Description of Historic Place

Port Essington is a former fish canning, fishing and boat building community on B.C.'s north coast. It is located on the south shore of the Skeena River at the mouth of the Ecstall River, just south of Prince Rupert and part of part of the District Municipality of Port Edward, in Range 5 of the Coast Land District. The historic place is located on the Port Essington Reserve of the Kitselas First Nation, an area of approximately 1.1 hectares, and is jointly administered by the Kitselas and Kitsumkalum First Nations.

Heritage Value

The former town of Port Essington has historic, aesthetic, scientific, cultural and social value as the centre of a large Japanese Canadian community on B.C.'s north coast, and is a reminder of their contribution to the province's fishing and boat building industries in B.C.'s remote northern towns.

Port Essington is significant for being representative of B.C.'s remote, multi-ethnic, self-contained salmon-cannery villages on the north coast of the province, and for its location near the mouth of the Skeena River, one of B.C.'s major salmon producing rivers. First established in the 1860s, Port Essington would evolve from a small trading post on the location of a First Nations camp known as Spa Xksuutks into a thriving community with at least four major canneries. With the arrival of the first Japanese Canadian fishermen, shore workers and cannery employees in the late 1890s, within a decade Port Essington would grow to become the largest Nikkei settlement north of Vancouver.

Symbolic of Japanese Canadians immigrating in the hope of making new lives in B.C., Port Essington is important as an integral destination point for many Japanese Canadians leaving Japan due to poor economic conditions in rural areas. Arriving to find employment in the fishing and cannery industries, many contributed to secondary industries such as retail and boat building.

Port Essington has historic and cultural value for being a major centre of Japanese Canadian contribution to the fishing, fish canning and boat building industries in B.C., and represents their industry, craft and economic success prior to World War II. From 1910 onward, Japanese Canadians dominated the fishing industry in B.C.'s north, holding the majority of fishing licenses, while a number of successful independent Japanese boat builders operated businesses in Port Essington.

As occurred elsewhere in B.C., the Japanese Canadian experience in Port Essington is important for illustrating how their success in the fishing industry would contribute in part to their economic discrimination and exclusion. Both before and during World War II, discriminatory policies were put in place by the federal Department of Fisheries that included revoking fishing licenses and denying Japanese Canadians the use of gas-powered engines on their gillnetters. After war was declared almost 1,200 Japanese Canadian fishing vessels were confiscated, and demands made for removing Japanese Canadians from fortified areas, cancelling all fishing licences for the duration of the war, and making their vessels and gear available to First Nations and white fishermen.

The Japanese Canadian presence as a key part of the community supports the cultural and social value of Port Essington. Typical of a cannery town, workers were segregated along ethnic lines. Japanese Canadian families lived in rows of houses in distinct areas of the town, some in homes clustered around their shops which provided Japanese products and services, making Port Essington known as the Powell Street of the north. The Skeena Buddhist Temple provided spiritual services and the Japanese Language School had 54 students in 1934.

Port Essington has scientific value as a hub of the Japanese Canadian fishing and boat building industry and innovation. Today Port Essington is part of the curriculum for University of Northern British Columbia's Canneries of the North travel studies program, and is showcased in the North Pacific Cannery National Historic Site and Museum in Port Edward, B.C.

The Japanese Canadian community values Port Essington because many first generation (Issei) and second generation (Nissei) worked or were born there. Third and fourth generations still retain a physical and spiritual connection to the town where their forebears first lived when they arrived in B.C.

Character-Defining Elements

Not applicable