r 1 O Notes re the Nova Scotia Bank « November, 1952.

Prom M.M.Gardner, retired partner in W.C .Smith & Co* Lunenburg* "I joined the company as a clerk in 1909> eventually became a partner by investing $12,000 in the business. We never paid large dividends, preferred to plough most of the profits back into the business. When we sold out finally to Ra^ljh Bell’s National Fish Company in 1946 my share was $224,000.

"How the times have changed. In 1909 a would come into the store and buy a 6-lb caddy (that’s what we called the tobacco boxes) of black-strap chewing tobacco, enough to last him a three months’ voyage on the Banks. If he was a heavy chewer he’d take a 12—lb caddy. Brands like Old Tom, Club,and Heart. Nowadays it s always cigarettes —— only the old men smoke a pipe, hardly anybody chews.

"Nowadays the young men don’t want to go any more, ’specially where there s work. A lot of our young men since the war have gone to in oil tankers, where they get big pay, comfortable quarters, the best of food, and a long leave each year. We’ve got a situation right now in the Masonic lodge at Riverport. Fifteen or twenty years ago they had a thriving lodge there, 36 or 90 members, all good solid fellows, the salt of the earth. Today they're down to 25 or so, and as the old fellows die off they get fewer and fewer. Most of the young men have gone away, and those that remain aren’t interested in Freemasonry, there’s too many other ways to spend their time. Looks as if the Riverport lodge will have to give up its charter. Never thought I’d live to see that.

From Wallace Smith, partner in W.C.Smith & Co.: " I went for a voyage to the Banks in the summer of 1914. I was jU3^ a y ° ^ g s'^er then, of course. In those days it was all done with sailing vessels —— schooners of course — and trawls that were baited and set and hauled by men in . And we used to catch all the fish we wanted on Banquereau, the Sable Island bank, the Middle Bank and Green Bank, sometimes on the Grand Bank itself. The vessels were owned "on shares", i.e. when a vessel)^ was built they'd sell p2 or 64 snares in her.Many of the fishermen themselves used to invest their savings inshares, one in this vessel, one in that. Nowadays a new vessel costs so much that we have to sell fractions of shares — as small as one-fifth of a share. In the 1920’s they began to instal diesel engines in fishing schooners for auxiliary power, and by 1959 sail had become the auxiliary and the engine was the main power. That is still the case. You never see topsails any more you can 3Q-i the vessels in the harbor all have spike topmasts, nothing more. In 1959 you could build a wodden fishing vesseljand equip it ready for iishing — diesel engine and everything — for about $4*»000. Today the same vessel would cost $140,000. Each vessel is still divided into 64 shares, but we have to sell fractions of shares because the cost is so high. There were 20 vessels operating out of Lunenburg last summer in the bait fishery on the Banks. Salt fish are still important to us in Lunenburg and Riverport. O^ur total (Lun. and Riverport) fish sales last year would run about $6,000,000, and roughlybhalf was salt fish and half was fresh fish. Until a few years ago the salt fisherman continued to land their catch nere, and then it would be carted or trucked away by dozens of small contractors, usually families, who would engage to "make" the fish on their flakes and return it to U3 dried and ready for shipment. About 15%> of the (Lun. & Riverport) catch is still dried in that way. The rest is dried by special drying apparatus within the plant on a scientific basis. We (my firm) pioneered in experimenting and installing artificial dryers. It gives a better and more uniform product. Under the old system all depended on the skill and care of the small contractor, so that in a single cargo shipped to the West Indies there would be fish "made" perhaps by twenty different contractors, all varying in quality. .

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There is a great difference, too, in the handling of the fish nowadays. Formerly the fish were pitchforked from the dories to the vessel, from the vessel to the wharf, from the wharf to the ox-cart or truck, and so on. All of which resulted in damage to the fish. mKpCXasqpOtiiXSMXMMXpm; Now the fish are removed in^ baskets from the vessel to the wharf, where most of them go direct to the drying- plant. Also nowadays we are much more particular in trimming away blood-spots and other small blemishes on the fish. Formerly, too, the fish were washed by hand after "making". Nowadays this is done by machine, and the fish are washed cleaner and quicker by this means. The best market for salt fish at the present time, for us anyhow, is Cuba — the east end of Cuba, round about Santiago. The next is, strangely enough, New York, which never offered a market in the old days. Part of this is due to the influx into New York»in recent years j of thousands of Porto Ricans, who were accustomed to eating Canadian salt fish at home and continue to demand KKX it where they are now. Our people sell some fish also in Bermuda, Brazil, Panama, Haiti, San Domingo. The Newfoundlanders sell quite a lot in Jamaica; but of course there you run up against the sterling currency problem. Incidentally the Norwegians still compete strongly in the West Indian market; they put up an excellent grade of salt fish and get a good price tfaixxrfcx for it. r \ The fresh has grown to a great size (from almost nothing) during tne past 15 or 20 years. This * * ¿3 due to improved methods of handling in the vessel and at the dock, improved refrigeration at the dockland in transit and in the shops inland, attractive pxskKging filleting and packaging, and persistent and skillful salesmanship inland. The meat shortage during the war, and the sharp increaee in meat prices since, induced many housewives to buy sea-fish who had never tried it before, and now they are steady customers. The great grocery chains like A & P buy and market huge quantities of sea-fish nowadays, dealing directly with the fishery firms on the coast. Some of them even supply their own packages for the fish, so that it goes out under their name right from the fish-plant. The method of sea fishing is changing fast. At the present moment there are half a dozen vessels tied up in Lunenburg, hook-and-liners, using dories to set the trawls — and tied up because it’s impossible to get crews for them. The young men don’t want to go dory-fishing any more, especially in winter weather. We used to get a lot of Newfoundlanders for dory-fishing every year, but now they’re all busy at home — where they have first-rate modern fish-plants now, some of the best in Canada. These hook-and-liners, as we call them, still operate on a share basis in the oldfashionea way. They carry a crew of 28 men — 24 to man the 12 aories, each man of whom gets his pay in the form of a share of the catch, after the cost of outfitting the vessel has been deducted. The cost of outfitting a hook-and-liher is so high nowadays that the vessel has to make a big catch if the men are to make good wages. (24 man the dories; then there are 4 others, the captain, engineer, cook and f1unkey-boy.) , . The result is that the men prefer to work in draggers or trawlers, whicn eaten their fish by towing a bag net over the sea bottom and scooping up the fish. All the work i 3 done from the deck — no dory work at all. So the hook-and-liner is on the way out. In a few more years they will be gone. That is, the big ones of the old schooner-hull type. Right now there are fishing out of Lunenburg 6 big^ trawlers, 2 draggers, and only 2 hook-and-line fishing vessels of the dory-setting type. The terms trawler and dragger are really synonymous — both tow net3 over the bottom. The Americans seem to call anything over 100 feet long a trawler, and anything less than that a dragger. A trawler has a crew of 20 men, a dragger carries 18. Our two most modern trawlers were built in England especially for these waters; they have comfortable accommodation, the latest dragging gear, M M X and so on; they are very fine . All these trawlers and draggers are equipped with radio-telephone, radar, radio direttion-finders, Loran, and sonic M depth-finding apparatus, so that the fishery is now on a scientific basis. Most of thi3 development has taken place since the war closed in 1 9 ^5 » indeed the whole industry has been revolutionised- within the past seven years. 5

Sven "the inshore fisherman have turned away from the use of dories in setting their lines of gangings and baited hooks, and the dory you see stowed on the after deck of their swift Gape Island motorboats is there for emergency use only. Since 19^5 nearly all of them have adopted the "long-line" method of fishing, by which the lines of baited hooks are paid out from the motor-boat itself, and hauled in mechanically by a "gurdy" on the engine. This means comparative safety and comfort, especially in winter, for XKM3E the men operate the lines practically under cover most of the time. The "long-line" method seemed strange and a bit sissified to the hard-bitten inshore fishermen of Nova Scotia when it first appeared a few years ago. Now they’re all going in forjit, and a good thing, too. Too many men have suffered and perished in time past when a sudden fog or snowstorm caught them in their dories far from the mother craft. The Cape Island type of boat remains the most popular on the coast, but some larger boats are now being built and equipped especially for long-line fishing. Ti^se run to 55 or 60 feet in length, and cost more than $50*000, equipped.

Another great change in the X& east coast fishery is being wrought by Mature herself, in a mysterious and baffling way* Our climate seems to be getting warmer, and the presence of unusually warm currents off our coast during the past three years has brought about a change in the habits of the fish, which like cold water. For the past two years the fishery on the seaward face of Nova Scotia has been virtually a failure, and the fishery was little better. Alwso our vessels find the cod and haddock and other Bank fish relatively scarce in their customary haunts, and the fish they catch are running much smaller in size. The really big cod — "steak cod" — are now comparatively few, whereas a few years ago they comprised a large part of the catch. The result is that the Nova Scotia fishing vessels are having to go farther afie2L2L. Some of the Lunenburg vessels are fishing as far as fOO miles from home. One last year went all the way to Greenland. This new hunt for the fish is joined by the American dr aggers, and by smart modern big trappers irom France and Spain, as well as the quaint schooners and square—riggers 01 Portugal. The French and Spaniards ggp&X are especially vigorous and well-equipped in this scramble off the Canadian coasts. The French even maintain a hospital on the 3anks, and a —research vessel to aid in the hunt for a catch. The French charts of the Banks are actually better than our own. Some of the Spanish trawlers are using a new method, working in pairs and towing a net between them to catch the fish that swim well off the bottom. With the general use of radar, Loran and sonic depth-finding gear all these craft are combing the Banks as they were never combed before. Many oi the old hook-and-line fishermen of Nova Scotia claim that all this dragging over the Banks KOXaxaXiiXMMAXKSIOlIMM is ruining the breeding grounds of the cod especially, and they blame the smaller catches and the decreasing size of the fish on this alone. Others feel sure the Gulf Stream ha 3 changed its course enough to make the waters off Nova Scotia unusually warm, and to send the big schools of cod further north where the water is still cold. There are reports that the Greenlanders are catching cod nowadays in latitudes where they were never seen before, and certainly the Icelanders seem to be enjoying a better fishery than ever before in their history. 95 So there's the great question. Is modern science destroying the fish, or catching them too fast, or are the fish getting more smart and engaging iria huge game of hide-and-seekj < r •*** The present trend in the fishery seems all towards more and larger and better equipped trawlers. Some of the European vessels fishing on the 3anks now discharge their catch into a larger ship and go 09. right &K after another lot. Probably in the near future they will operate in squadrons, each discharging into an actual factory-ship in which the fish will be processed and fffyzen ready for the market. . J " /-- -- 7 x / - * * J v ( k o ^jCL crj\ Wwr-inuN 4

I walked about the Lunenburg waterfront on a cold sunny day in November 1952* The draggers were all out on the Banks and there was very little activity on the *■ wharves. I counted 10 wooden vessels of the schooner-hull type laid up. ( Three at IS the wharves, five anchored in the harbor itself, and two hauled up for repairs and painting on the Smith & Rhuland slips.) All of these had the sharp bows and two masts of the familiar knockabout schooner, but all were stump-rigged (i.e with what are called "spike topmasts") with sail definitely the auxiliary, and all equipped with a powerful diesel engine. The crews (when they carry crews) are all accommodated aft, where too is the engine and the captain’s quarters, radio out fit and so on. The ones I saw at the wharves were smart and well kept, each with a dozan dories nested — six each side — with the port-side dories painted a magenta tint and the starboard ones the oldfashioned and usual yellow. I was told that they are tied up for lack of men. Dory-fishing in the winter season doesn’t pay enough per share to warrant the hardship and the risk. However the owners seemed to have them ready, or to be getting them ready, for winter fishing, and I was told that after Christmas at least some of them would be manned. At one plant I was shown the salt fish stacked in the drying room — all the actual drying had been done and the room was now kep£ chilled. In this plant the salt fish are dried and washed entirely by machinery • About 15% of the salt fish is still dried and washed by hand in the oldfashioned way by fisherman and their families who maintain drying-flakes outside the town. These contract to "make" the fish at so much per quintal (112 lbs), and when the fish is "made" they bring it back to the fish companies. On this day at one wharf I saw six or eight motor trucks of various kinds and sizes, and one ox-cart, all laden with salt fish which had been "made" by small contractors and was now being delivered. The old hands about the wharves said that fish "made" in the oldfashioned way-)in the JitiX open air by a careful and skilful man?was better than machine-dried fish. "The Machine-dryer takes something good out of the fish." This was not the option of Wallace Smith and others, who affirmed that "hand-made" fish was often "sun-burnt" or partly spoiled by damp, that.none of it was uniform. They say firmly that the machine-dried-and washed fish is a far superior product, and that fish made entirely in the oldfashioned way would get a poor market nowadays. The older men about the wharves were unanimous in condemning the "draggers". They said the draggers were destroying the bottom, for one thing. For another the drag-net took in everything, including a lot of small unmarketable fish, which were destroyed — "and if you kill the children how long are you going to have fish?" Everything very clean about the wharves. A scatter of coarse salt here and there, looking like snow, and crunching underfoot. Gulls roosting on the bollards and wharf ends. No more sail. In 19^1 a Hollywood film company hire.d_tMQ_LunQnburg two-masters, refitted them with M M E M L ^pmasts and^a ful Jesuit ofL3ail^_and photographed several sea sequences with these vessels off the Nova Scotia coast• The pictures were used in "The World In HisArms", starring Gregary Peck, a tale_ of the Alaska seal-poachers of 50 or 60 years ago. This was probably the lagf^time anybody will ever see a Bluenose schooner under fullsail. After this you will have to look-on a Canadian dime. Offices of the chief Lunenburg fishery companies are small and unpretentious buildings just above the waterfront, in a section given over for many years to dim shops selling marine supplies such as oilskins, sea—boots, waterproof mittens, cordage, groceries. ,

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In the inshore fishery all has changed, too. Until 1946 the Nova Scotian inshore fisherman operated his small craft like a miniature Bank-vessel. That is, he wouldjlt^f^i run out 10 to 50 miles off the coast, anchor his motor-boat, and put off in a dory'-' with his fishing-mate to set the long lines of baited hooks which are called "trawls". It was a long rough job, especially with a sea running or in cold weather. Then he and his mate would row back to the motor-boat and cook their dinner on the tiny stove in thejcabin. Hauling in the trawl-line was a harder, wetter job, for with any luck now the hooks would be loaded with lively cod and pollack and haddock, and maybe the two men would have to make several'trips with the dory before all the fish were stowed in the motorboat and all the trawl-lines coiled 3nugly in the t^bs for stowage. Then back to the coast,slitting and gutting the catch as they went. 3y4 the time they had disposed of their catch, overhauled and re-baited the interminable coils of lines and hooks ready for tomorrow's fishing, they would have put in a 14-hour day of the toughest kind. _____ Make no mistake, it's still a tough living, ^ut Trowadyao"jbhQ inshore fisherman putsoutVin his familiar Cape-l3land-type motorboat, with its cabin-chouse jutting up forward and its long open after deck. There's still a dory on after deck, but that13 for emergency uses only. Today he's using the "long-line" mfcfthod of fishing, which means nofdory work. Everything is handled from the deck of the motorboat itself, the "long lines" are jSKXiUC&ttX hauled in by X K & X & i p M xiKKkfx a 'gurdy"on the engine, not by man-power any more, and a lot of dangerous and back­ breaking work has been eliminated or at any rate made much easier. Add to this the fact that hundreds of inshore fishermen nowadays are equipped with radio-phones, radio compass, and even radar — all small-scale types of those used in the Bank fleet — and you will see the extent of the fisherman's march since '45* And now groups of inshore fishermen are g&XXXJigXX&gX putting their money and credit together and investing in boats specially built for long-line fishing. These have all the latest fishing and navigation equipment, with powerful engines and roomy cover, they run from 55 to 60 feet long, and cost as much as $51,000. There's controversy, of course — exactly the samacontr.py.ersy that arose about the coast of England .Scotland when the XXHiiXMX steam began to replace the ffifiKXX£K£%% hook-and-iiner. The hook-and-liners say that drag-nets destroy the bottom on the Banks, the natural breeding ground of the fish, and that the bag-nets catch and kill a lot of small unmarketable fish. "If you kill the babies," they say, "how long will you be able to catch big ones?" The dragger-men insist that you can't"destroy" the Banks or the fish — the sea is too big, the supply is inexhaustible. And they point out with much truth that until the draggers came along and guaranteed a steady supply to the fish-companies it wasn't possible for the salesmen to go out and create the great inland fish-market that exists today. With a market like that, they say, there's room for all. XMXMXXKjfcWXiiirrh er s's no controversy about the market. It's there, all over the North American continent today. Believe it or not, they even ship Atlantic-caught fish to ports on the Pacific. One small fish-company in my home town sells its own tasty brand of smoked haddock — "finnan haddie" in the trade term — US. in places as near as Montreal, as far away as Seattle. Today the great grocery chains like A & P buy huge quantities of fish at Atlantic ports and market them all over the continent. Often the fish are filleted and put up in attractive cellophane wrappers and packages marked with the name of the grocery chain, right in the fish-plant on the coast. With modern handling methods, with modern refrigeration right from the ship to the grocery store — in fact right to the refrigerator in the home — the fish retains its fresh quality and tast iness right to the table far inland. The scarcity of meat during the war, and the high meat prices afterwards, have created an enormous market for sea-fish that never existed before. Before the war, housewives far inland who tried sea fish found it stale and unappetising and would have no more of it. When the shortage of meat drove them to buying fish they discovered that new mthods brought it to their table in excellent condition, a tasty and nouriehing food — and cheap. And now, although meat is more plentiful and 6

cheaper than it was even a year ago, the housewife goes right on buying fish as well. It’s become part of the national diet. m MM’ T?he invention of the fried-fish -and- chip shop changed the eating habits of Britain and created fleets of tr$Jjwers and draggers in place of the difficult and uncertain hook-and-liners. Britain is a small country and the problems of transportation to market were small. In our vast spaces the problems of transportation and refrigeration confined the/?; consumtpion of sea-fish to the coasts and the immediate hinterland, and dj»ve the Nova Scotia and Newfoundland fihermen to salt and dry the great part of their catch for consumption filfIC chiefly in the ’Vest Indies and South America. Today that's all changed. The Maritime Provinces, including Newfoundland, all have large modern -pi ants catering especially to the fresh-fish trade inland. Not that they are neglecting the salt fish trade. There's still a good market for salt fish to the southward and they make the most of it. Lunenburg, the heart of the Nova Scotia , still ships roughly half its fish away in dry-salt form. Most of this goes to Cuba and New York, with smaller quantities to Panama, Haiti, San Domingo, and Brazil. The Newfoundlanders still ship a lot to Jamaica, where they have to strug|le with the sterling-currency problem. The New York market for dry-salt fish is comparatively new. The Porto Ricans who flocked to NewYork in thousands within the- past ten years took with them their old Y/est Indian taste for Nova Scotia xxkfc fish and they go on buying it there. Methods of "making1’ salt fish have changed like everything else since 19^5* Until the late war the method hadn't changed very much in XXXM X K M X M I M X & 3C3C XDQQQIp almost four centuries. Old wood-cuts showing European fishermen catching codfish on the Banks with hooks-and-lines, and splitting them and salting them ky spreading them on "flakes" ashore to dry in the open air, right back to the time of Queen Bess. This was the still the method used on the coasts of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia until the end of the late war. Then, along with new fishing methods, the "making" came under scientific scrutiny. Wallace Smith, of the old Lunenburg firm of W.C.Smith & Company, was a pioneer in this. Today the dry-salt fish in Lunenburg is "made" within modern fish plants, with artificial drying and washing all under one roof, and the result is a uniform and spotless product that commands a good price abroad. The rest of the salt fish at Lunenburg is still"made" in the old way — by small contractors, usually family groups, who haul the fish from the wharves to their flakes along the shore, dry them in the open air, and return them to the fish companies in the Fall. On a brisk Novemebr day in Lunenburg you can still see a few trucks and even an ox-cart here and there, making their way from the outlying "flakes" to the warehouse of the fish company, t serves as a good contrast to the new method of doing things, and gives you a glimpse of the old time-consumin g and painstaking way in which, slowly through the centuries, the fishing industry was built. For years visiting writers have described Lunenburg as a pretty town, a hospitabb town, a sleepy and oldfashioned town where everything belongs to X&X another century. That's not true any more, not entirely eanyway. Lunenburg is still a pretty town and its people are still hospitable, M X its atmosphere is as restful as you please; but along the wharves and in the fish-plants things are hustling in a i&anner that is strictly twentieth-century. You’ll still see an ox-cart or two, ^wneing its way along the narrow streets amongst the Cadf.illac$ and Buicks, but that belongs to some oldfashioned farmer ^down the shore. You'll still see wooden vessels with lovely lines in the harbor; but ^got^big diesel engine^, and the only canvas you'll ever see on those two spike masts will be trysails to steady her in a sea. You'll still see trawlytubs on the decks of some, and dories nested, six each side; but as often as not these vessels will be tied up for lack of a crew. The old men are retiring and the young men won't fish in dories any more. They're siging on the big tralwers and draggers. The man at the desk in ^bhat staid-looking office above the waterfront isn't phoning his wife about XKJS sauer kraut and pig's tjnuckles for dinner and talking in a quaint "Dutch" accent. He's speaking in a crisp educated voice to someone in Montreal or Winnipeg or Chicago or New York, and talking business, the kind oi business that brings millions of dollars to this one small port every year. 7

If you want to hear some quaint talk on the phone you must go to your radio and tune in on the M M X X X X M X wave-length of the Bank fleet. It's still a rugged life out there, for all the modern conveniences, and the typical Bluenose fisherman is still a two-fisted character with a fine choice of language in a pinch. There you can hear them chatting away with each other, enquiring about the catch, describing the fog, the snow, the * » » y sea, the depredations of foreign trawlers, all m words that would curl the quills of a porcupine. But if you listen long enough you'll hear the skipper call the s^re radio station and give the number of his house phone in Lunenburg. And then the conversation will be something like tms: " Hello*. Mabel? (Or Janie or Mamie or Mary) How are you? Fine! foung Jimmy get his tonsils out? You get the car fixed? That carburretor ain’t working right. Me? Oh, I’m alright. Sea’ sfa bit 3*«*y. Got a fair haul. Heading home tonight. 3e in there Tuesday afternoon. See you then, dear. And iwabel^. Get that car nxed Tuesday night we'll run up to Bridgewater and see the show.”