The union got your supplies in the spring for you. Bought your bait for you. We generally got a schooner full—loaded from the Magdalenes of herring for bait. . .. We did everything ourselves. We sold our canned stuff generally to a wholesaler in Charlottetown and sold all our markets in Boston. We never sold any here. We had our own trucks. We’d hire a truck from the district over to us (to take the lobsters to Boston)... . Before the truck got back, the cheque was here. Great service altogether. Very few losses we had; we had an odd one. We lost market lobsters at Pinette. That was the biggest loss we had. Big storm.1

We have, different years, shipped about 300,000 pounds to the States clear, of about 150,000 we’d can. Pounds. That’d make 1,200 cases or something like that. Oh, the fishing came up in 1930 and it was good time 1960. That’s about the size of it. It started to drop off then. Some years’d be better than others.

[The union] went till ’74, I guess. From ’37 to ’74. Pinette, and Flat River, and Belle River. Lobsters got scarce that year and there was very poor fishing. That’s why everybody dropped out. The thing went to pieces.

On the Land

Bought [this place] in 1936. This fella came to see me. I was fishing and he wanted to sell the farm. He was moving down to a bigger farm and he thought perhaps I’d like to have it. I said I’d see my father, see what he’d say. I asked him how much he wanted and he said 2,600 dollars. So, I told him I’d tell him Sunday. I bought it. 2,600 for the 50 acres and the house. But I bought the next 100 acres for 1,300 dollars after that. About two years after. I got another woodland, too.

We had, oh, about a dozen milk cows and a lot of pigs — we always kept a lot of pigs — and shipped our cream to go to [the butter factory of] Eldon. We had a good bit of stuff. For then. Not now. I’ll tell you another thin I did for years is load hogs and everything at the station here. I loaded for the shipping club first and then I did my own buying. They’d go to Charlottetown — Canada Packers — and Swift’s in Moncton, mostly.

We used to do quite a bit in the woods ourselves. We’d be working in the wintertime. There’d be nothing on the farm in the wintertime, only feeding cattle. No building going on here; our lumber business was small.

1. The Fisherman’s Union processed the smaller “canner” lobsters at its cannery in Belle River. The large “market” lobsters were stored alive in “floats” (floating crate- like containers) at the wharf in Pinette awaiting shipment by truck to Boston. These floats were susceptible to damage or loss by storms.

Stewart Ross 45