People uprooted from Kildonan (5)

Kildonan, on the east shore of Uchucklesit Inlet, was established by non-Indigenous settlers as a cannery camp in 1903. The first cannery built on the west coast of was the Uchucklesaht Cannery. In 1906, Wallace Brothers Packing (later Wallace Fisheries) bought the cannery and named the site Kildonan after their home village in Scotland. In 1913, the cannery was rebuilt with added cold storage, bunkhouses, and cottages. A burgeoning pilchard fishery in the 1920s led to increasing demand for seasonal workers.

By the 1920s, Kildonan was a self-contained community with a store, recreation hall, water and sewage systems, and a school for employees’ children. In the 1920s and 1930s, Kildonan had approximately fifty permanent residents; at its height, seasonal cannery workers increased the community’s population to 300. Japanese Canadians often worked in Kildonan and nearby Green Cove seasonally, but lived in the Vancouver area.