A Tribute to Donald V. Graham

I always said the measure of a person is the number of people at their funeral service.

Donald’s service was in Ferryland on Tuesday, January 15. The day was really bad, gale-force, Northeast winds, drifting snow that turned to freezing rain, then rain. Not fit to put your dog outdoors.

Despite the terrible weather, the church was filled, not even standing room, as the old fishermen would say, stogged to the gills.

My reason for my being at the funeral was simple, paying tribute to people like Don Graham, who started off in life with very little and eventually ended up with a fish plant.

He, like many others in this province, kept our rural communities alive by providing a place for fisherpeople to sell their fish and creating a lot of work for plant workers, not only in Aquaforte, but from surrounding communities as well.

I have a lot of respect for people like Donny, their driving force was to the community they were born in.

They kept rural Newfoundland and Labrador alive until greed and destruction entered the fishery, hence the moratorium and no we never did have too many fish plants, we just never had the will or common sense to manage our fishery right.

Donny (June 18, 1944 – January 11, 2019) did get a good send off — rest in peace.

Wilfred Bartlett
Green Bay South