Just before leaving for Vancouver airport, I did a walk of a few blocks to see if there was anything worth buying for the family. It was snowing fairly hard but the temperature was above freezing and the huge snowflakes were melting as soon as they hit you. Getting rather sodden and having not found anything of interest I headed back by a slightly different route.
In Thurlow Street I saw a shop called Salmon Village so I thought that looked promising and went in.
(OK, I admit I did not take the above picture as it is not snowing)
This had extensive stocks of sockeye smoked salmon which they claimed had no additives other than salt and brown sugar. They also had a service for packing for air travel. (Pictures are not that great as I did not have a camera with me so resorted to my phone!)
I settled on half a side of smoked salmon. The packaging was very effective. I have seen mail order companies here use small icepacks for keeping fish fresh but for the fee of one dollar each I got two very substantial ones. Having just unpacked I was surprised that they were still almost completely frozen.
I think that it must be sockeye salmon that you sometimes see in the UK labelled as "Alaska salmon". However in case any readers have never seen it the photo below contrasts the deep colour of the sockeye with the paler European salmon. My Finnish colleagues found it very hard to believe that the sockeye colour was natural and initially thought it was food colouring.
I assume that the Scottish salmon shown here is farmed. Wild Atlantic salmon looks much paler still.
Canadian airports, at least in Toronto and Vancouver, have the salmon for sale. It is tasty too!