[book excerpt: history]

W. B. MacDonald with Stuart Nelson: “Split Nets” and “Stormy Seas”

“By some weird quirk, I was, it seemed, destined to write books about one kind of salmon or another,” writes Surrey-based W. B. MacDonald in the preface of Rags to Riches: The Nelson Brothers Fisheries Story.

He’s referring to a pair of previous publications, The Good Hope Cannery: Life and Death at a Salmon Cannery (2011) and Salmonbellies vs. the World: The Story of Lacrosse’s Most Famous Team & Their Greatest Rivals (2013), a history of Canadian lacrosse. 

During the writing of the Good Hope Cannery book, MacDonald recalls, “it was in the back of my mind that there might also be a book in me about the ABC Packing Company’s competitor, Nelson Brothers Fisheries.”

Starting with a quick trips—to a northern Norwegian city called Tromsø circa 1850 and a Fraser River fishing village near New Westminster named Sunbury, circa 1906—Rags to Riches tells that tale. 

Along with his collaborator, family scion Stuart Nelson, the writers cover tumultuous beginnings, the peak year of 1958, and concludes with some “good news” from the fishing season of 2025.

The British Columbia Review would like to thank W.B. MacDonald, Stuart Nelson, and publisher Caitlin Press for permission to reprint the following excerpts. —BJG

* * *

“Split Nets”

Through the 1940s, Nelson Brothers Fisheries took its place among the leading companies in BC’s fishing industry. Large sets of herring, gluts of salmon—these were frequent and newsworthy events. Captain Norman Gunderson, Ritchie Nelson’s friend and early fishing partner, skippering Nelson Brothers’ Western Ranger, made a set in Trincomali Channel in November of 1941. His seine, 275 fathoms long and about 55 fathoms deep “enclosed a tremendous body of herring… so large was the trapped school that the net was split and millions upon millions of fish escaped.” Gunderson and his crew, assisted by five other boats, still managed to take in 200 tons of what might otherwise have been a 700-ton haul. “There were relatively few seine boats employed in the winter herring reduction fishery,” notes Alan Haig-Brown. “For this reason, a fishing company like Nelson Brothers would insist that a herring crew be composed largely of the company’s salmon skippers. In this way they kept their good people employed and avoided raids by competing companies on the ranks of their skippers.”

It was the same story with sockeye when the Fraser River run made a dramatic appearance at the mouth of the Adams River in September 1942. In a brief seine opening an estimated 800,000 sockeye were caught at an average of six pounds each—4.8 million pounds. Nelson Brothers’ high boat, with 10,000 fish, was the Sea Biscuit, skippered by Louis Percich. This was nothing compared to Canadian Fishing Company’s Cape Caution, under the command of Joe Cerezin, who caught between 12,000 and 14,000 fish. Captain Gordon Wilson, whose net split under the weight of the fish, was able to make repairs and another set, and still managed to catch 6,000 sockeyes. “With decks awash, big B.C. seiners wallowed in from the seining area… jam-packed with fish… canneries are glutted…” reported The Vancouver Daily Province. BC Packers brought in 180,000 sockeyes, the Canadian Fishing Company landed more than 125,000, Anglo-BC Packing took 90,000, and Nelson Brothers totalled 80,000. Fishermen revelled at the money they had earned. “One boat crew, with three hours work, is splitting $15,000; another, with a few more hours work, will distribute $17,000.” A fleet of about 2,000 gillnetters shared in the bounty, averaging around 100 sockeye per boat, with the high boat taking in more than 400. 

Nelson Brothers’ St. Mungo Cannery, on the Fraser River near New Westminster, was jammed with salmon. All its storage space was filled. Twenty thousand overflow fish were stored in ice aboard a former dredge tied up at the cannery wharf. Ritchie and brother Norman were on the cannery floor, issuing orders and directing traffic. Volunteers from New Westminster filled in for men fighting overseas and relieved exhausted regular cannery workers. The volunteers worked from 7:00 PM to about 11:30 PM pitching salmon and wheeling hand trucks stacked high with cases of canned salmon destined for Great Britain. Detective sergeants and constables worked alongside harbour board employees and newspaper editors such as Wen Ballantyne and Vic E. Andrew.

British Columbian newspaper reporter Frank Marshall was asked by Ritchie what he wanted to do. “It’s up to you,” replied Marshall. “Will you pitch fish?” asked Ritchie. Nodding assent, Marshall was issued a pair of hip length gum boots and taken to a collector boat where he was given a gaff and told to start pitching sockeye onto a conveyor. He worked alongside Harbour Board Chairman George Cassidy. “In that time,” wrote Marshall, “three fish collecting boats were unloaded by the crews with which we worked; one carried 4,479 salmon, the second 4,059 and the third in the neighbourhood of 2,000.”

In February of 1945 Nelson Brothers’ Western Girl, skippered by perennial highliner Charlie Clark, caught 1,000 tons of herring in a single set in the Laredo Channel. “Clark was able to hold them, and brail them out without loss, with the help of other nearby seiners. They rallied around and helped him hold his cork line. After Clark had filled his own and any company boats, the fish were brailed into the boats of other companies,” reported the Vancouver Province. By Nelson Brothers’ calculations, Clark’s herring set comprised enough herring to feed dinner to Canada’s entire population of about 12 million—not that herring was to every Canadian’s taste.

In 1949, Nelson Brothers’ Western Ranger, skippered by Hans Stoilen, went Clark 156 tons better, capturing 1,156 tons of herring in a single set—about 27 million fish. The Vancouver Sun’s Pat Keatly, aboard Charlie Clark’s Western Girl, described the scene. “Picture a great fleet lying off the coast of Vancouver Island near Courtney, with 50 seiners worth perhaps $75,000 each and as large as the old West Van ferries, and 200 smaller boats. Their running lights showed fuzzy in the thick mist as we crept out of our bunks at 3:00 a.m. to head for Lambert Channel.”

Fraser River pink salmon return every second year on the odd numbered years, generally migrating through Juan de Fuca Strait. In one day, Monday, August 4, 1949, half a million pounds of pinks in total were caught. Ritchie’s old pal, Norman Gunderson, captain of the Western Crusader, and his crew of seven, fishing off Carmanah, took 15,000 pinks. At 3 to 4 cents a pound, the catch represented $3,000 for the boat. On the same day Nelson Brothers’ Western Commander, under Captain Ingjarl Sando, caught 12,000 pinks, while other companies’ boats each took in between 8,000 and 10,000 fish.

“Stormy Seas”

With anomalous catches and big earnings came the same old dangers inherent in west coast fishing. In fog boats still ran aground. In October of 1941 Nelson Brothers’ seiner Delmar, captained by John Anzulovich, grounded on the north end of Lasquiti Island.

Boats still hit snags and piles. In September of 1944 the Nelson Brothers’ packer Aliford Bay, captained by Tom Johnson, hit a sunken pile at a Fraser River jetty while inbound with 12,000 pounds of salmon.

Boats still burst into flames. Two Vancouver residents and Nelson Brothers’ fishermen, James and Andrew Worseem, suffered severe head burns when their boat, tied up at Steveston, caught fire in October 1945.

Boats still sank in storms. When, a mile north of Nanaimo’s Entrance Island, heavy December seas lifted the seining table, tore up parts of the deck, and flooded the engine room of Nelson Brothers’ boat the Faith of Sechart, Captain John Widas and his two-man crew were forced to abandon the boat for a skiff half filled with frigid water. The men were rescued.

As were Captain Gordie Barker and his crewmen Eddie Abrahamson, Bill Garden, and Murdoch Jackson when their Nelson Brothers’ boat Western Cloud in heavy seas with a 30-mile-an-hour wind blowing “sprang a leak between the fore and aft holds in the engine room” and sank between Cape Mudge and Rebecca Reef with $12,000 worth of salmon aboard. [xii] The four men were standing on top of the boat’s wheelhouse when the ship they had radioed, the Nanceda, arrived to save the day.

Not all fishermen were so lucky. In 1943 Nelson Brothers’ 60-foot pilchard and herring seiner Annie A, captained by Pete Anderson, had her deck piled high with net and was proceeding off Cape Beale when she was caught in the trough of a high running sea and capsized. Crewman Alf Lien was trapped in the net and drowned when the boat overturned.

A winter storm in 1950 claimed the life of Nelson Brothers’ fisherman Y. Mizuyabi. His 30-foot gillnetter, the Rupert 54, was found near the Sisters Lighthouse, off Sisters Island, in Georgia Strait, with only its stern above water and Mizuyabi missing and presumed drowned.

The wreck of the packer Zip is perhaps the most dramatic of all the disasters at sea experienced by Nelson Brothers’ boats and crews. It certainly captured Ritchie’s attention as he recounted in his Howe Street office what he knew of the disaster to the Vancouver Sun’s Pat Terry and saved for posterity the resulting newspaper account. 

The 110-foot, 44-ton capacity, diesel powered, ex-submarine chaser Zip, under Captain Pete Jensen, was bringing 17,000 salmon from Barclay Sound to St. Mungo—one of Norman and Ritchie’s old routes—in early October 1936.

The sea was running high as day was about to break on Vancouver Island’s west coast. Jensen may have been overcome by fumes from an oil stove in the pilot house. At any rate, Zip was running smoothly at 10 knots when she struck the “saber-toothed reefs” at Bonilla Point.

As the sun struggled to break through a thick mist and the packer was thrown around like driftwood, Jensen, jolted out of his stupor, ordered the lifeboat launched. No sooner was it in the water with Jensen on board when a big roller upset it. Jensen hung on and rode it wrong side up toward shore, about 500 yards distant.

Deckhand and cook Ed Sydholm, engineer George Elander, and 55-year-old Norwegian-born ship’s mate Ole Dahl fastened their lifebelts and racked their brains for a way to get Dahl, who could not swim, to shore. Down in the fo’c’sle they removed a heavy wooden door from the meat cooler, made fast lines on it for handholds, and threw it overboard for Dahl’s use when the time came.

Jensen somehow reached shore and walked three miles over the boulder strewn beach to the Carmanah Lighthouse to get help.

As the tide receded Sydholm and Elander, not knowing Jensen’s fate, decided to swim for it.

After struggling in the pounding breakers and undertow, they made it safely to shore. Dahl leaped overside hoping to grab onto the door-raft but did not make it. “We waded out in that tumbling mess, and after half an hour we found poor Ole,” said Elander. “He was dead, it seemed, but we wouldn’t give up hope, and we carried him about 300 yards up that beach and for half an hour we worked on him. The poor chap was drowned…and that was…all. He was a good chap…” Jensen, Elander, and Sydholm survived to fish another day….

[Editor’s note: formatting in the original includes footnotes. For ease of readability, they’ve been deleted in this excerpt.]

The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors: Trevor Marc Hughes (nonfiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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