Canners and Markets

Lobsters was [my main source of income]. It was good money. It got to be good money. It was very poor at first. In 1960, I had over 7,000 dollars coming to me for the two months. [When I started,] I took 39 dollars for a month. -

Every man had his own cannery...and his own boat. [I fish first with] John Riley. I hauled the lobster traps in with him and when we came ashore we packed the lobsters.

Taking them out of the shell, and putting them in cans, and closing the cans with the solder. Then bath them at night. Four hours to cook them

[I’d start] around five o’clock, fishing, in the morning. We’d be in about noontime, and pack them in the afternoon. [Get home] around nine or 10, probably. Take our lunch with us. Couple of lunches. It was not bad to go to bed when we were done working. Sunday, we might go swimming in the summertime or skating in the wintertime.

[I worked for Riley] five seasons. Left to start in Belle River in 1922 with my own outfit. We had to pack with another Riley [Malcolm]...and we had to work in the factory for our board. We stayed there all the week. He had a bigger factory. He had seven or eight boats... a cookhouse, and he had a sleeping shanty. There was quite a few fellas. None of them living today that fished there then, I don’t think.

I’d say [the lobsters] went to the Old Country. Over to France. That was the biggest market for those canned lobsters. They slowed down after that. I don’t know where they went. Everywheres. We didn’t have much to do with that.

We took over the factory in ‘36 or ‘37 and we sold [lobsters] for 13 dollars a case. N inety—six cans in a case. But they had been just around that all along. We sold to two different buyers in Charlottetown. Can’t think of them now. DeBlois’s was the last ones we sold to.

[The fishermen’s union] started in 1937. Well, it really started in about 1936 up in Ti gnish, and there was a fella by the name of Chester McCarthy. He was a lawyer. He took charge of them up there, and then he went on to organize the whole Island. Murray Harbour started a fishermen’s union in 1936, I think, and we started in 1937. Each one was individual. They had a number. Our number was thirteen.

[The unions] only run for a few years and they started dropping out. Big packers around you know. There was no big packers around here, though, so we started in and we were big packers for a while. For 20 or 25 years, we operated with around 60 or 66 boats.

a 44 BELFAST PEOPLE