1889: What a Canneryman Must Know, BC

We’ve observed Chinook Jargon as a language of the multiethnic work crews in Pacific Northwest salmon canneries…

How important were canneries to early New Westminster? This is the local lacrosse team, founded in 1888 (image credit: Salmonbellies.com)

Which implies that their bosses needed to speak Jargon as well.

Here, thanks to reader Alex Code, is proof of that inference.

What a Canneryman Must Know.

Some people think a man does not require to know much to hold even the most responsible position in a salmon packing establishment. Smart young men thinking this way had better not apply for a soft billet unless they can keep books, sell dry goods and groceries, run a typewriter, talk Chinook, act private secretary to the proprietor and milk cows. This is the sort of man a well known canner wanted last week, and he got him. The prodigy comes from Nova Scotia.

— from the New Westminster (BC) Daily British Columbian of June 21, 1889, page 4, column 2

What do you think?
qʰata mayka təmtəm?