‘You’re just drawn to it’
Caribou Fisherman’s wharf harbour manager retires after 36 years
Fifty years ago, the Caribou Fisherman’s wharf would receive routine visits from Bayview boys riding on their bicycles.
“I was just fascinated with coming to the water or here to the wharf,” said John Lakerman, as he drove slowly around his workplace for the last 36 years. “Don’t ask me why, because my father grew vegetables. I just loved it. The peace and tranquility of it all when it’s a real nice day out there, or a nice evening, it’s just something you’re drawn to. It’s hard to say exactly what and why, but you’re just drawn to it.”
The Caribou wharf was a lot smaller back then when there might have been only four boats tied up. The real action was further up the shore at the old National Sea location or at North Nova Seafood where often times people would find 20 boats laden with gear for lobster or herring season.
“A pile has changed since I started here,” he said laughing, as his pickup cruises over the wharf’s newest extension.
Today, the Caribou wharf could conceivably hold 80 vessels. A younger Lakerman didn’t know that he would one day be in charge of one of the largest wharfs on the Northumberland Strait.
“Never in my wildest dreams,” he said. “I never even knew a wharfinger existed.”
A wharfinger is the keeper of the wharf, an older term for the person in charge of checking up on the equipment used by fishermen and for making sure it was business as usual for fishing seasons.
“Wharfinger, harbour manager, call it what you like,” says Lakerman. “I guess it was a difficult word for people to pronounce so they changed it.”
In either case, it’s a job that has kept Lakerman busy since he first took up the post in 1982. Even in the off-season months of winter he checks up on the fuel tanks and electrical boxes lining the docks.
“Just making sure nothing’s out of array,” he said. “Mother Nature is rough on the equipment. As good as technology is, if you look at it you’d think that salt will never get inside, but it finds a way.”
And that’s just in the off-season.
“Where there’s people there’s garbage. Or there will be a vehicle parked in the road during the season,” he said pointing to where the day’s catches get lifted out of the water by winches.
“Sometimes somebody will come down here and park his car right where the winch is and the fish buyer can’t get to it. Who do they call? They call and say, ‘John there’s a car in the road, what can you do?’ and, well, we have to get a tow truck in here and take it away.”
After Dec. 31, 2018, Caribou Wharf’s routine checkups will be carried out by someone else, because Lakerman is retiring.
“I will miss it. There’s no doubt about that,” said Lakerman “I’ll miss the guys and I’ll just miss being here. There’s great people here. Great people, young and old.”
The fishing industry is an unpredictable one. Some seasons are better than others, and uncertainty for the future has always come with the job.
“Put your best foot forward,” said Lakerman. “There’s always something new that comes up. If it’s not the price, it’s the bait, if it’s not the bait it’s somebody’s boat, there’s always something,” he said. “But with the pulp mill, that’s a real uncertainty.”
Lakerman is currently working on the highway interchange project linking the Paqtnkek First Nation to the Trans Canada in Antigonish County.
“I don’t mind getting up, whether it’s 4 a.m. or 5. I enjoy it.”
And for whoever takes up the mantle, he had some sound words of advice.
“Just have a cool head,” he said. “You need a cool head because you deal with people all the time and not everybody sees it the same way you do.”