Above: Members of the Canadian Armed Forces respond to Newfoundland and Labrador’s request for assistance with relief efforts during Operation LENTUS, in the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona that took place on September 24, 2022. Photo courtesy of Department of National Defence.
Many Atlantic Canadian Fishing Communities Unsure of What Comes After Fiona
A war zone.
That’s how some residents described the devastation at various coastal locations after post-tropical storm Fiona devastated several regions of Atlantic Canada on September 24.
After making landfall in Guysborough County around 3 a.m., Fiona tore through multiple provinces with sustained wind speeds exceeding 130 km/h. More than 100 millimetres of rain pelted Nova Scotia, with as much as 150mm affecting the Truro area. Storm surges flooded much of the Atlantic coastal area. In Port aux Basques, Newfoundland and Labrador, several dozen homes were destroyed or damaged and nearly 200 people were displaced.
Given their relationship with the sea, some fishermen and their enterprises were severely impacted by Fiona. At Cribbons Point Wharf, near Antigonish, the damage to buildings and boats was substantial.
“We had significant damage at our wharf. Not necessarily the wharf infrastructure itself, but we had two gear sheds that 13 of us used for gear storage. The roofs are completely gone from them,” said Jamie Stewart, president of the Gulf Nova Scotia Bonafide Fishermen’s Association. “The gear sheds are at the top of a hill and all the boats that were at the wharf at the bottom of the hill were severely damaged.”
According to Gordon Beaton, president of the local Maritime Fishermen’s Union (MFU) chapter, the road ahead for these harvesters will likely to be a long one. Contractors are already stretched thin and are set to be more in demand than ever given the amount of property damage in the province. Many harvesters are hoping they can recover what’s been lost by the middle of the spring or early summer at the latest.
“I’m not sure how those kinds of facilities are going to be rebuilt in any timely manner,” said Beaton. “Most boat shops and repair shops are booking people two to three years in advance. So, when you have that kind of damage to a vessel that may make it inoperable as a fishing boat until its fixed… it might be a struggle for some of those guys, too.”
Jason Spingle, secretary treasurer of the Fish, Food and Allied Workers Union (FFAW-UNIFOR), says the situation for harvesters on the southwest coast of Newfoundland is dire for many. Beyond their communities being ravaged by the storm, many have lost boats, fishing stages, gear and the use of their community’s public wharves.
“Everyone’s pretty devastated,” said Spingle. “They can’t even imagine that they would have witnessed what they did.”
Spingle says harvesters are going to have to look to the future now, especially if storms like Fiona are to become more common. He says that preventative measures are going to need to be taken to mitigate future losses to the fishing industry in the coming years.
“One harvester had a great point. He moved his boat, luckily, from the southwest coast to Codroy and they didn’t receive the same type of sea at all,” said Spingle. “The tides rose, but his boat was safe up there. But had he left it in Margaree, where he’s from, he probably would have lost his boat. He said a new wharf needs to be several feet higher. Because in this situation here, the Small Craft Harbours wharf that he ties his boat up to was covered, and she would have broken free.”
Many in Newfoundland, fishermen included, are reassessing their lives after the storm took so much from them. Without some sort of financial assistance, a lot of enterprises might have to take stock of whether continuing to operate is feasible.
“You’ve got people, they’re going to look at making life decisions now in terms of losing all their stages, all their gear. What are they going to do for the future?” said Spingle. “They’re going to need help.”
Harvesters in New Brunswick, while not seeing as much infrastructure damage as some areas of Atlantic Canada, are concerned about the state of the ongoing lobster fishery, according to Maritime Fishermen’s Union fisheries advisor Luc LeBlanc.
“The thing that’s a little bit worrisome, there’s reports of small lobster having washed up ashore. So, we’re a little bit worried that the storm might have had an effect on the stocks,” said LeBlanc. “In southeastern New Brunswick on multiple beaches, we know that there’s at the very least there’s several thousand pounds of lobster that would have washed up there.”
Meanwhile in Prince Edward Island, Fiona left a wake of destruction across much of the province, with massive coastal erosion, property damage and the loss of natural landmarks such as The Teacup in Thunder Cove. According to Bob Doucette, a fisherman and owner of Bob’s Deep Sea Fishing tours based out of North Rustico, damage to fishing infrastructure was extensive.
“Boats and that weren’t damaged, but wharfs and other structures were total write-offs from the look of it,” said Doucette. “In North Rustico, we have extreme damage, but some other harbours like Sandy Bridge up the shore a little ways and Cove Head just down the shore a little ways, they had a lot more damage than us down that way and up that way than us.”
While the residents of these ravaged areas try to put their lives back together, some are starting to rally behind them to provide aid. The Canadian Independent Fish Harvesters Federation, an advocacy group that represents seafood harvester associations and unions from Atlantic Canada, Québec and British Columbia, has called on the government to provide relief to the fishing industry.
“We’ve had a lot of damage to infrastructure. And Small Craft Harbours, they have storm damage money set aside, but certainly we know it will be nothing in the grand scheme of things as they start to take stock of what’s happened,” said Melanie Sonnenberg, president of the Canadian Independent Fish Harvesters Federation.
“We’re just looking for that all-party support, for the politicians to work together to find some resolutions quickly and to get money into people’s hands so that they can start to replace boats, gear, sheds. Some people lost everything that they had.”
Harvesters like Stewart are in the same line of thinking as the Federation, and hope that a form of relief funding from the provincial or federal level will help get people back to work as soon as possible.
“We’ll just have to see what the feds or the province does. Worst case scenario we have to pay for it ourselves,” said Stewart.
