Wally Paulik, interviewed by Josh Labove, 04 May 2016

So, we’re at the Golden Lodge Cannery (?), I’m here with Wally Paulik, and Wally, you were saying that you spent a lot of time in Steveston.

Yup, in the early '40s, I guess, I worked in the fish canneries and started gillnetting with my brother in 1940 and '42. I got my own boat in ’46 but what I recall about Steveston most is, okay, I picked up one of your brochures here today as I was coming in and it said 'sight, sound, and smell.’ That’s what I remember most about Steveston. On the subject of sight, I recall Packers towing some of the sailing vessels in from the lake to the canneries to roe salmon. On sound, the thing I recall the most is the sound of the gillnet boats that had the wet exhausts and the exhausts shot out under water and you’d get a hundred boats leaving, at the opening, leaving the fish canneries at the docks, going out, the steady sound of the gillnet boats with the wet exhausts. Later on that sound went away by the way side. It was a different sound because they put mufflers on and what they call a dry exhaust. That sound eventually vanished. On the subject of smell, the fishermen in the Steveston residence called it the money smell. The reduction plants turned herring, pilchards, and salmon into fish meal and oil and Steveston interurban cars also carried a cannery smell right to Davie Street and back. One of the things I remember most was in the early '30s, I think, because I was very young at that time, my dad took me to Garry Point and, at that time, the, uh, it was the home of the Atagi (?) boat works and not only did they build flying gillnetters but the yard embarked on building seiners as well. The yard built the Maple Leaf Sea in 1929. Captain Mel Falfer and his crew from Alert Bay still holds the all-time record for 1450 tons of herring caught by the Maple Leaf Sea with a 275 fathom with a depth of 36 fathoms. He made that catch in the Oakton Channel south of Prince Rupert. The fish was packed to BC Packers’ plants at Namu, Alert Bay, and Steveston. The value of that set was reported to be about $35,000 at the time. After 1942 when the Japanese were moved to the interior Stults (?) Brothers operated the yard and built many gillnetters in order to further widen sterns built with yellow cedar saw and timbers. The other yard that was very busy at Garry Point was David Boat Works. It had contracts to supply tanker built lifeboats for the 10,000 ton freighters being built at many BC shipyards during World War Two. Not all Steveston gillnetters were built in shipyards. I recall one being built on Sixth Avenue in a back yard by the name of, if I still recall I think it was Olson’s. He had help from a veteran Icelandic boat builder named Sigarson who lived up the street from him. The vessel was launched and fished by the Fraser River and then was stolen from its mooring. In around 1951 I was crewman on the Great Northern Five fishing anchovies in Barkley Sound. This would have been in April or May and we went into Bamfield for fuel and supplies and amongst the fish boats tied to their moorings I spotted a boat named June Two with a telltale Icelandic hooked stern.

This must be Olson’s boat, I wrote. I wrote a letter to Mr. Olson and addressed it to Sixth Avenue at the Steveston post office and told him that “I’m pretty sure that’s your boat.” The name, I forget the original name on his boat but the name has been changed. I advised him to go to Port Alberni, contact the RCMP, they’ve got a launch there and they’ll take you to Bamfield. I found out later that he did follow my advice but not only did he go himself he also brought Mr. Sigarson along who helped him build the boat to identify the boat. Sure enough, it was their boat. Later on I heard that in the court case, I wasn’t there, but in the court case the judge asked the fellow that took the vessel why he called it June Two. “Is that your wife’s name?” He says “No, actually, it’s my birthday.” laughs.

So I’m wondering if you can tell me a little bit about what Steveston was like, you know, before and after Pearl Harbor.

Yeah, Steveston, the earliest recollections I can recall were at the very point when the Scottish Canadian Cannery operated. My dad took me there and I was just a kid at the time and I recall very high density housing there that the Japanese fishermen lived in. It’s almost like some of the townhouse complexes we’ve got in Steveston today. There’s no color to the houses. They were all weather faded, sunburnt wood. They all had, they were two story houses, all had a gillnet roller out of one of the upstairs windows because the fishermen’s wives and the fishermen, in the winters, they made their own nets then they’d roll them out of the rollers and down to their boats or down to a net carton and took them to their boats. I also recall, well in the early '40s, uh, in Steveston, if you go to Number One Road here and you go south to the waterfront on the west side of the road the first shop was Mukai’s Confectionary run by the Mukai family. Later on, uh, well, I can tell you a little story on the Mukais. My brother and I were hunting at Rock Creek and we went into Greenwood and I said to my brother “Let’s stop for a cup of coffee here. There must be a coffee shop in such a small town.” We saw a coffee shop there, we stopped, and guess who served us coffee. Kenji and Hiroshi Mukai who we went to school with. They were a little older than I was but one of the Mukai boys was my brother’s classmate and the other one was my older brother’s classmate so it was quite a reunion.

They ended up interned in Greenwood?

Yeah, and if you went down the next shop was ... The Tufno brothers operated a sheet metal shop and the Tufno boys were Wally and Roy. They built not only fuel tanks for the gillnetters. They built water tanks that you usually put on deck and they built pumps that are probably still in the museum here. They were made out of sheet metal and had a plunger on the bottom and you had a long rod that you pumped up and down to drain your bilges. Later on, when they got high speed engines, they started building smoke decks for the mufflers, also out of sheet metal. The next shop I recall would be the Eastok brothers who built very fine gasoline engines for the gillnet boats. They started off with a five-seven horsepower called a one lunger. They made a ten-fourteen which we called a two-lunger and they finally ended up with a twenty horsepower, three-cylinder engine which was a very fine engine.

They all started building drum drives and the first drum drives were made out of car rear ends and their favorite rear end that they would buy or acquire and convert was a model T Ford rear end and I sold several of those to the Eastok brothers. I got a dollar and a quarter a piece for those at the time. They also would buy a stick shift transmission for the boat’s rear end so you could gear your drum drive down or speed it up. Later on they built their own ... They got away from using car parts and built their own drum drive. The next shop down that I recall was Steveston Machine Shop. It was operated by a fellow by the name of Ben Rose and Sid Watts and in the early '30s they actually built a marine gas engine, one-lunger engine, which they called the Ben-Sid named after the two partners. Later on, I think Mr. Rose went off on his own and Sid Watts and his son run the shop. Then there was another shop closer to the waterfront, it was our blacksmith shop run by Tom Howard. In between there there was a café and there was a pool room, I think, run by a fellow by the name of Carl, I’m not sure of his last name. Something like Neiberheir or something like that. Also just about where the new barns are and where the park is there, Tom Leslie ran quite a good business there. He had a gas station and a hardware store and a bit of a lumber yard. His son, Stan Leslie, later ran one of the gillnet collectors back for BC Packers and I delivered my gillnet fish to him. Going farther down Steveston, going down to Number Two Road, right from Number Two Road to Dwights and just about from Moncton to the waterfront was all Hongo’s farm and Hongo operated a store in the dike. Those kids worked in the summer holidays while we were going to school there, uh, picking beans, peas, cucumbers, and they had celery. We worked by the bushel. We got paid by the bushel. We got paid coughs. Excuse me. Every Saturday was payday. We went to the company store and the bookkeeper would use his abacus to figure out our bushels and how much pay we got coming. One of the other things we had was credit at the store. We could get charged for pop or chocolate bars or butter. We could charge it and bring it home. If you were overdrawn at the store you had job security. The foreman always said “Come back Monday. You’ll work next week, too.” laughs. So we had job security if you were overdrawn. Always had a job but they were good people to work with, work for. I recall every day at ten o’clock and three o’clock the foreman would come around with a big, I guess, porcelain jug of tea and we’d have tea, just green tea with the logs. I recall drinking the tea and then you’d spit the logs out because the logs were always floating in your cup but it was good tea, nevertheless. Another thing I recall in the early '40s, there was always a bounty on seals. I think you got five dollars a nose if you chopped a seal’s off and brought it to the fishery officer. The native fishermen even from the, uh, I recall there were two brothers Isaac George and his brother Patty George.

They lived over on Reid Island. It was close to, not Nanaimo, more closer to Ladysmith and they’d row through and they always had their thirty-thirty in their canoe. When they spotted a seal they’d pop them off. I remember another story. One day I was fishing dogfish in the gulf in the fall and Patty George comes along side there, he’s watching me, and comes along side this canoe, he’s heading for Steveston. I was hauling my last string and it’s almost getting dark I said “Patty, if you want to hang tight I’ll tow you into Steveston because I’ll be finished here in ten, fifteen minutes.” He said, “No, thanks Wally.” He said, “Your engine’s going to break down and I’ll have to tow you in.” laughs. I remember that story.

So, I have to ask, you must have lost a ton of coworkers though in 1942?

Yeah, there’s a lot of fishing families in Steveston, big families. The Lewbinsky brothers come to mind. You know, they’re three brothers that were involved with ABC Packing Company. There’s a lot of fishing families. They didn’t all live in Steveston. A lot of them lived in different parts. Those few years your only employment chances really were, uh, well, forget the sawmills because the sawmills ... I remember you could go to any sawmill at seven o’clock in the morning and there would be 1500 people lined up looking for work and sometimes the foreman would come out and he’d ask the guy “You got experience?” The guys with experience he wouldn’t hire but the guys with no experience he’d hire them and say “Well, you come to work for a week and then you’ll get some experience.” After the week they’d lay them off. So they had a week of free labor. I recall working in the wheat mills, scooping wheat. We worked a ten hour day and we got nine cents an hour. It was hard work when you’re out in the open field. So the canneries were a good source of income, you know, because even though it was seasonal you worked long hours. You could get overtime but you worked long hours. You could pretty well always find a job in Steveston in one form or another especially if you’re a net-man or something like that. A lot of the earlier fishermen, they’d maybe come to Vancouver and buy a boat but they knew nothing about nets but if you were a net-man you’d always get a job hanging nets for private individuals, not just for the companies.

After internment though there must have been lots of boats.

Oh, it was criminal what they did. You know, some of these Japanese fishermen had brand new boats built. Some of the other ... They towed them all up to Westminster and the government sold some of those at five dollars apiece. If they at least would have given five dollars to the Japanese but they got nothing. They took their ships, they took ... Their houses weren’t really their houses because, well, they built them. Most of the Japanese houses in the early years were built outside of the dike. That reminds me of another story. I have a few notes on here that I can tell you but, uh, searching through notes, I remember in around 1936, ’37, my dad reading the Richmond Review at home and he said “These are the most honorable people.” I said, “Who?” Then he told me the whole story. He said that most of the Japanese families in Steveston lived outside the dike and therefore their homes had no legal description and so the corporation of the township of Richmond could not send them a bill for property taxes. The Japanese community, nevertheless, each fall, presumably after the fishermen received their fishing statement from the canners, they presented a check for several thousand dollars on behalf of the Japanese Canadian Association to console in lieu of taxes.

I could be wrong on the exact name of the organization. Today, a lot of us pay several thousand dollars in property taxes to the city each year. However, in the depression years I recall my dad’s house on one acre was taxed in a thirty to forty dollar per year range. So the donation by the Japanese was indeed a sizable sum from a most honorable community in the depression years. Not many people are aware of that today.

No, I haven’t heard that before.

The Japanese, they’re a very proud people and while they probably remember it they don’t brag about these things but I think, you know, they should be given the recognition that they deserve.

Did you lose, um, personally, friends during the uprooting? Are there coworkers?

No, not really. In 1949, I guess, when the Japanese came back I actually sold a second gillnetter in Steveston that was sold to a Japanese person. I think most of the fishermen accepted the Japanese. They figured they had an inherent right to be here and I think it’s a sad undertaking on the part of the government to relocate them. They used the argument that, well, the Japanese did know the coast very well. I’ll admit that but, you know, they talked about they could radio Tokyo and all this. They didn’t have radios. We didn’t even have a radio at home until after the war or during the war, you know?

A lot of fear?

Yeah, so it was a case of, I don’t know what you would call it, overkill on the part of the government.

People being very nervous, maybe?

I don’t know. I know the fishermen’s union took a strong stand against it, that the Japanese should be ... Actually, when they came back they took a real good position that they should become part of the organization and get back into the fisheries.

And many Japanese families returned to Steveston.

Yeah, I don’t know but there was a lot. You could walk along the boardwalk from Garry Point right to, in Steveston, Number Two Road. Most of the houses were all outside the dike because they built them ... They recovered logs and driftwood and most of them, you know, they sawed off some of the boats’ wood and it was all from reclaimed lumber.

In some ways Steveston hasn’t changed very much. I mean, just as we’re sitting out here ...

Well, one thing that’s changed, sitting here we could usually spot about five fuel barges. Today, I don’t know if there’s even one. I think there’s one on the dock here throughout all of Steveston but in those days fuel barges were, well, even Vancouver harbor I think there’s probably one barge or now two and they had I think three, that I recall.

So this is relatively quiet by comparison to where it was?

Yeah. The other thing that changed a lot is the islands, Shady Island there. When they pumped the sand up there they brought it out here. Before you could cut across if you’re going to Ladner or going to Surrey you could cut across Shady Island a lot but you can’t today. You’ve got to go a lot farther. The other thing, river traffic, in those days, well, even in the '40s but the only thing a gillnetter gillnetting in the river here had to watch for was the Samson Five which was the government steam-wheeler that was retrieving sunken logs. A lot of them had their roots on still and if you kept one of those in the gillnet your net spun so they were, the government had them bunked. The Samson came in the river and they were working steady up and down the river so you’d have to watch for the Samson and there was also, in the '40s, the Lady Rose came into Steveston to the Number Two Road dock and took over Victoria. You’d maybe get one freighter a month go up to the rice mill, the Canada rice mill. By the way, yeah, I’m going to New Westminster to load lumber. But today you can go here, you’ll see Seaspan barges going through and you’ll see Seaspan towing rail cars on barges to Vancouver Island. It’s a lot of traffic.

Well, I want to thank you so much for chatting with me a little bit. I was hoping maybe we could just look at the map a little bit and see a little bit and go back inside. It’s getting a little warm out here already.

No problem.