the cannery art & artifacts

There are a great many artifacts at Good Hope, but the most important of all is our lodge itself.

The Good Hope Cannery is an authentic piece of west coast history, built from the 90-foot long knotless fir timbers known as British Columbia toothpicks. 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 our fish-cleaning room – to the canning line and retorts, the ovens that processed tins of salmon. We are slowly cataloging all the treasures in our 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. They are all reminders of this lost era, the remains of everyday life at Good Hope Cannery.

Fire Extinguisher
Fire was every cannery owner’s greatest fear. This fire extinguisher probably dates to the late 1930s or early ‘40s, and is of a type known as a fire grenade. When exposed to high heat, a soft metal catch on the wall mount would melt and release, snapping the catch against the glass ball with enough force to crack it and release the fire suppressant within – likely carbon tetrachloride. Unfortunately, it was probably not very effective.