About this episode
The history of the Western Canners factory on the Balboa Peninsula —both the cannery, which opened in 1935, and later the iconic restaurant—is woven deeply into the fabric of Newport Beach history.After churning out up to 5,000 cans of seafood daily (for humans and cats), the cannery closed in the 1960s, and then the historic property was saved twice: once in the early 1970s when retired engineer Bill Hamilton turned the closed factory site into the Cannery restaurant, and then again in 1999 when a history-minded businessman named Jack Croul (who never eaten at the Cannery before) paid three times the price for the property to stop bulldozers from knocking down the building to turn it into a condo project. After rescuing the historic site, Jack turned the beloved dining establishment over legendary restaurateur Ron Salisbury (now 93 and still active in daily operations), who tells us his incredible life story as well as the miraculous tale of how the Cannery was saved.
