8.9 Canada’s Ocean Fisheries
Miriam Wright, Department of History, University of Windsor
Canada’s Atlantic and Pacific coast fisheries changed dramatically in the years after Confederation. Marine creatures, including fish, shellfish and marine mammals had sustained Aboriginal peoples on those coasts for thousands of years, and these same resources later attracted European settlers. In the 20th century, however, new technologies enabled people to catch far more fish. Fishing enterprises expanded and consolidated, changing the structure of the fishing industry and greatly affecting the lives of men and women who earned their living from fishing. These changes also affected fish, and by the end of the 20th century, many fish populations, including Atlantic cod and Pacific salmon, were severely depleted.
Historically, Atlantic cod was the predominant fishery on the Atlantic Coast. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, merchants outfitted wooden ships and engaged crews to fish for cod off the coasts of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. As well, families, supplied with credit from merchants, fished inshore with small boats — the men and boys catching the fish, and the women and girls curing the catch on shore. In the days before refrigeration, people salted the cod that went to markets in Europe, the Caribbean, and South America.
By the 1940s, advances in refrigeration and freezing technologies meant that fishing companies could sell fish fresh or quick-frozen to customers in North America. Soon, women who had previously cured fish on shore were working in fish plants owned by frozen fish companies. While many fishing people continued to use small boats (although now equipped with gas engines), the companies acquired large fishing trawlers that operated offshore. By the early 1970s, inshore fishing people, plant workers, and trawler crews in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia had unionized to secure fair wages and control over prices in an increasingly industrialized environment. Industrialization, however, also put pressure on the cod populations as Canadian trawlers were joined offshore by vessels from Europe. In 1992, after declining for decades, the cod populations were so weakened that the Canadian government declared a moratorium on fishing. Despite these protective measures, the Atlantic cod off the coast of Newfoundland have not recovered. Other fisheries including crab and shrimp have replaced cod as the most significant species in the region, but these new fisheries employ far fewer than the cod fishery once had.
Like the Atlantic coast fishery, Canada’s Pacific coast fishery was diverse, including salmon (the most important species by far), herring, and halibut. The rich salmon rivers of British Columbia, such as the Fraser and the Skeena, have provided sustenance for Aboriginal peoples for thousands of years. Thus, Aboriginal people were also among the first workers in the commercial fishery in the 19th century when non-Aboriginal people built