It was long, hard work in P.E.I. lobster factories in the Bygone Days

Reginald "Dutch"Thompson's column The Bygone Days brings you the voices of Island seniors, many of whom are now long-departed. Thesetales of the way things used to be offer a fascinating glimpse into the past. Every second weekend CBC P.E.I. will bring you one of Dutch's columns.

The spring lobster season wrapped up on P.E.I. last week, so it's a good time to pay homage to the hardworking people at the lobster factories of the bygone days.

There were once hundreds of small lobster canneries on P.E.I., with the heyday about 100 years ago.

Joe O'Hanley, born in 1908 in Cable Head East, remembered working at the lobster factory when he was just nine years old.

"The boss came over to me one day, he said 'Would you like to come and work in the factory?Try it. Picking the arms, picking the knuckles.' I didn't think I could do it," he told Thompson.

The first money I ever made was 65 cents a day and I thought I was a millionaire Joe O'Hanley

O'Hanley said the workers would use a flattened nail to pick out the meat.

"The first money I ever made was 65 cents a day and I thought I was a millionaire," he said.

Back 100 years ago the factory owners ran the whole show, he said they owned the boats, they owned the traps and they owned the factory.

Fishermen and factory workers lived from Monday to Saturday night right on the wharf, sleeping in bunk houses or over the cook house.

Nellie Young, who was born in 1906 and lived to be 99 years old, worked long days over a hot wood stove at a lobster factory in North Lake.

She worked five months a year, six days a week andfigured she made about $10 a month.

Five meals a day

"I never got a hell of a lot anyway," she told Thompson.

She would serve the fishermen breakfast around 3:30 a.m.

She said she'd hit the stove pipe and there'd be "quite a racket" as the men rushed down the stairs for breakfast.

She'd also pack lunches for the boat,servingfive meals a day in total.

"I used to make soup from the bones and give themthat for their lunch or something you know. We were pretty cagey too. Prunes, I wouldn't want to see another prune."

There wasnever no fighting or anything. Elsie Collier

Every day she would use a 100-pound bag of flour to cook bread, biscuits, pies and sugar doughnuts. She cooked whole sides of beef at a time. She'd make steak and eggs, baked ham, and cooked up gallons of soup and porridge. Every night she put 50 pounds of beans in the wood stove to bake.

'Finest woman'

Boswell Robertson of Munn's Roadused to go to Johnson's Lobster Factory with his uncle to get wagon-loads of lobster bodies to throw on their fields for fertilizer, and praised the efforts of Young and the other cooks.

"Finest woman, and work day and night, because they give everybody there their breakfast. They had a pack to lunch or two for them out to sea and then be coming for all hours of the evening and night and they fed them good."

The workers would buy their groceries and clothes from the lobster factory owners, so often people would work for four months with only a few dollars in their pockets.

"Some peoples, when they got done working, they were in debt 13 cents," said Valerie Arsenault, who was born in Bloomfield Station in 1904 and was once the oldest living Islander at 106.

But that doesn't mean the workers were unhappy.

Elsie Collier, who was originally from Newfoundland,was born in 1912 andmoved to Murray Harbour with her husband Charles. Charles fished and Elsie worked in Fraser'sCannery.

"Mr. Fraserwas a good man," she said. "There's never no fighting or anything. And if Mr. Fraserwasn't there we'd work the same as if he was there. You know there was no bad feelings and I liked it.

"We used to take our lunch and go upstairs. And there's one lady and oh she could sing and we'd have a sing-song."

Elsie and her husband would haul boatloads of potatoes and vegetables back to Newfoundland each fall, and bring back some Newfoundland delicacies that Elsie missed, such as seal flippers, cod tongues and gallons of seal oil.

Elsie said she would light up the wood stove and fry up one of her specialties homemade sugar doughnuts boiled in seal oil. She said they were as light as a feather and were treats for her co-workers after the sing-sing at the lobster factory.

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