Hook and thread systems make fish grow alive and without bruises. (Brett Favaro, Marine Institute)
John Williams would mean that the 1992 cod moratorium seems like it was yesterday.
But after losing his life and reinventing himself a few times, he has felt every one of the last 30 years.
Williams was one of 30,000 people who lost their jobs when the federal government stopped fishing for northern cod on July 2, 1992. It is a date that still evokes feelings of a solemn and desperate chapter of the history of Newfoundland and Labrador.
“It was a pretty sad time to know you weren’t going to go fishing anymore,” Williams said.
“At that time I had three children, and they had to feed, go to school and get dressed. It was tough.”
It doesn’t help Williams to be constantly reminded of his little role in history – to be the person who pushed former Fisheries Minister John Crosbie to utter some of his most famous words.
John Williams, on the left, has a heated exchange with Fisheries Minister John Crosbie on July 1, 1991 in Bay Bulls, leading to one of Crosbie’s most famous phrases. (CBC)
It was July 1, 1992 and Crosbie was celebrating Canada Day in Bay Bulls, a small fishing village near St. Louis. John’s, where no one was in the mood to celebrate.
Especially not with Crosbie, when they knew what was coming the next day. Earlier in the week, Crosbie had given the harvesters until July 2 to get the nets out of the water.
Things quickly went awry, as a large crowd of angry fishermen and plant workers frightened the minister non-stop. Crosbie came down from the stage and faced the crowd face to face. Williams approached, shouting his worries a few feet from Crosbie’s face.
“Don’t mistreat me!” Crosbie escaped Williams.
“I didn’t mistreat you!” Williams applauded.
“I haven’t caught the fish out of the damn water, so don’t get me wrong!” Crosbie replied.
John Williams is now retired from a career in offshore oil and gas. He still lives in the Bay Bulls. (Dan Arsenault / CBC)
Those words became central to John Crosbie’s political legacy. But they also followed John Williams for 30 years, often as a punchline, other times a painful reminder of what he lost.
Williams and the other protesters knew they were doomed. The fish had been getting smaller and harder to find for several years. They were mad, however, at the lack of communication and planning that left fishermen and plant workers in the dark.
Thirty years later, Williams is still angry about the abrupt transition to cod and the $ 225-a-week federal government relief payments.
“It’s the same as going to pick blueberries,” he said.
“She was an idiot.”
Loss of income, way of life is still felt today
After the moratorium, federal programs were formed to recycle workers to other fields and get them out of fishing. It worked for some, including Williams, who found a career in offshore oil and gas, but the programs met with resistance.
“What are they recycling us for?” Richard Clements, manager of the Petty Harbor fish plant, said in an interview in 1993. “I’m [almost] 50 years. Why are they retraining me? “
Richard Clements talks to a CBC reporter in 1993 about recycling for another career. (CBC)
The largest program, the Atlantics Groundfish Strategy (TAGS), ran out of funding in 1997, a year ahead of schedule. Ottawa expected 26,000 fish gatherers and plant workers to be eligible for the program, and they were left unprepared when 40,000 people showed up.
The Auditor General of Canada, Denis Desautel, published a scathing report in 1997, saying that the TAGS did not help people get out of the fishing industry and only managed to create a dependency on government aid. The money earmarked for the training was earmarked for income support payments due to the large number of applicants and their dire financial situation.
“He was desperate,” Clements says today. “Then Petty Harbor almost became a ghost town. There was no boat coming in and out. No one was working. It wasn’t a good feeling.”
Richard Clements is still a staple at Petty Harbor Pier and still spends the summer months processing fish. (Ryan Cooke / CBC)
Clements was lucky to find a job within his skill set. He went to work at Bidgood’s, a family-owned supermarket, and continues to make fish fillets to make a living at almost 80 years old.
Many fish gatherers changed species and found well-paid races fishing for crab or shrimp. Others were not so lucky and had to go looking for new opportunities.
About 10 percent of the province’s population left during the first decade after the moratorium.
Today, there are 58,000 fewer people in the province than in 1992.
Exchanging the past for a future
The moratorium sparked a heated debate over resettlement. Communities like Great Harbor Deep, located in an isolated pocket on the northern Newfoundland peninsula, were forced to ask themselves a difficult question: does it make sense to keep this city alive longer?
Work at Great Harbor Deep was hard to come by and the education was bleak. The children had to leave in 10th grade, crowding the ferry every September to go to school elsewhere, living away from their parents from the age of 15.
“Anyone who can see a future here, I think is joking, because I don’t see it here,” said resident Pamela Ropson, in a moratorium anniversary special in 1993.
Pamela Ropson and her daughter, Megan, are shown here in 1993 images. Ropson said he felt his hometown of Great Harbor Deep had no future after the cod moratorium a year earlier. (CBC)
During the interview he had a girl kneeling. He said he was afraid for his daughter’s future.
Ropson lost his job at the fish plant and was not eligible for programs like TAGS. He faced the devastating decision to go to welfare to feed his family. He was waiting for the province to offer residents a resettlement package and would vote to leave.
This vote came in 2002, when 98% of Great Harbor Deep’s 130 residents agreed to leave their homes behind.
MIRAR | Ryan Cooke traces three people whose lives were changed on July 2, 1992:
How NL lost much more than a fishing industry: reflecting on the cod moratorium, 30 years later
CBC’s Ryan Cooke tracks people trapped in the momentous closure of the Newfoundland cod fishery and discovers that the impacts went far beyond their livelihoods.
Seven more cities have been resettled since 1992, and the most recent was Little Bay Islands in 2019.
If there is a positive to the moratorium, Ropson said it was opportunities for children who would otherwise have followed in the unstable footsteps of their parents and grandparents.
“They had a great lifestyle growing up, but it just wasn’t feasible,” Ropson says today. “But he’ll always be home. Always.”
Pamela Ropson and her daughter Megan moved from Great Harbor Deep with the rest of their family in 2002 when the town was resettled. It was one of the places devastated by the cod moratorium 10 years earlier. (Submitted by Megan Ropson)
The baby in her lap grew up to be a social worker and now helps Labrador children with fetal alcohol syndrome. Looking at her today, Ropson knows she made the right decision by voting to resettle.
“I’m very proud of her,” Ropson says with tears in his eyes.
There is no return to sight
John Williams always knew the moratorium would not be short-lived, despite claims by Crosbie and other officials that it could be as short as two years. Williams spent seven weeks one summer in the early ’90s looking for cod and didn’t sell any. He felt that at least 10 years would pass.
Richard Clements says he also knew the industry was doomed long before 1992 and that he couldn’t hold his breath to return.
MIRAR | Since 2012, a documentary by Azzo Rezori on the legacy of the moratorium: Azzo Rezori examines the mythology of cod in Newfoundland and Labrador, 20 years after the moratorium
The future of northern cod remains bleak in Newfoundland and Labrador, with the latest assessments still well below the threshold for leaving the critical zone set by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans of Canada.
But if you ask Williams, Clements or Ropson, they will tell you that the loss of fish or money was not the biggest impact of the collapse of the cod fishery.
It was the death of a lifestyle.
“The kind of thing we tried to keep as traditions, [my daughter] he doesn’t know anything about it, ”Ropson said.
“Now we have a different kind of culture. It’s gone.”
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