If you were a sport fisherman in the Comox Valley before the 1990’s, you know how good the fishing in the Strait of Georgia used to be. Chinook, Coho, and Pink were plentiful, though Tyee [30 pounds plus Chinook] had already been declining in our waters for several years. But even then we heard tales…
Category: Historical Comparisons
Emily Carr’s Blunden Harbour
This is the south east view of Kwakwaka’wakw the Village of Ba’a’s (Blunden Harbour) in 1901. Vancouver Art Gallery, all rights reserved Emily Carr used this photograph taken by Charles Frederick Newcombe in 1901 as a template for her famous painting. Almost nothing of the buildings and totems at Blunden Harbour survives today. Blunden…
Fishermen find Utopia in Nootka Sound
Tales of Tyee and the abundance of life that was Nootka Sound before the turn of the century
A rerun of the East Coast cod disaster
There are few internet resources as good as YouTube to forcibly remind you of a historical event which is relevant to today. In 1992, the Canadian fisheries minister, John Crosby, angrily reminded protesting cod fisherman in Newfoundland that “I didn’t take the fish from the [expletive] water.” A pretty dramatic moment, still available on YouTube….
Fish Farms and Complete Ecosystems
In the 1980’s, there was a battle over fish farms, and there was — and still is — a massive backlash to open ocean fish farms from indigenous peoples , local residents, fisherman who still had jobs, many scientists, and, a name every BC citizen needs to know — Alexandra Morton — conducting her own…