shares each, Windsor and McDonald sold their shares and were replaced by Frank Burnett, broker with 34 shares, O.L. Malcolm with 20 shares, and J.E. Macrae, agent with 10 shares, C.S. Johnson, broker with 10 shares, and L.H. Wright, gent with 1 share.

B.C. salmon canneries made their own cans at that time and a large amount of sheet tin was used…

The United Canneries of British Columbia 1899 season showed the plant’s production nearly doubled to 16,300 cases. but the 1902 season shows a reduction to 7500 cases.

On October 14,1905, the English Bay Cannery was sold to R.D. Rorison and Sons for $7350 and the property included the cannery, wharf, cannery cottages, and lots 31 through 34, Lot 4, DL 540 and lots 4 through 11 Block 14, DL 540, all excepting a portion of the Fish House building and the machinery, which was

Ron Hyde

Salmon Can Label – English Bay Canning Company

planned to be shipped to another cannery on the coast.

In May the following year, fire damaged one of the buildings on the south side of Point Grey Road and in 1906, the cannery was dismantled. Part of the timber was used to repair some of the cottages on the shore as well as to build a residence on Lots 4, 5 and 6, Block 13, DL 540.

Lieutenant Colonel W.D.S. Rorison, M.C., V.D., son of R.D. Rorison and member of the firm R.D. Rorison and Company Limited, formerly the owners of The Royal Nurseries at Royal on the EburneVancouver line, said, “We must have built our house at 3148 Point Grey Road in 1908. Yes, we did buy the lumber of the old cannery and used a lot of it in building our house, our rafters, and such heavy timbers.”

As late as 1928, 22 years after the English Bay Cannery ceased operations, a heap of rusty red iron stood like an island on the Kitsilano waterfront under the old cannery location, the remnants of the old scrap-tin heap. B.C. salmon canneries made their own cans at that time and a large amount of sheet tin was used; there was much waste from cutting out the tops and bottoms from flat sheets.

English Bay Cannery (photo reference) Edwards Brothers, Vancouver, B.C. P H Coll 334 Edwards Brothers 2 Edwards Brothers Studio was a partnership between brothers George William and Edgar Herbert in Vancouver, B.C. from 1891–1920. Both brothers were portrait and landscape photographers. George also photographed the gold rush in Klondike in 1898. In the later years of the studio, the Edwards brothers began to sell photographic and motion picture supplies. (Subject Columbia—Vancouver’s [LCSH] Canneries-British)

Edwards Brothers, Vancouver, B.C. The waste clippings were dropped through a hole in the cannery floor into the water below as it did not pay to save them. s History is Ron Hyde’s passion. Before he retired, he worked for the Liquor Distribution Branch and wrote a Reflections column for their monthly newsletter. A member of the B.C. Historical Federation for 20 years, he has written several articles for their BC History magazine and was their newsletter Editor for 42 issues. SOURCES - Gulf of Georgia History Project

Background papers on business and social themes

Prepared by Jamie Morton,

Project Historian - City of Vancouver Archives:

Major James Skitt Matthews

Early Vancouver Vol. 1 and 3 - Wikimedia Commons Org. - University of Washington Library - British Columbia Archives

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