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People uprooted from Port Essington (137) View on map

Port Essington, a Tsimshian First Nation seasonal camp on the south bank of the Skeena River, was established by a non-Indigenous settler as a trading post in 1871. By 1890 it had three salmon canneries and a sawmill. In the early 1900s, early construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (GTP) encouraged population growth, and the village became a transfer point and headquarters for the Skeena River salmon canning industry.

The first Japanese Canadian residents, Shiga Aikawa and Yasukichi Yoshizawa, arrived in 1890, followed by Japanese Canadian fishermen and cannery workers in the late 1890s. The summer population peaked at 2,000, and nearly two-thirds were Japanese Canadian—the largest Nikkei community north of Vancouver. A Japanese Mission was established in July 1918, and later, the Skeena Buddhist Temple and a Japanese Language School, which had fifty-four students in 1934.
This person will be included on the monument panels in a future addition.