Fishing At Grande Grave In The Early 1900s

Throughout the French regime, the Gaspé fishery was characterized by the seasonal migration of fishermen from France. The fishery became increasingly sedentary after 1760, as Jersey interests moved in and imposed their organizational structure on the industry. Jersey firms set up operations at Grand-Grave in this period, and features typical of the Jersey system were still visible there in the early 1900s. There is evidence that fishermen worked under differing conditions. All the fishing techniques were characteristic of coastal fishing, and the catching and processing methods belong to tradition that originated with the first Europeans who fished in Gaspé waters. Herring, sand lance and squid were the main bait species; the principal types of gear were the herring net, the sand lance seine, the jigger and the hand line; and the Gaspé boat, a type of sailing barge, was the main fishing vessel. The processing was done by company establishment and independent fishermen alike at the same time of the year, and traditional methods were used in both cases.

The collapse of the North Atlantic cod fishery in 1992 was one of the world's worst ecological disasters, and in 1995 Spanish and Canadian trawlers faced off over the dwindling supply of turbot. Where there used to be plenty, there is now virtually nothing; fishing communities that once survived (or even prospered) now face ruin.The twenty essays in How Deep is the Ocean? take a detailed look at the evolution of the Canadian east coast fishery. The book begins with aboriginal fishers before European contact; then it follows the European fishery through the days of sail, when boats could scarcely make headway through the teeming cod, to the diesel age, when electronic aids can find almost no cod. How Deep is the Ocean? covers the sociology of early fishing communities, the impact and significance of the credit system, and the techniques and technologies of aboriginal, European, and Canadian fisheries. The essays on the twentieth century include old-time fishing patterns of living memory and the changed state of the North Atlantic's ecology.

This study is part of the work done in connection with therestoration of the old fishing establishment at Grand-Grave, which is now in Forillon National Park. Its contents should helpin the historical interpretation of the social and economic lifeof merchants and fishermen who lived in Forillon. The archivesof William Hyman and Sons (1845-1967) formed most of thedocumentary basis for the work. The guiding principle for thework was economic anthropology, and its purpose to show how Gaspesociety was shaped by the manner in which the production of driedcod was organized. Gaspe was settled and populated through asystematic expoloitation of cod, so that a study of this processconstitutes a most valuable means of access to its history.

The 18th-century container glass from the Roma site has been divided into three main categories, one secondary category and one miscellaneous category on the basis of a combination of features that include glassmaking tradition, country of origin, function and dating. The main categories are: utilitarian blue-green containers of the French wood-burning tradition; darkgreen liquor bottles of the French coal-burning tradition; and "black" glass liquor bottles of the English coal-burning tradition. The secondary category consists of small bottles resembling the French liquor bottles and believed to be their quarter- and half-sized counterparts. Objects unidentifiable by any of these standards are included in the miscellaneous category. A total of 156 identifiable objects were retrieved from the Roma site and are described in this report.