Fishermen’s Co-ops in Atlantic Canada

by Sandra Dinsmore



The story of Canada’s first co-operative, which became a model for many others, serves to illustrate how co-operatives all over Atlantic Canada changed the lives of fishermen and their families after years of poverty and being exploited. Boats and fish houses are often in well protected coves on PEI. Fishermen's Voice Photo

 

The provinces, islands, and regions of Nova Scotia (NS), New Brunswick (NB), Prince Edward Island (PEI), Newfoundland-Labrador (NL), and the Magdalene Islands make up Atlantic Canada. The poverty of its fishing villages in the early 1900s must have been much like that suffered by the Washington County islanders in Dean Lunt’s, Hauling By Hand, or by Southerners in Appalachia who, according to a folk song, “owed their souls to the company store.”

Several decades of recession left few fishermen in Atlantic Canada who owned their own boats. Most rented both boat and gear from the private companies to whom they sold their catches at prices set by the companies, which also owned the company stores that advanced credit in the form of currency refundable only there. A barter system prevailed leaving fishermen with no bargaining power. Nova Scotia, according to a 1945 History of the United Maritime Fishermen, had 11 steam trawlers. One trawler could land more fish in a single day than one of Nova Scotia’s then 35,000 in-shore fishermen could land in a year. Poverty and deprivation left fishermen and their families with barely enough to eat. Banks automatically refused fishermen credit.

The story of Canada’s first co-operative, which became a model for many others serves to illustrate how co-operatives all over Atlantic Canada changed the lives of fishermen and their families after years of poverty and being exploited.

Desperate, seven fishermen from the rural village of Tignish at the northern tip of PEI banded together in 1920 and decided to change the status quo.

Ferdinand Gaudet (pronounced Goody), one of seven, taped his reminiscences in 1975. He started fishing in 1910/11 at 16 or 17 and said that in the early years companies paid by the season no matter the amount of fish caught. Later he got paid for half his catch, as the boat and gear he fished with belonged to the company he worked for. The best price he realized in those years was $2.50 for 100 pounds.

Every season, Gaudet lived at the shore for four months, boarding with a farmer paid by the company. These months together at the shore gave him and other fishermen an opportunity to talk with each other about the problems of the fishery. Their conversations proved instrumental in forming the idea of a fishermen’s union.

The fishermen went to a respected Tignish lawyer, Chester McCarthy, and asked his help, thinking that because he was knowledgeable about the fisheries, he could find a way for them to become a legal entity so they could get credit. But because Canada had no co-operative legislation at the time, in 1923, McCarthy formed the co-op under the Joint Stock Companies Act and named it Tignish Station #1 Fishermen’s Union of Prince Edward Island.

Fishermen’s Coop in Tignish, Prince Edward Island, 2009. Most lobstermen on PEI fish wood traps. Wire is available, but fishermen there don't like wire traps. The village of Tignish, remote, rural, and isolated from bigger centers, became in time a village of co-operatives and is known as such today. Fishermen's Voice Photo

 

Union members purchased supplies co-operatively and sold their catches to mainland companies. In that way they tripled their income from lobster, alone. But it wasn’t instant Easy Street. Far from it. Gaudet’s daughter, Angela, spoke of her father’s and the other member’s fear of being found out by the private companies for whom they still had to work. Union members still had to rent their gear and supplies from and sell their catches to the private companies. Although their incomes rose, union members were independent in spirit only. They held union meetings in secret and even had passwords to discourage spies from private companies discovering what they were doing.

When Union members tried to set up their own processing company, banks still refused to extend them credit. McCarthy offered to finance the company himself for a percentage of sales. The fishermen accepted his offer and opened Tignish Fisheries Company.

Two years and 22 more fishermen members later, McCarthy issued the first share certificates to the company’s 29 shareholders. Also in 1925, he was able to incorporate Tignish Station #1, making it Canada’s first fishermen’s union or co-operative, though it didn’t call itself a co-op until 1959, when the “Union” became Tignish Fisheries Co-operative Association, Ltd.
That same busy year, union members bought a lobster “factory” or processing building for $3,500 borrowed from McCarthy. Gaudet’s daughter Angela described the “factory” as being about the size of a 2-storey shed or barn. She said any older buildings she has seen had a loft for storage and she guessed the factory would have been no more than 1200 square feet. By 1926, according to the archives, the plant employed 28 women and 12 men, and paid a 7 percent dividend to members.

In 1937 those same fishermen who had started the fisheries co-op opened the Tignish Credit Union. In fact, the credit unions we have in Maine today were started by fishermen.

In 1959 the name Tignish Station #1 became Tignish Fisheries Co-operative Association Ltd. In 1975 the Tignish Cooperatives video project interviewed and tape-recorded 45 fishermen’s reminiscences. In 1995 the Tignish Fisheries Co-operative built its Royal Star Foods plant. The plant is a large state-of-the-art facility that processes various seafood products. According to Royal Star Foods Manager and Tignish Fisheries Co-op member Francis Morrissey, the co-op is 87 years old and has 178 members. He said it employs 300 people including Angela Gaudet, Royal Star’s Human Resources Manager, and is the largest co-op in PEI.

Although the first Canadian fishermen’s co-op was built by fishermen and a lawyer, one of two Roman Catholic priests who ministered to rural Atlantic Canadians, Father Moses Coady, was so impressed by what he saw at Tignish, he started many fishermen’s and other co-operatives based on the Tignish model. The other priest, Father James J. Tompkins, developed what became known as the Antigonish Movement.

Born of several decades of economic depression, the movement started in the 1920s at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. The university became involved with social and economic problems due to the zeal and inspiration of those two priests who had been sent to desperately poor rural hamlets. Through the development of co-ops of many kinds and adult education, they turned those poverty-stricken hamlets into productive villages. Because Father Tompkins started so many co-ops, Canadians consider him the founder of the Antigonish Movement, of adult education, and of credit unions. In fact, Canadians consider co-operatives Canadian.

Gerald Handrahan, one of those interviewed in 1975, said he felt, “The mood that led to the cooperative movement in Tignish was one of desperately seeking a way to be able to make a living on Prince Edward Island rather than going elsewhere.” He also stated that the co-operative movement “was spearheaded by the earlier Fishermen’s Union and the Tignish Fisheries Company as well as by the influence of the Antigonish movement.” He went to say, “Co-op study sessions taught people how to start their own businesses and how to get things for themselves.”

According to the video project, another original member interviewed, Joe Aime Arsenault, had been to the US where he had been involved with unions, was considered “the principal mover towards the Union,” and “was the first to discuss setting up a cooperative.”

In his interview. charter member Harold Cormier said he believed that without the union and Tignish Fisheries, the fishermen would still be in the same situation of getting only what buyers were willing to pay. They would still be without control and would be in debt to the private companies that would still set the shore price and not tell the fishermen until after they started fishing. Cormier described the company’s growth as evidenced by the buildings and equipment it had built and purchased. He stated that, like the two priests, Chester McCarthy helped organize 27 other unions on PEI.

The village of Tignish, remote, rural, and isolated from bigger centers, became in time a village of co-operatives and is known as such today.

To access the Tignish Cooperatives video projects, go to: http://www.archives.pe.ca/finding_aids/3010.pdf and to access the Tignish Fisheries Co-operative’s history, go to: royalstarfoods.com