University Helps Out Local Fishermen
Memorial University may be closed, but on the upside, it has given us access to one of its parking lots in Corner Brook to allow local fishermen to work on fishing gear while the pandemic is ongoing.
We have been working there since early May and will be in great shape for the autumn/winter herring fishery.
Purse seines require a large flat area to be mended properly. After the federal government privatized our city’s port facilities, we lost access to the dockyard and warehouses. We ...
The Final Final
This is Final Voyages #264 — the last of a 22-year series that began in the first Navigator Magazine in November 1997.
When I pitched the idea of writing a monthly article called Final Voyages in The Navigator, the magazine itself was only a concept. TriNav Group of Companies directors/owners Paul Pinhorn, Trevor Decker and Rick Yong were considering launching a fishing and marine industries publication and asked my opinion on which direction they might follow.
I thought a magazine ...
Providing No More – Part III
Just before 8 p.m., Tuesday, February 6, 2018, the fishing vessel Fisherman’s Provider II ran hard aground on a shoal nearly three miles from Canso, Nova Scotia. Three crewmembers successfully abandoned ship into a life raft and were taken onboard another fishing boat. However, the Provider’s captain, Roger Stoddard, refused to join his crew and stubbornly ignored repeated calls on VHF Radio, cell phone and even refused to respond to shouts from fellow fishermen near enough to the Provider ...
Providing No More – Part II
On February 6, 2018, the fishing vessel Fisherman’s Provider II left port in Canso, Nova Scotia on a five-day halibut fishing trip. After nearly two hours of erratic steaming behavior, including going around in circles just off Canso, the vessel ran hard aground on a well-known shoal. At first, the skipper and three crewmembers had plenty of time to comfortably get off the vessel, but the captain, Roger Stoddard, was apparently not about to leave his vessel under any circumstances. This is ...
Providing No More
“It was totally bizarre.”
That was the way veteran Canso fisherman Billy Bond described it. And, his sentiments, more or less, sum up the feelings of the fishermen and most other people in Canso, Nova Scotia, when talking about the loss of the Fisherman’s Provider II and especially the death of the vessel’s captain, Roger Stoddard.
Owned by Fishermen’s Market International Inc., the 43-foot fibreglass fishing vessel was docked at the company’s wharf in Canso, located on the ...
It Must Have Been Really Quick – Part II
After refitting his longliner in the winter of 1994/95, Skipper Bob Stacey from St. Lawrence had a brand-new boat ready for the 1995 fishing season on the south coast of Newfoundland.
The Jessie Marie was even five feet longer than before the refit. One of the main reasons for the upgrade was to make the vessel suitable for scallop fishing.
Bob and his two-man crew fished the Jessie Marie for several months after the refit and for the most part, things went fairly well, but during a ...
It Must Have Been Really Quick
Bob Stacey was known as a hard-working fisherman.
With little interest in anything else except hunting, the young fishing skipper from St. Lawrence, on the southern tip of Newfoundland’s Burin Peninsula, worked tirelessly in his chosen profession. If he wasn’t at sea, he was working on his boat and fishing gear.
Bob was a St. Lawrence oddity in some respects.
St. Lawrence bills itself as the Soccer Capital of Canada and it has good reason to make that claim. Its team, St. Lawrence ...
Third Time Unlucky – Part II
Boat repairs created problems for fishing skipper Kenneth Hickey in 2015. His 45-foot vessel DSL Enterprises needed upgrading, but the work was taking longer than anticipated and by mid-June, Kenneth was worried whether he’d be able to catch his snow crab quota before the season ended in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland at the end of June. His wife Madeline was the registered owner of a second enterprise that included a 45-foot vessel, but government rules prevented Kenneth from using the second ...
Third Time Unlucky
Kenneth Hickey was known as a cautious fisherman.
His wife Madeline says her husband often worried about many of his peers because he felt they were not exercising safe fishing practices. She says he often voiced his thoughts on the matter and that is why she never worried about Kenneth when he was at sea.
Kenneth, from Southern Harbour, Newfoundland, was generally attentive and careful in almost everything he did, but in a period of a year or so he had a couple of close calls that ...
Pop’s Pride – Part III
On September 6, 2016, the 22-foot fishing boat Pop’s
Pride left port in St. John’s Newfoundland between 6:30 a.m. and 7 a.m.
with four fishermen onboard. Three of the men were from a single family. The
fourth was a family friend. All were from Shea Heights, a tight-knit community
within the city limits of St. John’s. As the men hauled their nets that
morning, winds increased to approximately 30-32 knots (56-60 kilometres per
hour) along with seas of two metres (six feet). It appears the ...
