OHQ vol. 113, no. 2 political and commercial ideologies. General readers will delight in the sophisticated graphics of birds-eye views and promotional maps. These volumes hold something for everyone. James V. Walker Eugene, Oregon Flight of the Bumblebee: The Columbia River Packers Association and a Century in the Pursuit of Fish by Irene Martin and Roger Tetlow The Chinook Observer Publishing Company, Long Beach, Washington, 2011. Illustrations, photographs, notes, index. 224 pages, $22.95 paper. In 1899, seven small salmon canneries operating around the mouth of the Columbia River joined forces to create the Columbia River Packers Association (CRPA). The Combine, as it was known locally,became the most powerful cannery on the West Coast. It began operating in Alaska in 1902. By 1980, when the company shut its doors and moved to San Diego, it was the largest employer in Astoria. Today, its old Hanthorn Cannery on the waterfront in east Astoria is Pier 39, an upscale boutique hotel. This story of the glory years of CRPA has been a long labor of love. Astoria historian Roger Tetlow began the book before his death in 1999. Irene Martin, who has written several books about the history of gillnetting on the Columbia, picked up the manuscript and carried it to completion.As Martin notes,she had a prodigious amount of information available. The big attraction is the pictures, many of them drawn from the company files, now held by the Columbia River Maritime Museum. There is a rich collection of engravings, promotional material, maps, cartoons, boat plans, ads for canning equipment, labels from cans of salmon, and pictures of beautiful little boats, bobbing at anchor, from the Columbia River to Bristol Bay in Alaska. There are facsimiles of letters (a company director in 1906 warns againsttheAlaskaventure)andwaybills(salmon sold for pennies).There are beautifully detailed black–and–whitephotographsof icemachinery and engines and of the company bowling team and regatta floats featuring girls posing as mermaids .Itisabeguilingportrayalof lifeinasmall fishing town during the boom years. Most of all,there are pictures of fish,salmon strewn across the beach after seining, burying the ankles of the Chinese work crew, bulging in purse seine nets, fish taller than small children , held by girls in bathing suits and men in oilskins, and fish in cans.And not just salmon: during the 1930s, trollers increasingly were catching albacore tuna. At first the company shipped the tuna to southern California for processing. Later, company president W.L. Thompson decided he could do it himself and, in 1937, began converting the half-pound line in his salmon cannery to pack tuna. Tuna brought Astoria an economic boom, but it also laid the roots for the company to leave the river.Its fortunes increasingly lay elsewhere . As the great Columbia runs declined, the CRPA packed most of its salmon in Alaska. Albacore caught in the fall off Oregon could not keep up with the huge post-war demand for canned tuna. The company imported tuna from Japan in 1952. It bought Hawaiian Tuna Packers,Ltd.,in 1956,and it merged with Castle and Cook, Inc., in 1961, changing the company name to Bumble Bee Seafoods, Inc. In 1979, Bumble Bee bought a cannery in San Diego, closer to the Latin American fishery. There is much to savor in this book, but there are also some significant omissions. As Martin makes clear, the book is a tribute. The company’sruthlessnessisacknowledgedbriefly, but downplayed, replaced by stories of how the CRPApromotedfromwithinandtheleadership it showed in battling against the building of the ColumbiaRiverdams.Thisisallinteresting,but it is a very small lens through which to view a company that was as important as the CRPA. OHQ vol. 113, no. 2 The company played a significant role in turning salmon, a fish that had sustained life at the river for thousands of years,into a global commodity,with unlimited demand,as biologist Jim Lichatowich has written.After 1945,the CRPA was increasingly involved in the modern industrialization of the fishing industry. But that is material for a different book. This one celebrates the glory days, when salmon was king on the river, there were plenty of fish, and Astoria was a company town. Carmel Finley...
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