Tag Archives: story of the first lobster canning operation

Paul Sparkes: Other species

Lobsters in the hundreds of thousands were hooked, trapped and dragged ashore at Pool’s Island, Bonavista Bay, in the 1870s. Overnight it seemed that everyone was a lobster-fisherman and everyone made money. The story of the first lobster canning operation there is told by our legendary Capt. Abram Kean in less than a page in his 218-page book of life, politics, seal hunts and fisheries. In character, he ends up his little report on the boom and bust lobster experience by blaming the government for its lack of hands-on control. “Seventy years ago,” Kean wrote in 1935, “the canning of lobster was unknown in Newfoundland. The first indication we would get of lobsters would be in April in seal nets. After eating all we wanted for food, the rest would be given to pigs … about sixty or sixty-five years ago people commenced canning lobsters in Bonavista Bay.”  Canned Caplin?? Canned Squid?? click here to read the story 09:38