JOHN
Newfoundland's
500 years of fishing
Newfoundland's
500 years of fishing
Newfoundland is an isleland on the coast of Canada. Their capitol is St.John. There is more than 500 000 thousand people living there, and the number is rising.
Here is a short summary of 500 years of fishing in Newfoundland
1497: John Cabot cruises the Newfoundland
coast and finds cod in abundance.
Early 1500s: French, English, Portuguese,
Spanish and Basque fishermen begin fishing the waters of Newfoundland.
1583: Sir Humphrey Gilbert claims Newfoundland
in the name of Elizabeth I. French crews come in to the area.
1585: Bernard Drake destroys Spain’s Newfoundland
fishing fleet ( and three years later helps defeat the Armada)
England gains control of the avalon Peninsula
fisheries.
1610: John guy establishes the first settlement
in Canada at Cupers cove. (People still live here, but it is now called
Cupids) It is in this area you find the capitol St.Johns today. The islelands
residents resists attempts throughout the century by fishermen and traders
based in England, to restrict residential occupancy and control of the
cod fishery.
1700s: The resident fishers in Newfoundland
were taking control of the cod fishing.
1804- 1884: During this period Newfoundland’s
population increases tenfold to 200 000
1817: For the first time, a Newfoundland
governor, Vice-Admiral Francis Pickmore, plans to winter on the island,
but dies in February. In1824, Newfoundland’s status changes from British
fishing station to crown colony. The first legislative elections are held
in 1832.
1968: The northern cod catch peaks at
810,000 tonnes, up from 150,000 in the 1940’s.
1977: Canada extends control over coastal waters from 12 to 200 nautical miles. A five-year respite in the offshore cod fishery occurs, until Canadian companies develop offshore trawlers.
1985: inshore fishers are concerned over
the decline in cod cathes.
July 1992: The northern cod harvest is
closed, putting 30,000 Newfoundlanders out of work. By the following year,
all Canadian cod fishing is banned.
April 1997: Ottowa allows a limited cod
catch off Newfoundland’s south coast.
To celebrate the 500 years of fishing
outside the coast of Newfoundland, a replica of Cabot’s Matthew prepares
to cross the Atlantic for the 5000th anniversary celebrations.
The cod fishing outside Newfoundland’s coast today, is now
Quotations from the novel;
P.65; "And the fishing's went down, down,
down, forty years sliding away into
nothing, the goddamn Canada government
giving fishing rights to every country
on the face of the earth, but regulating
us out of business. The damn foreign
trawlers. That's where all the fish is
went......."
P.65; " 'Well', I says, 'I can fish. Worked
in the woods in the winter.'
" 'No, no, no. We don't want fishermen......'"
P.83; "..... He didn't want his boys to
be fishermen. So of course both of them
was crazy for it. Jack tells them it's
a hard, hard life with nothing to show at the
end but broken health and poverty. And
a damned good chance of drowning all
alone in the freezing boil......
P.292; ...This business about allocating
fish quotas as if they was rows of
potatoes you could dig. If there's no
fish you can't allocate them; if you don't
catch them, you can't process them or
ship them, you don't have a living for
nobody. Nobody understands their crazy
rules no more. Stumble along. They
say 'too many local fishermen for not
enough fish'. Well, where has the fish
gone? To the Russians, the French, the
Japs, West Germany, East Germany,
Polan, Portugal, the UK, Spain, Romania,
Bulgaria- or whatever they call them
countries nowadays.
P.293; "Fishing problem? Fuckin' terrible
problem. They've made the inshore
fishermen just like migrant farm workers.
All we do is harvest the product.
Moves from one crop to another, picks
what they tell us. Takes what they pay
us. We got no control over any of teh
fishery now. We don't make the
decisions, just does what we're told where
and when we're told. We lives by
rules made somewhere else by sons a bitches
don't know nothin' about this
place."