Good Hope Cannery

Canada / British Columbia / Port Hardy /
 hotel, fishing area, resort, historical building
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Good Hope Cannery is the oldest building remaining in the inlet, and is now a popular sport fishing lodge. Rivers Inlet is still one of the most popular saltwater sports fishing destinations in BC, even though commercial fishing has been closed in the inlet since 1996 due to the declining sockeye salmon stocks.

www.goodhopecannery.com/

History: In 1894, the Anglo-British Columbia Packing Company constructed the Good Hope Cannery on the Inlet. A year later, H.O. Bell-Irving and Company assumed “Sole Managing and Selling Agent” responsibilities, and the Bell-Irving family owned it for decades. Good Hope operated as a cannery until the early 1940s, then continued as a net storage and mending facility until 1965, when the owners converted it to a resort. The remarkable heritage site did not go unnoticed over the years, and was even featured in a National Geographic book called “Our Amazing Earth.”

Good Hope is one of a small handful of canneries remaining on Rivers Inlet. In fact, it’s one of only two standing on the entire coast not converted to a museum. It is being lovingly restored – beam by beam and piling by piling – preserving as much of the original machinery and surroundings as possible.

The lodge, its contents and surroundings are remarkably intact, from the boiler that heated the building and fired the equipment, to the ice house – now the fish-cleaning room – to the canning line and retorts, the ovens that processed tins of salmon. The owners are slowly cataloging all the treasures in this living museum – the gill netters, old skiffs, pulleys from the machine shop, nets, and the famous old “East Hope Engines”, the so-called One-Lungers that worked extensively on the coast.
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Coordinates:   51°34'13"N   127°30'56"W

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This article was last modified 15 years ago