John Graves Simcoe, the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada (present-day Ontario), arrived in 1791, he was accompanied by his wife, Elizabeth Graves Simcoe, who was an artist and also kept a diary rich in the details of everyday life. There were dozens of diary entries describing the fish to be found in Upper Canada, such as this one on April 6, 1793: “St. Denis of the 5th caught yesterday at Niagara, 500 whitefish and 40 sturgeon; this is common sturgeon, one nearly 6 foot long.”[10]
Settlers often chose to build their homes beside water, both for ease of travel and for the number of fish that could be speared, netted, trapped, or caught with a baited line. Newcomers continued to be amazed at what they found:
I think I may assert, without fear of contradiction, that the angling in Canada is the finest in the world. Many thousands of trout streams and hundreds of salmon rivers discharge their waters into the gulf and river St. Lawrence. From Lake Ontario down to the straits of Belle-Isle, a distance of nearly 2,000 miles; on each shore of the river there is hardly a mile of coast-line without a river or stream. Thousands and thousands of lakes, all of which hold trout, lie hidden in the forest; in the majority of them perhaps a fly has never been cast. Trout fishing is open to everyone … and such salmon fishing![11]
By the middle of the nineteenth century, settlers spread across the country and the fishing industry on the East Coast steadily expanded as demand for cod grew not only in Canada but in the West Indies and South America. The fishing schooners, both from Canada and abroad, now carried dories, small seaworthy craft equipped with a sail and two sets of oars for the crew of two men. The dories left the schooners at daybreak to set long lines of hooks baited with herring, squid, capelin, or salted clams. They made four trips out to the trawl, or longline, each day to check the gear. This endless round of baiting, setting, and hauling trawl ended in the evening when the “dressing” of the cod began. Each fish was gutted, beheaded, split (backbone removed), washed, and placed in the hold, where it was packed in salt. This chore ended about midnight. Then the men slept until 3:30 a.m. when they began the next day’s fishing. The schooners were often out on the Grand Banks for three months, and when they returned, the catch was given to “fish makers,” who washed the coarse salt from the cod and spread it to dry in the sun on racks covered with spruce boughs, known as “flakes.” For three weeks the fish was watched so that it would not get wet in the rain or sunburned. When it was hard-dried, it was ready to be packaged in barrels or boxes for shipment to markets at home or abroad.
As we follow the cod from the water to the kitchen to the dinner table, we find the ingenious recipes developed by enterprising cooks over the centuries that used virtually every part of the fish: Fried Cod Roe, Fried or Baked Cod Tongues, Stewed or Fried Cods’ Heads, Fish Hash (made from fresh or salt codfish), Codfish Balls, Cod Sounds (membrane lying along the backbone, first simmered in water, then baked in a casserole with onions, grated cheese, and thin strips of salt pork), Toast and Fish, Roasted Scrawd (small cod culled from the catch), Fish and Brewis, Salt Fish and Potatoes, Boiled Rounders (small codfish with soundbone intact), and many more![12] Codfish was, and is, traditionally served with potatoes, turnips, parsnips, onions, carrots, cabbage, rashers of salt pork or pork scruncheons, and drawn butter.
Drying codfish in the traditional manner at Village Historique Acadien at Caraquet in New Brunswick.
An old Newfoundland custom continues to recognize the importance of cod and other seafood. In many Newfoundland homes, even into the twenty-first century, the celebration of Christmas begins on Christmas Eve with a thanksgiving meal of Salt Fish or Cod Sounds followed by sweet raisin bread called Christmas Fruit Loaf. In this way, fishing is recognized as the main means of livelihood and, as a result, fish has its place in thanksgiving before the day of feasting.
In the 1828–1830 season, the government of Nova Scotia offered bounties on the tonnage and “Merchantable”quality (i.e., that suitable for European and South American markets) of dried cod. These bounties were designed to encourage the outfitting of vessels in Nova Scotia for employment in the cod industry and to capitalize locally on the resources.
This rich resource eventually became the major industry in Atlantic Canada, encompassing not only fishing but everything needed to support it. The latter included the building of fishing schooners like the famous Bluenose, launched in Lunenburg in 1921. After a season of fishing in the Grand Banks, the Bluenose won the International Fisherman’s Trophy and kept winning it for twenty-one years as the fastest sailing vessel in the world. The Bluenose is still honoured on Canada’s dime. The Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, pays tribute to this rich harvest from Canada’s eastern seaboard.
Giovanni Caboto did not find the rich spices he sought, but instead discovered a far more valuable resource that over hundreds (and probably thousands) of years has sustained the First Nations, newcomers to Canada, and the tables of the hungry around the world.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Come Then, Chefs, Cooks, and Boys — All You Who Make Good Cheer”
TWO TINY VESSELS ROUNDED THE SOUTHERN END of Acadia (now Nova Scotia) on an early summer day in 1604. On one of the crafts was Samuel de Champlain; Sieur de Monts, the leader of the expedition, was on board the other. De Monts had a commission from King Henri IV of France as governor of La Cadia (the land stretching from today’s Philadelphia to Newfoundland) to “establish the name, power and authority of the King of France throughout the new territory,” to bring the Natives to Christ, and most significantly, to “people, cultivate and settle the said lands.”[1] He was now searching for the ideal location to build his first habitation. Tragically, he chose Île Sainte-Croix (now Dochet Island) at the mouth of the St. Croix River, for in the months ahead it was to become the last resting place of nearly half (thirty-five) of his total company of seventy-nine men.
Despite their preparations for winter, the members of the party were so cut off from the mainland by huge cakes of ice that it was impossible to procure fresh water and fuel. They had cut down most of the trees on the island to build their log structures, not realizing how valuable they would be as a windbreak and as fuel in the months ahead. As a result, they were forced to eat their food cold and to dole out their frozen cider by the pound. Starvation, cold, and the “dreaded disease” that we now know to be scurvy had taken their toll by spring.
In July those who survived, including Champlain, moved to the mainland and took many of their buildings with them. They called the new habitation Port Royal in honour of their king. Champlain’s sketches show a larger settlement than before, with several sleeping quarters, a storeroom with a cellar (one hopes to keep their cider from freezing), a kitchen, a bakeshop with an oven, and gardens surrounded with a reservoir of water filled with trout. They had gathered some quick vegetable crops from the fertile meadows, and small game abounded: geese, ducks, partridge, and plenty of rabbits and hares. A single musket shot once brought down twenty-eight plover.[2] Despite these improvements and a more adequate supply of food, twelve more men died over the winter of 1605–06.
Champlain did not appear to know what ailment afflicted his men, or that nearly seventy years before when Jacques Cartier spent the winter with the Natives at Stadacona (present-day Quebec City), many members of his crew nearly perished with scurvy. They learned from the First Nations how to make a medicine by boiling the leaves and bark of the white spruce. In eight days they used a whole tree. “Had all the doctors of Louvain and Montpellier been there, with all the drugs of Alexander,” wrote Cartier, “they could not have done so much in a year as did this tree in eight days.”[3]
The First Nations used many native plants and trees, including the seed pods of the wild rose, to prevent and cure scurvy.
The
