It is a fish-processing industry that became established on the Pacific coast of North America during the 19th century, and subsequently expanded to other parts of the world that had easy access to salmon.

[1] During the first years of the Napoleonic Wars, the French government offered a 12,000-franc prize to anyone who could devise a cheap and effective method of preserving large amounts of food.

Shortly after, the British inventor and merchant Peter Durand patented his own method, this time in a tin can, creating the modern-day process of canning foods.

Salmon canneries eventually spread throughout British Columbia, along the Fraser, Skeena, and Nass Rivers, as well as along much of the coast.

The nets were woven with spruce root fibers or wild grass, and used sticks made of cedar as floats and stones as weights.

Cobb claims that at the start of the 19th century, the Russians marketed salted salmon caught in Alaska in St.

[4][7] Shortly after, the Northwest Fur Company started marketing salted salmon from the Columbia River.

It then merged with the Hudson's Bay Company, and the salmon was marketed in Australia, China, Hawaii, Japan, and the eastern United States.

[4] The first industrial-scale salmon cannery in North America was established in 1864 on a barge in the Sacramento River by the four Hume brothers together with their partner Andrew S. Hapgood, the Hapgood-Hume Company.

The decline was accelerated by mining and forestry operations, and the introduction of grazing animals, which resulted in the spawning grounds becoming silted and polluted.

Columbia salmon harvest managers responded to these declines by introducing the hatchery production of fish fry.

[9] People of many different nationalities worked in the canneries along the Pacific coast, thus creating an ideal atmosphere for the development of interracial relationships.

The single men generally stayed in racially segregated bunkhouses, while First Nations families lived in small huts or in camps near the canneries.

[12] Men, women, and children lived and worked alongside each other during the fishing season, before returning to their homes for the remainder of the year.

First Nations men were valued as excellent fishers, as fishing had been a part of their economy since long before settlers reached the coast.

[16] The name of this machine demonstrates the inherent racisms present at the time of its creation, and it has since been renamed as the iron butcher.

[17] These contractors, often called the China-boss, would agree on a set price with the cannery operators, and would then hire workers with that figure in mind.

[13] Women cleaned fish, packed them into tins, mended nets, and acted as nursemaids to the many children on site.