Other species
Paul Sparkes: Lobsters in the hundreds of thousands were hooked, trapped and dragged ashore at Pool’s Island, Bonavista Bay, in the 1870s. Overnight it seemed that everyone was a lobster-fisherman and everyone made money.
Lobsters in the hundreds of thousands were hooked, trapped and dragged ashore at Pool’s Island, Bonavista Bay, in the 1870s. Overnight it seemed that everyone was a lobster-fisherman and everyone made money.
The story of the first lobster canning operation there is told by our legendary Capt. Abram Kean in less than a page in his 218-page book of life, politics, seal hunts and fisheries. In character, he ends up his little report on the boom and bust lobster experience by blaming the government for its lack of hands-on control.
“Seventy years ago,” Kean wrote in 1935, “the canning of lobster was unknown in Newfoundland. The first indication we would get of lobsters would be in April in seal nets. After eating all we wanted for food, the rest would be given to pigs ... about sixty or sixty-five years ago people commenced canning lobsters in Bonavista Bay.”
A canning factory was set up at that time in Pool’s Island by a Nova Scotia man who paid people to hook lobsters at so much in wages and so much per each 100. It soon happened that there were not nearly enough people in the factory to process the numbers of lobsters coming in. This was, for one thing,
“A canning factory was set up at that time in Pool’s Island by a Nova Scotia man who paid people to hook lobsters at so much in wages and so much per each 100. It soon happened that there were not nearly enough people in the factory to process the numbers of lobsters coming in. This was, for one thing, a clear indication that we were starving for an economy.”
a clear indication that we were starving for an economy.
Kean records that huge amounts of lobster were packed but that still, “tens of thousands of lobsters were thrown away, for pigs to eat and for manure for gardens.”
Soon, additional lobster-canning operations sprang up in the area. Kean writes “ten years later, eleven factories were packing lobsters on the same ground.”
His criticism of the government was that “no attempt was made to lock the stable door until the horse had made its escape. And then the door was barred and bolted.” A closed season was made for three years was made and other precautions were taken after that. “But,” says Kean, “the lobster fishery of Newfoundland is today (mid 1930s) but the miniature of what it was 50 years ago.”
50 years ago
I took a casual glance back to 50 years ago. At the end of April 1967 it was being reported locally that the lobster fishery had gotten off to a poor start, particularly along the south coast. The starting price for lobster-fishers was the same as it had been in the two previous seasons: 40 cents per pound. But in those years, before those seasons had closed, the price had “jumped” to 55 and 60 cents. Forty cents 50 years ago is equivalent to $2.90 today.
Canned caplin
Fifty years ago here, W.J. Bursey was described by this newspaper as “the stocky, pugnacious owner of Fort Amherst Seafoods.” Bursey was, in fact, a fiery, entrepreneurial man. In May 1967, he travelled to Ottawa with a plan to produce canned caplin. Bursey did not go alone. With him were representatives of the Newfoundland Department of Fisheries, the Fisheries Development Authority and The College of Fisheries. They all met with representatives of the Federal Departments of Fisheries, Industry, Trade and Commerce. The Ottawa people turned up their noses at the idea of canned caplin. Bursey came home and (quite in character) vowed “I’m not going to let this thing drop!” As far as he was concerned, he had proven the worth of canned caplin as a food. He had earlier put 15,000 cans of it on the market and it had been bought up in “less than a month.” To Bursey that showed “sardinestyle caplin could easily compete with sardines and smelt.” He also reported that an Ontario wholesaler was willing to take 500,000 cans for sale in the United States.
With no finger-pointing, this newspaper gently recorded, “the meeting decided that caplin should be used for meal and oil or shipping frozen, not canned.”
Canned squid, anyone?
Also May 50 years ago. Telegram photographer Bill Croke visited The College of Fisheries and came back to pose a question in the next day’s issue, “Would you believe canned Newfoundland squid is delicious?”
Croke reported the results of an interview with Kresimir Sepic, who had come here from his native Yugoslavia to lecture in the College’s food technology department. “In brine and oil it’s a gourmet’s delight” Sepic suggested. “It compares favourably with the squid caught by the Japanese along the west African coast and sold to European countries, primarily Italy.”
Sepic, a chemical engineer, was of the opinion that Newfoundlanders “do not use to their fullest extent the fish that abound on their doorstep.”
Back at The Telegram, Croke opened a can and “tried it on” columnist Harold Horwood, women’s editor Jane Williams and Canadian Press correspondent, Don Mcleod. Armed with toothpicks, all three approached the delicacy. Williams could not “get beyond the look of it”. Horwood and Mcleod finished off the canned cephelopod, likening it variously to “chewy chicken, tuna fish and lobster.”