Skip to main content
  1. Home /
  2. Map /

Ceepeecee Cannery

CeePeeCee Cannery buildings viewed from the water with fishing boats moored at the docks.

Ceepeecee Cannery complex included a reduction plant, a two-storey staff house, a number of houses and apartments, bunkhouses, a cookhouse, and a store. Image I-28367 courtesy of the Royal BC Museum and Archives

Not all canneries focused on salmon. The Ceepeecee Cannery is an example of a plant that focused on pilchards even after the addition of a salmon canning line.

1934-1950s

49°52’21.4″N 126°42’48.1″W

Ceepeecee Cannery was built in Esperanza Inlet in Nootka Sound as a pilchard reduction plant. The plant was owned by Canadian Packing Corporation, a subsidiary of the California Packing Corporation. Pilchards remained their main industry even after Nelson Brothers Fisheries added a canning line in 1934 when they purchased the plant.

Pilchard stocks collapsed in 1945 due to over-fishing, so operations at Ceepeecee switched to herring reduction. The plant was destroyed by fire in the late 1950s.

Workers look on as crates of canned salmon are loaded from the cannery dock into the hold of the boat with a large pulley.

Workers in rain gear load crates of canned salmon into the hold of a ship, 1947. Image I-29661 courtesy of the Royal BC Museum and Archives.

Women wash salmon in a long sink with a conveyor belt. Overhead pipes bring water to each station.

Cleaning fish at CeePeeCee cannery 1947. Image I-29659 courtesy of the Royal BC Museum and Archives.

Aerial view of cannery nestled at the end of a bay. Wooded hills surround the small cleared area around the buildings.

CeePeeCee Cannery 1926. Image CVA 289-003.397 courtesy of the City of Vancouver Archives.