Page 6 - Lobster Factories around Cape Breton

ISSUE : Issue 20

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1978/8/1

live at Jersey Cove • D. B. was getting all those lobsters. That was a long distance, so you can imagine how big the factory was. Had two boats, but the one going south was, I don't know, a 40-footer. Three-sail boat with a four-cylinder engine. But before my day they didn't have an engine in it. If it was calm they had to be rowing that big clovm of a thing. Oh, D. B. had the whole business. He had the store, he had the mill, he had the lobster factory, he had the landing for the Aspy • as far as I can remember • and I worked three years there • I never saw five cents, as far as cash was concerned. I'd get a suit, a couple of pair of shoes in the summertime. Take stuff home to eat • that was taking it all. And you weren't always paid by the hour. I didn't want to Two crews of workers at D.B.MacLeod's factory at Breton Cove. Top Photo; (names incomplete) Back Row: Mrs. D.B., Mary Anne, Christie Watheson, D.B., go. I thought that last year I could do better fishing codfish, something like that. The fellows • two fellows that were cracking claws the year before, they were only getting 25 dollars. So they coaxed me to go there. My brother had cracked there 6 or 7 years • he left and went in the army. I was about 17. And they tried me out at this cracking business and I guess I was pretty good at it. They coaxed me • 40 dol? lars a month. And you take my 40 dollars and take all my eats out of it and what I'd wear • and my hours. Say the first two weeks you were at least working from 7 till it would average 12 at night, take about two hours for meals • 13 hours. No overtime or anything. Just the 40 dollars a month. Made to measure suits too. So you weren't getting much. I left it altogether and started fishing on my own. Norman R., Rory A. An- gus ?i/IacDonald, Malcolm Smith, John Buchanan, Kennie; Front Row: P/Iary Grace MacLean, Jessie Urquhart, Rachel MacLeod, Maggie Matheson.... Back Row: Bobo (dog), Sandy John X. MacDonald, John Buchanan, Angus D.B.MacLeod, Alex Smith, A.J.Matheson, Effie Smith, Mary Morrison, Annie MacLeod, Christie MacLeod, Jackie "lacDonald. Front Row: John Malcolm Maclnnis, Mabel MacDonald Morrison, ''faimie Urquhart, Sarah ''lacQueen, Tomena Smith, Rhoda Matheson, Jessie Mary Maclnnis MacLeod.

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