“The fishing is rather hazardous. It takes place at the mouth of the river, off the sand spits, where the water is usually in great commotion. Very good boats are used, but they are often capsized, a number of fishermen being drowned every year. Each boat carries two hands—the net man, or captain, and the boat puller. It is nothing unusual for a boat to capture in one night from two to three hundred large fish varying in weight from 25 lb. to 28 lb. This is the fish that is known on the Fraser River as the ‘spring,’ on the Columbia River as the ‘chinook,’ and in Alaska as the ‘king.’
“In 1876 Alexander Ewan started below New Westminster to can the salmon of the Fraser River. These are a different variety, their local name being the ‘sockeye.’ They are without doubt the finest of all salmon for canning, being of a uniform red colour and having red oil. Their flavour is even better when they are canned than when they are eaten newly-caught. The sockeye is much smaller than the spring, running to a uniform weight of six or seven pounds. On the Fraser River, therefore, the fishermen use a smaller net, made of finer thread, only five or six ply, the mesh being six inches instead of nine.
“Such was the success of the first cannery on the Fraser that fifty have since been erected between New Westminster and the Gulf of Georgia. The season’s pack on the Fraser has been as high as one million cases, each case containing 48 lb. of salmon. One million cases would contain from twelve to fourteen million fish.”
Mr. Barker then referred to the illusory fears some persons in the Old Country have entertained on the subject of tinned salmon: “There have,” he said, “been instances of ptomaine poisoning in connection with various animal foods, including canned fish. But it has been proved on incontrovertible evidence, and to the satisfaction of the highest scientific and medical authorities, that canned fish is absolutely innocuous, and very wholesome, when eaten fresh. The process of canning it sterilises it. Ptomaine poisoning is caused by the prolonged action of the air on food that has been hermetically sealed, such as shell-fish, sausages, and canned or bottled foods. We have paid a lot of money to find that out. I will give you a typical instance—a case of poisoning in New Haven, Connecticut. We engaged one of the leading doctors of the New York Health Department to go there and investigate the circumstances. He found that when the tin was opened—in the middle of July, with the thermometer at nearly 100°—only a small part of the fish was eaten. The rest was left in the tin, and was not consumed until three days later, when this stale food caused one child to die and made two or three others sick. Cases investigated in Chicago and other parts of the United States have had a similar history. Canned salmon should be used only on the day the tin is opened.”
I asked Mr. Barker to describe the processes to which the fish is subjected in the cannery.
“In the first place,” he explained, “a machine takes off the heads, tails and fins, splits the fish open, and removes the entrails, then brushes and washes the fish inside and out. One machine will deal with twenty-five thousand salmon in a day. Afterwards they go into another apparatus, where they are scraped thoroughly with a knife, while fresh, clean cold water is running on them. Next they go into a bath of water, where they are scrubbed thoroughly with a brush made to fit the fish. Afterwards they are deposited on a revolving frame and cut into slices, which exactly fit the tins, into which they are subsequently inserted with a small quantity of fine Liverpool salt. The filled tins travel on a belt to automatic scales, which throw out any that are light weight, the others proceeding on to a machine which, having closed each tin, cleans the outside with hot water and steam. The lids are now crimped to impart strength, and then the tins are run through a flux and rolled through the hot solder, which sets on a subsequent journey along a twenty-foot belt, the process being assisted by a jet of water. A stay in the coolers is followed by a hot-water test for defective soldering, after which the cans are conveyed to the retorts and cooked, under pressure of steam, for from half an hour to three-quarters. On leaving the retorts they are vented—that is, a hole is opened in the can to allow gases to escape. A drop of solder having been dropped on that hole, there is a second cooking process, to soften the bones and sterilise any air that may remain in the tin. Finally the tin is washed, lacquered (to prevent rusting), and labelled.”
A SALMON CANNERY ON FRASER RIVER
CHINESE QUARTER, VANCOUVER. B.C.