By Brian Lee
It used to be around here that if you were male and weren’t already heading north by July 1, then chances are you were a logger. Now, "up north" means the goldfields in northern BC but 20 years ago it stood for Port Hardy or Prince Rupert and it meant you were commercial salmon fishing. In the early ’90s the industry still had some swagger and Pender Harbour was a player. It was rare to wander around Port Hardy or Prince Rupert between openings and not bump into someone you knew. It was as if all of the men from your hometown had been snatched up and transplanted to another place where everyone had more money and drank a lot of booze. That’s not to say that there weren’t women on the fishboats. Daughters (and wives) were a welcome rarity on the grounds —and a boat with female cargo drew unusually close scrutiny. After a week on a boat with only male company and the ubiquitous Penthouse magazine to leaf through, most fishermen I knew came to appreciate even the most binoculared blur of the female form. Openings were cautiously spaced, meaning "weekends" could be up to four or five days long. Inevitably, the first night back in "Roopie" or "Puerto Vahardy" meant a blowout. Fuelled by the unlikely chance of charming a local lady, platoons of Aqua Velva-ed louts would scurry up the ramps each night to descend on the local bars. I don’t recall anyone meeting with much success in that arena -- it always seemed the liquor got to us before we got to them. Besides, the bars were often suspiciously empty of dance partners.
I worked on a fish packer so while my buddies had already delivered and were out on the town, we were usually waiting to off-load to a larger boat. News of the debauchery would filter back to me the next day with tales of fights and arrests or so and so getting separated from the herd and falling victim to one of the more predatory local women. The fishing equivalent of the walk of shame was returning to the wharf in the morning to catcalls from the older fishermen who were already lined up on either side of the finger sipping coffee and bullshitting. With plenty of time for all-day gossip sessions, there were very few secrets in the fishing fleet. But working on a packer meant we also stayed in port a day later than the rest of the fleet, which gave us a glimpse into the town’s secrets. As the gillnetters headed out for the next day’s opening, a small squad of tendermen (the unfortunate name for packer crews) headed up town. What we found was that this town with seemingly few young women was merely a town with women who wisely avoided the bars while the fleet was in. Even on a Sunday night, the bars would teem with locals and a bounty of beautiful and heretofore unseen girls. At first, we thought we’d stumbled upon Shangri-La, but it wasn’t the case. Without our rag-picking brethren we were dangerously outnumbered and easy targets for drunken locals with a hate on for fisherman. A couple days in town was all you needed anyway. It was nice to slink away to a quiet little crab bay to recover before the next opening. There were still cocktails at anchor but with less rum than Coke and things were more civilized. Sometimes we’d row ashore and have a fire or just sit rafted up feasting on halibut and crab. We knew people spent small fortunes searching for experiences like this but most of us would have preferred to be home swimming in Ruby Lake.Fishing was hard, dirty work that left me so exhausted that at times I’d hit the bunk without bothering to wash the scales and fish slime from my face. But if nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days, what’s left is a slice of BC’s history that I was lucky to be a part of. And I can’t think of anyone who experienced fishing’s last spurt of vigour who doesn’t feel the same way. Note: Future issues will be available for PDF download on the 15th of the month (July 15).
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