Cassiar is a historic salmon cannery on the northern shore of Inverness Passage at the mouth of the Skeena River, about 67 miles (108 km) southwest of Terrace and 11 miles (18 km) south-east of Prince Rupert, British Columbia. The name derives from the surrounding Cassiar Mining District and Cassiar Mountains, originally from “Kaska”, the Kaska Dena First Nation name for this region. The Skeena River is one of the world’s longest undammed rivers. It originates in the Coastal Mountains and flows 354 miles (570 km), draining a watershed of 13.4 million acres (5.4 million ha). Water from the Skeena enters Chatham Sound through several channels: approximately 75% flows equally through Marcus Passage and Telegraph Passage, while the remaining 25% flows through Inverness Passage between the Tsimpsean Peninsula to the north and Smith Island to the south. The Tsimshian Peninsula is mostly underlain by metamorphic and igneous intrusive rocks. At Cassiar Cannery, bedrock consists of metasedimentary schists that developed during the Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras (about 500 million to 200 million years ago).
The archaeological record from this area spans at least 5,000 years across three cultural traditions. The earliest occupation, from 3000 BC to 1500 BC, is characterized by shallow midden accumulations containing barbed harpoons, adze-blades, points, bone wedges and chisels, canine-tooth pendants, beaver incisors, bird-bone tubes and beads, and bone awls. From about 1500 BC to 500 AD, rapid midden build-up reflects larger villages with bigger houses and substantial population growth. During this period ground-slate points occur abundantly alongside ornamental artifacts such as labrets and red-ochre pigment balls, plus ground-stone tools. The first trade items appear, including obsidian, amber and dentalia shells. From 500 AD to the early 1800s, house-pit size and associated materials reflect ranked village structures. Archaeological excavations have yielded art depicting various animals, bone and stone tools, and personal objects such as combs and pins. In 1876 the first salmon cannery on the Skeena River was built at Inverness, about 3 miles (5 km) north-west of Cassiar. The industry grew quickly. In 1889 Alfred E. Green purchased property and built a cannery on Inverness Passage; in 1903 he sold it to the Cassiar Packing Company. By 1905, twelve canneries were operating near the river’s mouth.
The Skeena River canneries were essentially self-sufficient small towns. Cassiar had a store, doctor’s office, cookhouses, machine shops, bunkhouses, managers’ houses, blacksmiths, shipwrights, net lofts, canning and processing equipment, and power production. The fishing industry operated internally without money: tokens or charges for food, nets and fuel were levied against personal accounts and debited from paychecks. In 1914 the Grand Trunk Railroad connected the Skeena canneries to Prince Rupert. Beginning in the 1920s, the number of canneries began to decline. Cassiar Cannery was the last operating salmon cannery on the Skeena River; it went out of business on Labor Day weekend 1983. Today the cannery no longer processes salmon, but the facility is supported by boat repairs and restorations, tourism, reclamation of red cedar and spruce from salvaged logs, and estuarine research. Read more here and here. Explore more of Cassiar and the Skeena River here: