Coming up next we’ll be making the ferry crossing over to Vancouver Island, where we will be spending the rest of this series. But before we get there, to help set the mood, we’re going to take a quick pit stop in a historic British Columbia fishing town called Steveston. Nowadays, the urban sprawl is so expansive that there’s really no break in civilization between Vancouver and Steveston, but once we actually arrived at the docks, it felt extremely different from the “big city” just northward. I felt like I was in Maine. There is actually some interesting history here that will serve as good context foreplay✨ for what is to come. And the town of Steveston is quite charming as well. So let’s take a look around!
Arriving in Steveston
Making the jump from plain ol’ Richmond/Vancouver suburbs to historic Steveston happens unceremoniously. One minute you’re speeding through cozy residential neighborhoods, the next you’re slowing down as you drive along the docks. Having never been this far north on the west coast, my only reference points for what this place feels like were all about 2,000 miles eastward. Maine. Massachusetts. Nova Scotia. That’s what Steveston feels like.
As we hopped out of the car, a cold, whistling wind readily greeted us. The calls of seagulls floated through the air and an extensive jumble of fishing boats floated peacefully offshore. In the background, the cold north Pacific waters sat quietly, with misty green mountains protruding in the distance. I was excited to get out there! But, today, we were still stuck on the mainland. Although I believe the Fraser river runs around Steveston (and Richmond) in such a way that it is technically on an island.
Before we went into the town, we walked down onto the docks. I was surprised to find that there was nothing preventing a random person like me from walking every inch of these docks that were clearly in active industrial use. These were not yachts and tour boats. These were, for the most part, working fishing boats. It was actually a really engaging walk to catch a glimpse inside each of these small, floating worlds. Looking through the windows of the boats, each space felt personal and worn, like living rooms. My favorite boats had Christmas lights strung up across the outer deck. It must be magical to sit on the decks of these boats at night, under the stars and those lights. Sigh.
Anyway, here are a few pictures from my wanderings around these docks. The picture of this fisherman guy off in the distance prepping for departure are my favorite from this whole article.
Next to this blue-collar marina, there’s a big white building suspended over the water on stilts. This, historically, was the town’s cannery. The official name is the Gulf of Georgia Cannery and it’s a National Historic Site in Canada. Yes, this was the place where they put things in cans. Specifically, fish. Back in the early 1900s, the best way to keep fish from going bad was to can them. So, for a time, the fishing industry boomed as fish were packed in cans and exported around the world.
Inside the cannery was actually pretty interesting. In addition to some vibey, old-timey art on historic can packaging and some interesting renderings of the fish that were put into those cans, there was also lots of ancient machinery and old photographs. Back then, this whole town was made of pure timber. The photos and models showed streets of muddy wooden planks, with offshoots to rows of wooden shacks. Honestly, it looked like a pretty bleak place to live, especially in the wet gray of winter. However, what it lacked in creature comforts is made up for in cultural diversity. Steveston was home to early Japanese communities in Canada, so many of the fishermen and factory workers here were of Japanese descent. One photograph in the gallery below shows Japanese mothers working with their babies on their backs in 1913. Which is crazy to contemplate because of how terrible the conditions here apparently were.
This cannery ran continuously until 1979, and the conditions were consistently awful right up until the day it closed its doors. Around the space, there were small plaques with anecdotal descriptions of what it was like from actual cannery workers. Here is one caption that stood out to me:
“Very noisy. No earplugs in those days and hot. The temperatures would be running about 250-300 degrees.”
Also, apparently, this hot air absolutely REEKED of fish guts. The smell was said to have been intense. In 1984, when Parks Canada conservators began cleaning up this place, they found 5-year-old rotten fish all over the place, including inside all of the machinery. That must have been awful to clean up.
Anyway, the TOWN of Steveston is very cute. And it’s very British Columbia. It’s undeniably cozy, at times walking a fine line between gritty and textured, and it’s got signs in Mandarin Chinese next to Orca street art. Along the docks, there are some shiny new apartment buildings that I wouldn’t mind living in, but despite the best efforts of local real estate developers, Steveston does still have an obvious visual identity. And it also has some cool little coffee shops. We stopped into one called Rocanini Coffee Roasters and got some awesome breakfast burritos.
It only takes like 10 minutes to walk through the main thoroughfare of the town. Here are some pictures from that walk:
The last thing we did in Steveston was walk through the Fisherman's Wharf—which is an actual wharf! I hear this term all the time in places that trade in seafood, but I only just now realized that this term refers to fishing vessels lined up along a dock, selling their catches directly out of their boats. Until I got here, I had never been to one of these in real life. Steveston has a legit fisherman’s wharf, and to have the best possible experience, you should show up as early as possible. We didn’t even realize it was here, so we didn’t happen upon it until about noon. It was still cool, but there were some boats that had already closed up shop for the day. We should have come here the instant we arrived!
And that, children, is the story of Peter’s visit to Steveston.
If you have half a day free and you are in the area, it’s a fun place to visit! It might not be the sexiest thing to do in the Vancouver area, but I really enjoyed my time here.
Up next, we’ll be catching a ferry over to Vancouver Island and getting out into the wilderness that British Columbia is famous for. Get your hopes up. To conclude, here’s a very cool sea-shanty-ish alt-Celtic tune from an awesome Canadian folk band.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter was born & raised in Columbus, Ohio, and started this blog when he moved from Boston to Hanoi (Vietnam) in 2014. After years based in Nashville working on his band, The Great Palumbo, he now resides in London, UK.
