New Friends and Fish
It is now over a week since we left Goose Cove. There is so much on my mind about the very small town on the north shore of Hare Bay, it is difficult to organize it all for you to read.
Within minutes of our arrival we have met many of the Murrin family from the house closest to the wharf. The family, now more than 90 members, consisted of 11 children. Their names are all inscribed on a small hand-painted plaque at the corner of the house, now 90 years old. Many come from away for short stints over the summer. There seems to be about a dozen visiting now, some siblings, children and grandchildren. Felix is the first we meet when he comes to the cutting table on the wharf to clean today’s catch of cod.
The small, green and white salt box house, lovingly preserved, has six bedrooms upstairs. The family lived without electricity and running water.
Eddie Murrin is the next to pay us a visit. He is a cousin of the Felix Murrin family and also the gentleman who relayed the text to us, telling us his other cousin Wade was coming to help rescue our dinghy. (All seems a bit confusing but after a day, we had the relationships all sorted out.)
Eddie owns the larger grey house with the picket fence porch on two sides. He told us it was built 130 years ago by his grandfather.
He has given me permission to share the following with you. I believe it gives a very similar picture to the other family histories we have either read about or heard directly from others we have met:
“Our family was small compared to most. Just four children. Much smaller than most families. Cousin Wade, there were eleven and cousin Felix there were also eleven.
My father was a very hard working fisherman. There were three brothers who fished together. They had a sawmill and did saw lumber for a number of years and after almost every year, they would build a new boat. They would harvest the timber and plank and would saw it with their own sawmill and designed their own boats.
We had a milking cow, four sheep, twelve hens and raised a pig to harvest in the fall and maybe about eight sled dogs that were used for transportation and to harvest firewood. All had to be fed everyday.”
I asked Eddie about the root cellar we walked past, behind the Murrin houses.
“The cellar was used to store vegetables that were grown during the summer/autumn. It is about 100 years old. Concrete walls and roof and insulated with sod.”
Somewhere in the many conversations we had over our visit, it is mentioned that Eddie’s cousin baked eight loves of bread twice every day!
We had the opportunity to “tour” Eddie’s home on an evening when he invited us for a visit with him and his friend, Kathy. We spent four hours sitting in what was once the kitchen, and probably the hub of the home. The large wood cook stove has now been replaced with a wood stove for heat.
The many bedrooms were small and one has been replaced with a modern bathroom. The now-modern kitchen sits beside the dining-room which is where the priest would eat, alone, when he visited a couple of times per year. He also got a bedroom to himself, so the sisters would have to share space for the night.
Wade comes to the little gathering but we are sorry to hear his wife, Annie will not be joining us. We were in Goose Cove for five days and never saw her once.
Annie works at the fish plant in St. Anthony and due to various circumstances is working 70-80 hours per week. We hear on CBC about the situation with the late start to the crab fishery, backing up to the mackerel and cod fisheries so the workers have been going for seventy days without a day off.
This is not an opinion page so I won’t dabble in the business and politics of the commercial fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador, but there is a story there.
We watched the many fishers go out early in the morning and return with their boats full. Those fish have to be gutted while your boat is still in the water. Cleaning cannot happen on the wharf. (This we do appreciate!) After resetting their nets, they often return to the wharf with a second load and repeat the process.
The fish then has to be boxed and delivered to St. Anthony where the fishermen wait their turn to have their catch received at the plant.
The “food fishery” is for personal use. One can catch five cod per day, a total of fifteen per boat. This can only be Saturday to Monday from July 1 to Sept 4 and again from September 23 to October 1. Wade hasn’t started his personal fishing yet. Some prefer to wait until later in the season when the cod is not as a “watery”or as “thick”. (Most seem to go as often as permitted and to catch as much as allowed. We have seen the winter supplies in a few freezers!)
Speaking with one of the sons-in-law from the Felix Murrin family, we hear of all the ways they will preserve and prepare the hundreds of cod they will catch in a season for their personal use. Some still dry and salt the flattened cod. Some cod is frozen whole and prepared later and others are filleted with the skin removed and eaten fresh, deep fried with scruncheons. (Bits of pork fat) This gentleman thinks the best part is the “britches” - the ovaries, containing the roe. None is wasted with the tongues and cheeks being favoured and served in many restaurants.
Watching these men and women catch, clean and preserve fish speaks to me about traditions and how it isn’t just the fish being preserved. Generations of fishers have been following the same processes for hundreds of years.