John West (1809 – 1888) was a Scottish inventor and businessman who emigrated to Canada, California and later Oregon where he operated a cannery and exported tuna to Great Britain. The Pelling Stanley and Company in the UK imported his tuna and paid for the rights to use his name, which led to the establishment of the use of "John West" as a brand name.Born in 1809, John West immigrated to Quebec, Canada where he married and started a family while apprenticing as a millwright. In 1849, he left his family and job to search for gold in California. A year later, with little gold to show for his efforts, he arrived in Astoria, Oregon and went to work using his knowledge as a millwright.[1] In 1853, West and his wife Margaret took up a 640-acre (2.6 km2) Donation Land Claim along the lower Columbia River upon which he soon began construction of a water-powered sawmill. West built a steam-powered sawmill in the early 1860s, and by 1868, he was exporting lumber to Australia.[2] During these years, the community of Westport grew up around John West's sawmill on his Donation Land Claim. Less