Will Reviving the Cod Industry Doom It Yet Again?
It’s been thirty-two years since the federal government first closed the northern cod fishery. It was historically the colony’s main trade for centuries, but that changed, nearly overnight, in 1992, after a press conference at the downtown Radisson Hotel in St. John’s, when then federal fisheries and oceans minister John Crosbie announced a complete halt. Fishery workers would be compensated for ten weeks, at the rate of $225 a week, and then go on employment insurance. The meagre amounts were seen as an insult to the workers whose labour was responsible for a $700 million per year industry (almost $1.35 billion in 2024 terms)—and who recognized, in the mass layoff, the spectre of their culture on the brink of extinction. Of course, fishery workers weren’t the only people who would suffer from the shuttering. With fishing boats now idle, fuel sales dropped. Schools amalgamated across communities as young families moved elsewhere and school districts struggled to fill classrooms. Those of us who lived through it will remember how local businesses offering small luxuries—restaurants and cafeterias, hair salons, cinemas—all felt the sting of a laid-off workforce. more, >>CLICK TO READ<< 07:48
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