Gone, Fishing? |
There’s no doubt that fishing runs in my family. My ancestors were fishermen, the Swampy Cree who lived near the northern tip of Lake Winnipeg. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, Europeans arrived in northern Manitoba and mingled with local natives. Many of these settlers were of Scottish-Viking descent, from the rugged Shetland Islands just off the coast of northern Scotland. They too were fishermen.
by Wayne Arthurson
Even today, some of my uncles and cousins continue the longstanding family tradition, working as commercial fishermen. They climb into their aluminum Lund boats during the open water months on Lake Winnipeg and head out onto the ice to “drill” for whitefish during the frozen expanse of a Manitoba winter. So far I’ve ignored the fishing propensity in my DNA, but if I ever decide to follow my genes, is there an industry in Alberta for me?
The answer is yes. Alberta does have a commercial freshwater fishing industry, but it is very small. Compared to the province’s billion-dollar beef business, or to Canada’s $2 billion-plus fishery and an aquaculture sector alone worth more than $500 million, the commercial fishery in Alberta is, for lack of a better term, a small fry.
Canadian freshwater fish sales totaled $60.3 million in 2003/2004, with Alberta providing a little less than 10% of that figure, according to Canada’s Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation (FFMC), a 36-year-old Crown corporation that buys, processes and markets freshwater fish from Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, the Northwest Territories and parts of northwestern Ontario. “Look at it this way,” says Doug Clayton, the FFMC’s Alberta manager. “Alberta has about 1,000 lakes, about 80 or so that we actually fish in. Saskatchewan has over 9,000 lakes. Manitoba has over 100,000 lakes. That’s a lot of fish coming out of Manitoba.”
Alberta’s commercial fishery may be small, but there are more than 200 commercial fishermen in the province who catch about 2.3 million kilograms every year out of 84 lakes. And since freshwater fishers in Canada were paid $34.9 million by the FFMC last fiscal year, they get a decent-sized piece of the pie. Individual earnings can reach up to $40,000, although there are no yearly guarantees.
In Alberta, the industry is strongest around Lesser Slave Lake and Utikuma Lake a little further north. Combined, the lakes supply more than half of the province’s core whitefish catch. But there is also a strong fishery at Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca, and on the many small lakes and irrigation reservoirs scattered throughout southern Alberta. This past season, the average price for whitefish was $1.30 per kilogram, down slightly from previous years. Alberta also produces whitefish roe, or golden caviar, which is processed in a FFMC plant in Joussard and sold exclusively through brokers to cruise and ferry lines in the Baltics. Golden caviar is a value-added product, so a fishermen can make $7 to $8 a kilo on top of the price they receive for fish.
Most of the fish caught in Alberta is sold to the FFMC, which people in the industry simply call “the Corporation.” Using a series of fishing co-ops and small processing plants scattered throughout Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and northwestern Ontario, the Corporation operates like the Canadian Wheat Board. It purchases, processes and exports the majority of the freshwater fish caught in the system. Manitoba is the biggest supplier, with a little more than half of the country’s annual production. Canada’s primary commercial freshwater fish, whitefish, is sold mostly in the United States, where it is either further processed into fishcakes or sold into ethnic communities. Jewish centres along the eastern seaboard purchase whitefish, for instance, for Gefilte fish, a traditional dish. Other freshwater staples include walleye, pickerel and sucker.
Unlike the Canadian Wheat Board, the FFMC also allows fishermen to sell their fish outside the system. A fishermen can sell you fish fresh out of his boat, but only for your personal consumption. Only FFMC licensed brokers, such as Wayne Wood’s Fresh Fish in Edmonton, can resell the fish, either to restaurants or retail outlets. Fishermen can sell fish to restaurants or retail stores, but they need a special FFMC dealer license. To meet consumer demand, Wayne Wood’s buys fish directly from fishermen and from the FFMC.
The FFMC is where my family members sell most of their fish, as do about 80% of Alberta’s fishermen. “The point of Corporation was to stabilize the industry to offer prices at the start of the season so the fisherman could make decisions based on concrete numbers,” says Clayton. “In the old days, the fisherman would find out what they were getting for their fish after the fact, so it was difficult to do any planning.”
Curious whether I have what it takes to follow in my ancestors’ footsteps, I met with Brian Peters, executive director of the Alberta Commercial Fishermen’s Association. “The harvest of the industry, the actual catching of fish, is a throwback to very labour intensive practices that agriculture may have practiced 25, 40 or 50 years ago,” he says. “It’s very much hands-on. They set the nets with their hands, and even though they have power augers to drills holes in the ice in the winter, they still have to pull the nets out by hand. And they take the fish out individually, one at a time, by hand. These people work hard; they work as hard as anyone in any industry”
The job is more and more challenging these days. Andy Thompson has been a commercial fishermen for more than 40 years, learning the trade from his father who moved from southern Alberta to homestead near Lac La Biche. It’s not his primary source of income — Thompson also farms alfalfa seed ? but fishing is a key part of his identity. “Since we grew up on the lake, it was just natural thing to do, to fish,” he says. “But right now is the worse I’ve seen. They keep cutting those quotas and shortening the season, putting more restrictions on the lake like where you can fish, the depth you can fish. It’s just getting tougher and tougher.”
Commercial fishing seasons and quotas are set by the provincial government, with seasons varying widely from lake to lake. The 10- to 12-day season for the east end of Lesser Slave Lake is in the spring, for example, while the 15-day season for the west end of the lake is in October. Fisherman are also told how deep they can lower their nets, and how far offshore they have to be.
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