Fish Makers: The Centrality of Women
In Bonavista and many other places in Newfoundland women were integral to the work of
making salt fish. Although women certainly cut throats, headed, split, and salted fish, they
were most obviously involved in the washing and drying of fish. It seemed as fish moved
further away from the water (the domain of men) and onto the land, women became more and
more central to the processing. This especially applied where pickled and other lightly
salted fish was made. The woman-centred nature of this work was described over and over
again during my field work and in many other primary and secondary sources (Anspach 1810;
Bulgin 1978, 91; Budgell 1979, 5; Cadigan 1995, 51-3; Devine 1990, 19-23; Frost 1979, 15;
Hatcher 1978, 2; Jukes 1993, 27; Miller 1979, 9-10; Murray 1979, 12-16;Neis 1993, 190;
Porter 1993, 47-49; Rixon 1981, 12-13). Women organized and oversaw the 'making' of fish.
For the three or four generations preceding its demise, women were almost entirely in
charge of the drying of pickled fish in many communities on the east coast where it
dominated as a method. Men and children were called on to a lesser degree and usually in
times of an emergency when weather threatened the fish (and therefore everyone's
livelihoods) or for big tasks such as preparing a large load of fish for shipment to the
merchant. Women made other types of heavier salted fish as well, but men were likely to
play more significant roles in these processes.
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St. John's:
A very early shot of the Battery and what appears to be a family of men,
women and children on a flake. Note the two young women are about
to carry off a hand-bar of fish -- not light work. PANL a17-196 (PANL-CMCS)
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It is important to note that women were responsible for fish-making in most regions of
Newfoundland and Labrador.
My research and the sources above reflect a wide range of
locations and it can safely be said that women were integral to drying fish in communities
in every bay and along every coast of the island and Labrador, although there may be some
places such as the Southern Shore where women were somewhat less involved in the overall
processing. (This needs further investigation.)
In the case of the Bonavista area, there is evidence that in the cod-trap fishery, where
earnings were higher and in some hook-and-line operations, young women were often hired
as domestics to mind small children and to cook and clean. This freed older more skilled
women to concentrate on the fish-making requirements of the operation. (Laura Whiffen;
Frost 1979, 16; Miller 1979, 2-3; Murray 1979, 98). (It also helped to further train young
women in the indispensable skills of managing a household et al. -- something
they would likely have to be able to do within a few years in their own homes (if they
married)).
The women and men I talked with frequently and forcefully stressed the role of women in
making fish. Mr. Humphries of Cape Freels stated, "The women worked like slaves. When
we'd be gone fishing they'd wash it out ... and spread it on the flakes" (Rixon 1981,
12). Bennett March of Brownsdale, Trinity Bay summed up the work of his mother, a salter
and fish maker, in the following way: "My mother, she salted -- and ... she almost
lived over on the flake" . This sentiment was echoed almost exactly by Mr. George
Groves of Bonavista who stated that both his mother and his wife "lived on the
flake" (Crewe 1981, 14).
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Grand Bank: Beach
crews of women making fish for merchant-owned, banking schooner
firms. In the 1940s, each woman made roughly 3 cents a
quintal. PANL A18-173 (PANL-CMCS)
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Bride Fitzgerald remembered her father, Dan, of Spillars Cove having the odd argument
with Bride's mother over him not helping with the flake work. When accused of laziness he
would reply, "Agnes ... I goes out and catches the fish, I'm not going to make them
on the land." Bride also recalled that if her mother was sick, her father and
brothers "hardly ever come out on the flake" to help her with the fish.
"And Mom ... she used to bawl at them, and she said, `You're just too lazy for to
eat!' " Dan replied, " `Well that's not our job you know. When we bring it to
the land for you, you's got to make it' ". Bulgin comments that there was an old
saying in Twillingate, "`The men ketch [sic] it and the women make it'" (1978,
91).
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Grand Bank: Women making
up a round pile. Fish would "work" in these piles - that
is, the close packing continued to cure the fish in key ways. Once
completed, these piles were covered with canvas or "rinds" to
keep the weather from them. PANL A37-97 (PANL-CMCS)
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Part of the reason that women were the main makers of pickled and other light-salted
fish was due to its quick curing in the salting phase. As soon as the caplin scull fishery
got underway in late June, men became completely engrossed in catching fish. Pickled fish
had to be removed from salt brine and washed and dried three to five days after it was
caught. It fell to women then to get this catch washed, out on the flakes, and made all
through the busy days of July. More heavily salted fish could stay in bulks and pounds
longer, so that its washing and drying could be seen to later in the summer. This
potentially allowed men to take a more active role in the making. But early in the summer,
with men heavily engaged on the water almost every day, women made up the shore crews
around most of the island. Later on in the summer and into the fall as the fishing
slackened off somewhat and there were more days of rough weather, men could and often did
play a larger role in the washing and making of fish. However, women clearly did the bulk
of this crucial and labourious shore work through the summer and the fall.
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Hermitage: Women on
beach flakes. This is likely a banks fishing operation. Note
the "bonnets" being worn. This seems to have been a
South Coast/Fortune Bay phenomenon. Widows wore black
bonnets. PANL A43-158 (PANL-CMCS)
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The work women did was governed by a number of patterns. With larger operations (those
organized around cod-traps), groups of women worked their flakes together. These women
were generally related, usually by marriage. Various arrangements were possible, but a
general rule seems to have been that the wives of the sharemen in a crew worked together
at drying fish. Mind you, it was most often the wives of the sharemen who were more
closely related to the the trap owner-operator who took part (that is, the
daughter-in-laws of the trap owner). It has been reported that in certain places, young
women who were shipped to better-off families as domestics often helped on the flakes
(Neis 1993, 192). In examples that I came across of households that employed servant
girls, their main role was to run the domestic sphere. This allowed the women of the
fishing operation to work the flakes. Regardless of these intricacies, in the shore crews
of trapping operations, two to three women worked together to make fish. The most
experienced and senior of these women generally directed this work.
Badgers Quay:
Woman washing clothes with
children. Just one of a myriad of daily tasks to be carried out
besides fish work. PANL VA14-116 (PANL) |
Laura Whiffen, who made fish from 1931 to 1955 in Old Cove near Bonavista,
described her mother-in-law,
Martha, as one such person. On their flakes Martha was "the director" of
activities. She made the decisions and assessed the weather in consultation with known
forecasters (Devine 1990, 23). Martha also gave directions to her daughters-in-law as she
had once been given them by her own mother-in-law -- and these were acts which formed an
ongoing, unbroken process of training for numerous generations. Laura stated that it took
two to three years on the flakes before she considered herself anywhere near as qualified
or competent as Martha.
In smaller hook-and-line operations, shore crews often consisted of just one woman
working at times with her husband and children to make fish. Mary Ann Martin's mother was
the main splitter, salter, and fish maker of her family's operation. Mary Ann recalled her
working their two flakes, more or less on her own. This was not unusual (Murray 1979, 14).
Pool's Island:
A rare shot of the interior of a typical Kitchen. Many key
"tools of the domestic trade" are visible: woodstove, sewing
machine, cloths, cooking equipment, etc. PANL VA14-189 (PANL) |
In these smaller scale operations, the fish-making apprenticeships were likely not so
clearly defined or necessarily complete as described above for Laura Whiffen. In my
fieldwork with women I spent a good deal of time attempting to ascertain the training
process that girls experienced or went through to prepare them for flake work.
Interestingly enough, most of the women I talked with received little detailed training as
girls. Children generally were expected to and did help out when rain threatened (Murray
1979, 38), but the majority of the women I talked with did not participate much in labour
or training until after marriage. This speculative finding may have been the simple result
of a small sample though there is also some documentary evidence. Four of the five women
whom I asked said they were not expected to help on the flakes on a daily apprenticeship
basis during their girlhoods. Of these four, two were connected to hook-and
line-operations. Only one woman, Bride Fitzgerald of Spillars Cove, recalled doing a good
deal of flake work as a young girl.
One possible reason for this is that training in other crucial tasks -- gardening and
domestic spheres for example -- took place in the younger years.
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Salvage: Eight or nine women of various generations pose on a
flake with a baby, a man and some boys. PANL E36-52 (PANL)
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Another intriguing
concept that I came across in interviews and texts was that young girls were enlisted to
dry many barrels of caplin during the summer for dog-food (Murray 1979). This could have
been a preliminary training for later fish-making -- practising, as it were, on products
not directly connected to important earnings. Mary Ann Martin pointed out that in her
family's hook-and-line operation, the children were not often entrusted with the daily
work of making fish and were often scolded for sloppy work when they did help out. The
making of fish was in many ways a very serious business and demanded serious attention, a
matter I will turn to in a moment.
In addition to making fish, women were required to perform a whole range of other tasks
including cooking, cleaning, knitting, sewing, berry-picking, gardening and, child and
elder care. The following quote from Mrs. Humphries, originally of Cape Freels, evokes the
sense of her daily round during the fishing season:
"We worked almost as hard as the men ... when they come in from fishing, we used
to got to work to get their breakfast. Then we'd go down to the stage. I used to head most
of the fish, you know.... I used to like to be at heading the fish eh. My sister-in-law
used to cut the throats, you know. When we get that put away, the men used to go on again.
We'd be up to the house scrubbing on the board our clothes, making a bit of bread, cakes,
stuff like that you know; sometimes in the garden, hauling the weed out of the potatoes
and that. We worked hard you know. We'd be at the grass ... trying to get a bit for the
horses for the winter, you know.... When they'd get the fish, then, well, we used to wash
the fish .. bring it out and spread the fish and go back for more.
To put a bit of bread in the oven, it's not like it's now, just turn the button ... we
used to put a couple of billets of wood in and go down [to the wharf] and when we think
the bread be baked, have to come up and wash hands, take pinny off.... take bread out and
go down at it again. There's no stop. I suppose we start in June to September, eh.... We'd
make fish to October month some years, you know.... Scrubbing on the board used to be bad,
you know, scrubbing clothes. No washer. I only had a washer three year before I came in
here [came in to St. John's, circa 1962] ... Used to take the kids in little round baskets
and take them down to the flakes, put them on the flake till you get the fish spread....
The same thing at the gardens, take the kids up in this little round basket and put them
down, give them something to eat.... I really worked hard all my life, you know, harder
than I works now, you know." (Rixon 1981, 13)
Many of the women of Bonavista who worked making fish and had no one to mind their
infant children would bring them up on the flakes while they worked. Laura Whiffen recalls
them using butts for play-pens (this excerpt can be found in the Audio Library, page 2,
clip 7).
Toddlers -- well they'd bring them up -- I tell you -- the little toddlers, they have a
-- well it was a butt -- that high, la ... she'd bring them up -- and it was a clean one,
you know, and put them in a butt. And they'd give them play things -- they'd play there --
they was quiet little children -- those was.... and they'd play there in that tub till
they'd get the fish done and then they'd carry them up.
Hubert Mouland of Bonavista recalled his wife carrying their son up on the flakes in a
box (Crewe 1981, 23). Mrs. Melita Guy also heard that women would use puncheon tubs and
often gave babies a "sugar tit" (sugar wrapped in gauze) as a pacifier. As soon
as there were siblings old enough to mind younger sisters and brothers, parental
baby-sitting was no longer necessary.
It is important to conclude this section with some final remarks about how serious
drying fish was. This work of women substantially increased the value of the fish - a fact
too often overlooked (Andrew 1969, Antler 1977, and Antler and Faris 1979, 149-50 are
three exceptions). The proper washing and drying of the fish were critical to making a
living in the salt fishery. People were very careful, for example, about "spending
fish" during the summer on treats or luxuries. Melita Guy related how her grandmother,
as director of the operation's flake, was the only person allowed to give them (as
children) the odd fish to take to the merchant's to buy candy. This did not happen that
often and was a special treat.
Jabez Ryder mentioned that the flakes often had gates on their ramps, ostensibly to
keep dogs off, but he noted that they also slowed down brazen young men trying to make off
with a few fish for a purchase. He mentioned his father chastising and chasing these young
men off the flakes from time to time. It is clear that fish could not be squandered.
Because of this importance, fish making took on significance in relation to community
status (Small 1979, 48-50). Women being the key actors in that work derived status from
it.
Wilson Hayward described to me one day that the women fish makers in his neighbourhood
were very aware of their status and worked hard to produce good looking, good quality fish
-- the quality of that work defined them on some basic levels in relation to their peers
and neighbours. Keeping an orderly, tidy flake, taking good care of the fish day in and
day out were all matters that affected personal identity, status and esteem (much like
keeping an orderly household did and does, Murray 1979, 34). When I asked him if certain
women were known for their fish, he responded immediately -- "You know they
were!" When their fish was graded and sold to the merchants, it did not take long for
the report of how it had fared to circulate through the neighbourhood. Laura Whiffen
asserted that her mother-in-law, Martha, was known to be an excellent fish maker on the
Cape. Clearly, fish making was important to fishing women's sense of their selves in their
communities.
This work was also carried out along with a whole range of other duties from child
care, cooking, and cleaning to gardening, berry-picking and drying hay (the latter items
of this list often generating products for sale as well as domestic consumption).
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