Farewell John Crosbie & a Way of Life

 Master Mariner -- David Blackwood

Therefore the land mourns,
   and all who live in it languish;
together with the wild animals
   and the birds of the air,
   even the fish of the sea are perishing.

Hosea 4:3

When I was sent to Newfoundland in 1980 as a newly ordained United Church minister I learned about what was at that time a declining inshore fishery in a day of factory trawlers. I served five preaching points, five communities where three had numerous men (it was all men) heading out in boats under twenty feet in length to catch several species, although lobster was the most lucrative. There had been a time when boats similar to those caught cod commercially, but federal and Newfoundland governments encouraged fishers to invest in expensive trawlers which were very lucrative but were clear-cutting the ocean floor and sucking up what was once considered an inexhaustible cod stock. 

Then the cod were all but gone, and both those governments shut down the fishery. A way of life ended as 35,000 fishermen and plant workers from over 400 coastal communities were thrown out of work. An while there has been some recovery in the nearly thirty years since the moratorium it will never be the same. This past September we spent three weeks on Change Islands, Newfoundland, adjacent to Fogo Island. The fish plant there and on Fogo were both processing cod but there will never be a large scale fishery again. In the communities I served there are only handful of people who derive a living from the sea today. 

I am reminiscing about this because the federal fisheries ministry at the time of the moratorium in 1992, John Crosbie, has died only days before his 89th birthday. This means that Crosbie was born in pre-Confederation Newfoundland and would have been well aware of the days when cod was king in the economy of the dominion, then province. Crosbie was feisty and funny and blunt to the point of being bellicose -- a true Newfoundlander. He was an extremely unpopular man when he announced the closing of the cod fishery, but it was a "shoot the messenger" situation. When confronted in one community he yelled, "I didn’t take the fish from the goddamn water, so don’t go abusing me.



It is so important to remember that the abundance God has created on this planet cannot be abused and exploited without consequence. The arrogance of humanity has its perils, and even places where conservation has been a priority are vulnerable. When we were in Iceland a couple of years ago the guide on a one-day tour bragged about their sustainable cod fishery and pointed out the failure of ours. But cod have been moving north from Iceland, creating a crisis in their industry as well. It is likely because climate change is warming their waters, and massive tourism to that island nation is a contributor. 

Well, rest in peace, John Crosbie.