Vol. 40, No. 1

One year they went down in the ’30s and they didn’t find fish until they got way up north. Well, down north as we say, hey. On their way back they found some fish down around Makkovik or Hopedale or somewhere like that. They got a bit of fish to bring home. And as I remember, that was the fall that Dad decided to stay down there. Of course, he met Mom, and that was it. – Sam Lambert, “My Mom Came from Labrador”

“Our best price that I can remember back at that time was during the war. Of course, there was a shortage of food all over the world everywhere and the price of fish went up. We went from salt fish dried and shipped at $1.75 a quintal. Overnight almost, it went to $10 a quintal. That was a good bit of money then. To outfit a family of five or six people at that time, enough groceries and other things you’d need from October to June, because we were cut off during the winter months, you could probably do that for a hundred bucks. So $10 a quintal was a fortune. But anyhow, that only lasted for a short time until the war was over.” – Chesley Lethbridge, “From Fisherman to Fisheries Officer”

“One of the first jobs you got was to prong the fish out of the boat to the stage head with what looked like a giant fork. They would strictly tell you to only prong them in the heads, not the bellies. Some of the fish was so heavy, you were barely able to do it, occasionally losing one overboard, which you quickly got before anyone seen.” – William Larkham, Jr. “The Way it Was in William’s Harbour”