Tag Archives: Port Union
From seafood to smokables – High hopes for a historic fishing town
Cannabis could be coming to the rescue of a Newfoundland fishing community that’s been without an economic centre since Hurricane Igor laid waste to the area in 2010. Port Union’s old Ocean Choice International fish plant could soon be used to plant marijuana. The disused building is in the final stages of a sale to local businessman Daniel Porter,,, Between 70 and 100 jobs are envisioned for the plant, with a business plan to produce about 10,000 kg of cannabis each year. Shelly Blackmore, mayor of Trinity Bay North, is excited about the possibilities. >click to read<18:06
‘This place was cod’
If you took a drive through Port Union in the 1980s, you would have had to slow down driving past the fish plant. In those days, over 1000 people worked at the plant — then owned by Fishery Products International (FPI) — and vehicles filled the plant parking lot and lined both sides of the road. With three shifts, working day and night, the plant was operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, processing cod fish landed by the FPI offshore trawlers. Back then the plant was operating almost 52 weeks of the year, with a 10-day shutdown during Christmas when the trawlers came in for the holidays. An estimated 1,400 workers in that area alone were directly affected by the closure of the cod fishery in 1992. Darryl Johnson was one of them. click here to read the story 12:03
