Mark Ferguson, Heritage & Fisheries Research

Significant research is under way in Newfoundland focusing on one of the key determinants that has shaped half a millennium of Newfoundland and Labrador's heritage, this place's people, their ways of life, their culture and their very modes of expression.  I refer to the central activity of the Island and coast of Labrador: the salt fishery, and in this case, namely the processing of cod-fish on land.  Dr. Gerald Pocius of the Centre for Material Culture Studies (CMCS) at Memorial University is in the midst of a long-term SSHRC-funded study of Newfoundland's salt fisheries architecture. The broad-ranging research initiative has involved fieldwork, archival research, and oral historical interviewing (tapes housed at Memorial's Folklore and Language Archives), and a number of folklorists and vernacular architecture specialists, including Bob St. George and myself, have taken part at different times.

As a result of over six years of labour, a  significant collection of materials, primary and secondary, on the Newfoundland and medieval European salt fisheries has been established.   Manuscript highlights include a remarkable gathering together of images (historical photographs, illustrations, maps, etc.,) depicting the architecture and occupational folklife of an all too neglected, rich, diverse heritage.  The image and cartographic collections of the Provincial Archives (PANL) and the National Archives of Canada (NAC) and the Department of Canadian Heritage have been combed and the best of their collections combined in various forms at CMCS.

Spectacular examples include: the NAC's Miot photographs taken on the Northern Peninsula in the mid-nineteenth century; Cloué's French Hydrographic Charts of the same "Petit Nord" fishing stations (housed at PANL);  and a complete copy of the New World material (ca. 1775) in Duhamel Du Monceau's Traité Général des Pesches, et histoire des poissons qu'elles fournissent tant pour subsistence des hommes.  A number of fascinating seventeenth to twentieth century Newfoundland textual, manuscript, and cartographic depictions of fishing rooms and salt fish work from PANL, the Maritime History Archives, the Centre for Newfoundland Studies, and the Battle Harbour Historic Trust have also been pulled together.  The material culture inventory of the Battle Harbour site (as described and indexed by Dr. Peter Pope) is available, as are selected and extensive transcripts from theNewfoundland Commission of Enquiry Investigating the Seafisheries, 1937.

Another photographic gem is a very large and thoroughly indexed collection of salt fish architecture photographs and glass plate negatives from PANL, many of which have been Xeroxed, a good many of which have been scanned, and/or reproduced in other ways.  The CMCS and PANL are working together to create a searchable database of these images and a web site of the best of them for PANL.

Fieldwork and field recordings are equally if not more central to the research.  Many hours of tape, dozens of rolls of film, and architectural plans have been created from a number of  locales on the east coast of the Island.  Various field trips were made to Fogo Island (which has a remarkably high retention of stages), and to the Baie Verte peninsula (to look for remnants of the nineteenth century French Shore fishing stations and activity).

The Fogo Island research (in collaboration with local fishermen and women) has led to the development  of a detailed map of the fishing stages of Joe Batt's Arm circa 1920-50, based on an existing topographic chart, oral histories and local memories of fishing activities.  As well, two trips to Little Fogo Islands in conjunction with interviews yielded excellent results: some great fishing and salting stages and material culture of both summer and year-round habitation. The trip to the Baie Verte Peninsula, although preliminary, turned up a surprising amount of good physical evidence and oral history of the French fishing stations, flakes, fish-making techniques and activities.  This region along with the Northern Peninsula are great candidates for continued and intensified research.

At present, Dr. Pocius and myself are making good use of many of the materials we have gathered for lecturing, presentations, and short papers.  Down the road, it is hoped that a thorough analysis will emerge, either in a collection of amply illustrated research essays and/or a longer monograph on the fisheries architecture and fish making of Newfoundland and Labrador.  As noted, in collaboration with PANL, we are developing a digitization project utilizing the rich collection of salt-fishing images housed in the Provincial Archives.  This will hopefully lead to an improved index, a computer database of images, a Web site and finally "virtual" and actual exhibits of the images -- potentially slated for the Queen's College Great Hall exhibit space and/or touring around the province and the country.

Let me conclude this summation of this valuable project on a melancholy note and with what I can only describe as a plea.  The work that we have just barely begun desperately needs continuing.  As I write, I think on four fine men and women who have sadly passed away in the last half-year.  I had the privilege of working with them and I called them friends.  As their memories disappear along with those of so many thousands of Newfoundland and Labrador men and women who lived through the last decades of the salt fisheries, we are losing a remarkable cultural storehouse and a tremendous heritage resource -- the knowledge of the absolutely unique Newfoundland world of salt fishing communities, work and lives.  Just as the architectural signs of that way of life -- the stages and flakes and stores -- have all but disappeared (with little notice and almost no systematic effort to either preserve or record them), we now face in the coming decade the disappearance of the last remnants of that world's intangible tokens -- the memories and stories of the fishing people who lived the first half of this century.  Let this modest article serve as a warning call for action THAT MUST BE TAKEN IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS: with the 1999 Jubilee and 2000 millennial celebrations  fast approaching, two great opportunities for such action present themselves.  Let us honour and preserve the Newfoundland salt fisheries and the memories of the people who lived them as fully as we still can in these our last years of knowing.

If you have ideas or information on these photographs, please contact Mark Ferguson, Heritage & Fisheries Research, by phone at 709-753-4352 or through E-mail at ferguson@plato.ucs.mun.ca