The Mi’kmaq call the Avon River “Tooetunook,” which means “flowing square into the sea,” or more specifically, into the Minas Basin in the upper Bay of Fundy. Since 1970, when the Windsor causeway was constructed across the Avon, the river hasn’t exactly been able to “flow square” at all. That’s because the aboiteau — the […]
Lobster: the last, best fishery
Part 1: Stocks are healthy, but why?
Lobster stocks in Atlantic Canada have been flourishing in recent years, ironically not just because of conservation measures, but also because of two ecological disasters — the collapse of groundfish stocks and climate change. But can the lobster fishery survive with current rates and rules for harvesting as waters continue to warm and ecosystems change? […]
Independent inshore lobster fishers fear the Clearwater purchase could decimate their livelihoods
At a November 12 press conference, Sipekne’katik First Nation Chief Mike Sack announced that his Band was launching “hundreds” of lawsuits related to the way governments, some commercial fishers, and the RCMP reacted to its launch of its moderate livelihood fishery on September 17, the 21st anniversary of the landmark Marshall decision that affirmed Mi’kmaq […]
What 2020 has been like for the Halifax Examiner
Morning File, Monday, November 2, 2020
What a year. Because our annual subscription drives are in November, this is the time of year when I look back and consider the growth of the Examiner and think about the future. I started the Examiner in the summer of 2014, and it was at first a one-man operation. I was shocked at the […]
Lobster fishery at a crossroads
Part 2: Tensions over a moderate livelihood fishery are hiding a much bigger threat to the inshore
On October 1, hundreds of Mi’kmaq and their allies held a mawio’mi to celebrate Treaty Day on the wharf in Saulnierville on St. Mary’s Bay in Southwest Nova, where crews from Sipekne’katik First Nation were almost two weeks into their new “moderate livelihood” fishery, affirmed as their Treaty right by the 1999 Supreme Court of […]
Lobster fishery at a crossroads
Part 1: It’s been 20 years since the Marshall decision, so why is there still no moderate livelihood fishery?
Ten years after Donald Marshall Jr. was found to be wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for 11 years for a murder he did not commit — in a case that a Royal Commission determined was the result of racist attitudes and incompetence on the part of the police and others in the justice system that had […]