The Label Unwrapped – Canadian Symbols

“The Label Unwrapped: The History of Canned Salmon Labels” is the Gulf of Georgia Cannery National Historic Site’s current feature exhibit, which recently opened in May 2019. In this blog series Shannon King, Manager of Audience Engagement, shares some insight into the new exhibit and the colourful stories behind the labels. 

When Great Britain and British colonies around the world were the primary markets for British Columbia’s canned salmon, companies often included Canadian symbols on their labels to show that the tins contained salmon from Canada.  

Labels included some of Canada’s most enduring national symbols including the maple leaf and beaver. Other labels used images that had become popularized by Wild West movies. The Mountie is an immediately recognizable Canadian symbol of law and order popularized in Westerns. To me, it seems Shafer-Haggert Ltd. was trying to say that theirs was a brand that you can trust.