Since salmon fishing is at the heart the Cannery, in honor of this Valentine’s day, I would like to share a song. This song tells of a fisherman’s love for sockeye fishing during the Pacific West Coast salmon canning days of the late 1800s to early 1900s. 

Anglo-BC Packing Co. Receiving Salmon, Garry Point Cannery,
Fraser River 1891 (Vancouver Archives)

The Song of the Sockeye
by Ross Cumbers (1939)

Oh, hark to the song of the sockeye
Like a siren’s call of old;
When it gets in your blood you can’t shake it:
It’s the same as the fever for gold.

There’s a hole in the B.C. coastline,
River’s Inlet’s the place I mean;
And it’s there you will find the old-timer
And also the fellow who’s green.

Oh, the boats head for there like the sockeye
And some are a joy to the eye,
While others are simply [disasters],
And ought to be left high and dry.

Now they go to the different canneries
And before they can make one haul
It’s three hundred bucks for net, grub and gas
Which they hope to pay off before fall.

Then it’s off to the head of the inlet
At six o’clock, Sunday night,
But when morning comes and you’ve got about three,
The prospects don’t look very bright.

Of course, there is always an alibi
To account for a very poor run –
The weather is wrong, the moon’s not full,
Or the big tides will help the fish come.

Now, along about dusk when you’re starting to doze
And you think you’ve got a good night’s set,
An engine will roar, and you look out the door
and some farmer tows into your net.

Now some of us think of the future,
While others have things to forget,
But most of us sit here and think of a school
Of sockeye hitting the net.

And when the season is over
And you figure out what you may have made,
You were better off working for wages,
No matter how low you were paid.

For the comforts of home are worth something,
So take it from me, my friend;
oh, frying-pan grub and no head room
Will ruin your health in the end.

So hark to the song of the sockeye
Like a siren’s call of old;
When it gets in your blood you can’t shake it:
It’s the same as the fever for gold.

Source book: Songs of the Pacific Northwest by Philip J. Thomas, 2007.

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