Steveston - First settled in 1877
Steveston gets its name from the family of Manoah Steves, who established a dairy farm in 1877 in the south western corner of Lulu Island. His son, William Steves, bought the land that became the Steveston townsite. Other families established farms in the vicinity and agricultural enterprises were soon underway. It was not however Steveston's destiny to become another farming town. The abundance of salmon returning to the spawning grounds of the Fraser river made Steveston the ideal location for all aspects of the fishing industry to flourish and this industry soon became the main stay of this fledgling community's economy.
A more detailed history of Steveston is found here.
Steveston still provides moorage to a large fleet of fishing vessels, but no longer has an operational cannery. These days it's considered to be the area in Richmond, B.C. bordered by water on the south (the Fraser river) and west side, Steveston Hwy on
the north and No.2 Road on the east. Originally it was a farming community, but it quickly became a fishing village and still has a fishing fleet. They fish primarily for salmon and herring, as well as a variety of shellfish.
You can go onto the docks and buy fish, crab, shrimp etc. straight from the folks that caught them, you can't get 'em much fresher than that, short of catching them yourself. And to boot, their pricing is typically much better than the stores. Living so close to all this seafood, it's really too bad that Waita is allergic to seafood.
Where there's a river, a dock and tourists, you will find someone mixing
them and offering tours of the harbour. In Steveston it's on the River Queen.
And no, being one of the locals of course we have never taken the tour ourselves.
As part of a revitalisation project in the early 80's, new docks were built with the usual assortment of restaurants and trinket shops. You
can barely move on 'em on a sunny day.
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Pages last updated 28 November 2018