Steveston

Steveston is an early community on the South Arm of the Fraser River, with its historical centre where No.1 Road meets the river, in the City of Richmond, B.C. Steveston is recognizable for its historic buildings which include houses, commercial buildings and riverfront structures related to its historic marine-oriented industry, including its fishing fleet, boatworks and salmon canneries.

Steveston has historic, cultural, social and aesthetic value as one of the most important places of settlement and commercial activity for the Japanese Canadian community, the location of renowned events in their history in the province leading up to their forced removal in 1942, and a major postwar settlement on the B.C. coast.

Second only to Vancouver's Powell Street area in the size of its Japanese Canadian population before the 1942 internment, Steveston is valued for being one of the most significant centres of employment for new Japanese Canadian immigrants.

The village is significant as the home port for a large Japanese Canadian fishing community and the location of Japanese Canadian owned and operated boat yards, boat-building and boat maintenance businesses, illustrated by the still-existing Murakami Boatworks building, the former G.S. Mukai Boatworks and the Britannia Shipyards, now a national historic site. The many Steveston canneries, represented by the still-standing Gulf of Georgia Cannery, provided major employment to Japanese Canadian fishermen and their families.

Steveston is valued for its historic buildings that physically demonstrate places of living and working for marine industrial workers, including segregated bunkhouses and enclaves for Chinese and Japanese Canadian immigrants. The general erasure of the history of Japanese Canadian ownership of properties throughout B.C. makes Steveston provincially significant as a rich source of buildings with origins in, and connections to, the Japanese Canadian community.

Steveston has historic value for the Japanese Canadian institutions that developed there, notably the Steveston Japanese Language School and the Japanese Fishermen's Hospital. The hospital in particular has cultural and social importance to the province and the country for being perhaps the earliest medical institution in Canada with a health care plan supported by affordable annual dues of subscribing families.

Steveston is valued as an example of the rebuilding of Japanese Canadian society following the postwar dispersal of the Japanese Canadian population in B.C. Former Steveston residents with the ability to return to the Protected Area after 1949 faced significant resettlement and rebuilding of their lives and businesses without any of their former property - lands, buildings, houses, boats or businesses. Steveston is an important centre for the expression of the cultural legacy of Japanese Canadians following the war and dispossession as found in Japanese themed gardens, religious institutions such as the Steveston Buddhist Temple, Japanese Canadian historic sites, commemorative monuments and statues, and renewed Japanese Canadian cultural institutions in new facilities.

Source: Province of British Columbia, Heritage Branch

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