John Williams wishes he could say the 1992 cod moratorium seems like yesterday. But after losing his livelihood and reinventing himself a few times, he has felt each of the last 30 years. Williams was one of about 30,000 people left unemployed when the federal government ended the cod fishery on July 2, 1992. It’s a date that still stirs emotions from a solemn and desperate chapter in Newfoundland and Labrador’s history. “It was a very sad moment knowing you weren’t going to be fishing anymore,” Williams said. “At the time I had three children and they had to be fed, schooled and clothed. It was difficult”. It doesn’t help Williams that he’s constantly reminded of his small part in history — that he was the person who prompted former Fisheries Secretary John Crosby to say some of his most famous words. John Williams, left, is in a heated exchange with Fisheries Secretary John Crosby on July 1, 1991 in Bay Bulls, leading to one of Crosby’s most famous lines. (CBC) It was July 1, 1992, and Crosbie was having a Canada Day celebration in Bay Bulls, a small fishing village near St. John’s, where no one was in the mood to celebrate. Especially not with Crosbie, when they knew what was coming the next day. Earlier in the week, Crosbie had given harvesters until July 2 to pull their nets out of the water. Things quickly went awry as a large crowd of angry fishermen and factory workers heckled the minister non-stop. Crosbie came down from the stage and faced the crowd face to face. Williams moved closer, shouting his concerns a few feet from Crosby’s face. “Don’t abuse me!” Crosby hit Williams. “I didn’t abuse you!” Williams returned the applause. “I didn’t take the fish out of the damn water, so don’t abuse me!” Crosby replied. John Williams is today retiring from his career in offshore oil and gas. He still lives in Bay Bulls. (Dan Arsenault/CBC) These words became central to John Crosbie’s political legacy. But they also followed John Williams for 30 years — often as a mouse, other times as a painful reminder of what he lost. Williams and the other protesters knew they were doomed. Fish have been getting harder and harder to come by for several years. They were maddened, however, by the lack of communication and planning that left fishermen and plant workers in the dark. Thirty years later, Williams still gets irritated talking about the abrupt transition from cod and paltry federal government relief payments of $225 a week. “It’s just as well we went blackberry picking,” he said. “It was stupid.”
Loss of income, lifestyle even today
After the moratorium, federal programs were formed to retrain workers in other fields and get them out of the fishery. It worked for some — including Williams, who found a career in offshore oil and gas — but the programs were met with resistance. “What are they re-educating us for?” Richard Clements, manager of the Petty Harbor fish plant, said during an interview in 1993. “I’m [almost] 50 years old. Why are they retraining me?” Richard Clements talks to a CBC reporter in 1993 about retraining for another career. (CBC) The largest program, the Atlantics Groundfish Strategy (TAGS), ran out of funding in 1997, a year earlier than expected. Ottawa expected 26,000 fish harvesters and factory workers to be eligible for the program and was caught off guard when 40,000 people applied. Canada’s auditor general, Denis Desautel, issued a scathing report in 1997, saying that TAGS had failed to help people out of the fishing industry and had only succeeded in creating a dependency on government aid. Instead, money earmarked for training was allocated to income support payments due to the overwhelming number of applicants and their poor financial situation. “It was desperate,” Clements says today. “Petty Harbor then almost became a ghost town. No boats coming in and out. Nobody working. It wasn’t a good feeling.” Richard Clements is still a docksider in Petty Harbor and still spends his summer months processing fish. (Ryan Cooke/CBC) Clements was fortunate to find work within his abilities. He went to work for Bidgood’s, a family supermarket, and still makes fish for a living at nearly 80 years old. Many fish harvesters switched species and found well-paying careers fishing for crabs or snow shrimp. Others were not so lucky and had to look for new opportunities. About 10 percent of the province’s population left in the first decade after the moratorium. Today, there are 58,000 fewer people in the province than in 1992.
Trading the past for a future
The moratorium sparked intense debate about resettlement. Communities like Great Harbor Deep, located in an isolated pocket of Newfoundland’s Northern Peninsula, have been forced to ask themselves a tough question – does it make sense to keep this town alive anymore? Work at Great Harbor Deep was hard to come by and training was grim. The children had to leave in the 10th grade, boarding the ship every September to go to school elsewhere, living away from their parents from the age of 15. “Anyone who can see a future here, I think they’re kidding themselves, because I don’t see it here,” resident Pamela Robson said at a special event marking the moratorium’s 1993 anniversary. Pamela Robson and her daughter, Megan, appear here in footage from 1993. Robson said she felt their hometown of Great Harbor Deep had no future after the cod moratorium a year earlier. (CBC) She had a baby girl on her knee during the interview. She said she feared for her daughter’s future. Ropson lost her job at the fish factory and was ineligible for programs like TAGS. She was faced with the devastating decision to go on welfare to feed her family. He was waiting for the province to offer residents a resettlement package and would vote to leave. That vote came in 2002, when 98 percent of Great Harbor Deep’s 130 residents agreed to leave their homes behind. WATCHES | Ryan Cooke traces three people whose lives were turned upside down on July 2, 1992:
How NL lost much more than a fishing industry: Reflecting on the cod moratorium, 30 years later
CBC’s Ryan Cooke traces the people caught up in the landmark closure of Newfoundland’s cod fishery and finds the impact went far beyond their livelihoods Seven other towns have resettled since 1992, the most recent being the Little Bay Islands in 2019. If there’s an upside to the moratorium, Ropson said it’s the opportunities for children who would otherwise follow in the shaky footsteps of their parents and grandparents. “They had a great lifestyle growing up, but it just wasn’t feasible,” Ropson says today. “But it will always be home. Always.” Pamela Robson and her daughter Megan moved from Great Harbor Dip with the rest of their family in 2002 when the town resettled. It was one of the places destroyed by the cod moratorium 10 years earlier. (Submitted by Megan Ropson) The baby in her arms grew up to become a social worker and now helps children in Labrador with fetal alcohol syndrome. Looking at her today, Ropson knows she made the right choice by voting for reinstatement. “I’m so proud of her,” Ropson says with tears in her eyes.
No way back in sight
John Williams always knew the moratorium wasn’t going to be short-lived, despite claims by Crosby and other officials that it could be as short as two years. Williams spent seven weeks one summer in the early 90s looking for cod, and didn’t sell a single one. He felt it was going to be at least 10 years. Richard Clements says he too knew the industry was doomed long before 1992 and was not holding his breath for a comeback. WATCHES | From 2012, an Azzo Rezori documentary on the legacy of the moratorium: Azzo Rezori examines the mythology of cod in Newfoundland and Labrador, 20 years after the moratorium The future of northern cod remains bleak in Newfoundland and Labrador, with the latest estimates still well below the threshold for exiting the critical zone established by Fisheries and Oceans Canada. But if you ask Williams, Clements or Ropson, they will tell you that the loss of fish or money has not been the biggest impact of the collapse of the cod fishery. It was the death of a way of life. “The things we tried to keep as traditions, [my daughter] he doesn’t know anything about it,” said Robson. “We have a different kind of culture now. It’s gone.” Read more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador
