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In the 1950s and 1960s, Aboriginal gillnet fishers protested new state salmon regulations restricting access to the industrial fishery of the Nass and Skeena Rivers in northern British Columbia. Using cannery records, as well as letters, petitions, and statements native people made to the Department of Fisheries, this article examines both the protests and the impact of the regulations that the state introduced in a time of massive structural, economic, technological, and ecological change in the northern fishery. The native fishers' letters suggest that both their Aboriginal heritage and work-centered, class-based identities were shaping their opposition to the state. Those leading the protests were active in other areas of native politics, but also strongly identified as gillnetters, small-boat fishers in an increasingly stratified and competitive fishery. Moreover, native fishers in British Columbia had had a long history of labour activism and organization. This article suggests that understanding the ways these Aboriginal groups navigated between both the colonial and capitalist legacies can provide insights into native politics and experiences in this period.
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In the years following World War II, the Newfoundland fishing economy was transformed from a predominantly inshore, household-based, saltfish-producing enterprise into an industrialized economy dominated by vertically-integrated frozen fish companies. The state played a critical role in fostering this transformation, and one aspect of its involvement was the creation of a "modern" fisheries workforce. Although women's labour had historically been an integral part of the inshore fishery, state planners assumed that women would withdraw from direct involvement in economic activities. Indeed, the male bread-winner model, the dominant gender ideology of western culture (but not of Newfoundland outport culture at the time), was embedded in state economic policies for the Newfoundland fishery in the post-World War II period. Training men to become more efficient, technologically-trained harvesters and offshore trawler workers became central concerns. Although the attempts to recruit young men as trawler crews were not entirely successful, this and the other examples of the government's mediating role helps illustrate the complexity of economy, state and gender ideology, all involved in the construction of a new fisheries workforce.
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In the early 1990s, the northern cod populations off the coast of Newfoundland had become so depleted that the federal government placed a moratorium on commercial fishing. The impact was devastating, both for Newfoundland's economy and for local fishing communities. Today, although this natural resource exploited commercially for over 500 years appears to be returning in diminished numbers, many fisheries scientists and fishers question whether the cod will ever return to its former abundance. In A Fishery for Modern Times, Miriam Wright argues that the recent troubles in the fishery can be more fully understood by examining the rise of the industrial fishery in the mid-twentieth century. The introduction of new harvesting technologies and the emergence of 'quick freezing', in the late 1930s, eventually supplanted household production by Newfoundland's fishing families. While the new technologies increased the amount of fish caught in the northwest Atlantic, Wright argues that the state played a critical role in fostering and financing the industrial frozen fish sector. Many bureaucrats and politicians, including Newfoundland's premier, Joseph Smallwood, believed that making the Newfoundland fishery 'modern', with centralization, technology, and expertise, would transform rural society, solving deep-seated economic and social problems. A Fishery for Modern Times examines the ways in which the state, ideologies of development, and political, economic, and social factors, along with political actors and fishing company owners, contributed to the expansion of the industrial fishery from the 1930s through the 1960s. While the promised prosperity never fully materialized, the continuing reliance on approaches favouring high-tech, big capital solutions put increasing pressure on cod populations in the years that followed. As Wright concludes, 'We can no longer afford to view the fisheries resources as 'property' of the state and industry, to do with it as they choose. That path had led only to devastation of the resource, economic instability, and great social upheaval." --Publisher's description
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