I saw a way of life that seemed to be hundreds of years removed from my city apartment
This First Person article is about a Montreal filmmaker named Colin MacKenzie’s experience. See for more information on CBC’s First Person stories.the FAQ.
I used to spend my summer vacations as a child lying across the seat of a white rowboat in the hot sun.
In the Laurentians, my grandmother lived on a small lake with pine trees and chickadees all around. I was fishing for perch, but I could have caught anything. But I don’t think I caught more than a handful of fish between the ages of four and sixteen.
Only one or two of them might have been big enough to take home, clean, fry, and eat.
In 2006, when my sister Kathy got married, I had one of my first short conversations with my future brother-in-law. It seemed like a long time had passed. People were helping us get ready for the big day as we stood on the steps of a small white church in the town of Shigawake, Que.
Michael Sullivan goes out to sea to catch lobster. He has a chevron mustache and likes to wear a black ball cap. He catches enough lobster and fish to make a living.
Michael’s eyes sparkled as he talked about how his craft worked. His family tree goes all the way back to Ireland, but the Sullivans eventually moved to the Gaspé coast, which is a peninsula that sticks out of eastern Quebec like a thumb. Michael and his brother are both the fifth generation of their family to fish.
He told me that the worst thing that made him sad was that the lobster fishery was going bad, with fewer and fewer lobsters being caught. He was sure that by the time he retired, no one would be able to take over his license.
But after 11 years and the birth of two daughters, things had changed in a surprising way. Michael had been getting a lot more fish every year. He went back to the “old ways” by making his own traps out of wood.
People catch lobster with modern metal traps that have already been made. But Michael’s wooden traps are based on an idea from his father, who has since died. They are a kind of tribute, and Michael changes them every year.
I had never known much about the sea. My dad worked at a paper and pulp company, so we moved from one small mill town to another. We never lived near the ocean.
After my parents’ marriage broke up, things changed. We moved to the Gaspé Peninsula with my mother. First, we lived in Murdochville, a town where copper was mined, and then we moved to Bonaventure, where our house was next to a lighthouse on the bay.
Years later, it was there that my sister met the man she would marry.
When I met Michael that day on the church steps, I knew I had to make a documentary about this man, his chosen path, and his wooden traps. The film gave me the chance to spend more time with my mother, my sister, her kids, and Michael in their homes in Gaspé, which are a 10-hour drive from my apartment in Montreal.
In the winter of 2019, I moved into my sister’s spare room for five weeks so I could write about Michael’s plan to build 200 new traps.
It was clear right away that the “old ways” were also part of the family’s daily life. My sister took care of the house, and Michael spent almost all of his time building traps and keeping his boat in good shape.
Everyone worked hard to keep the family business running. Everyone, even the kids, worked on this fishery. They knitted fishing nets, tied and braided ropes, built frames for the traps, and poured cement into their bases to make them heavier.
When I was growing up, my father worked every day in an office. I had no idea how we paid for our house, food, and trips. At my sister’s house, everything was much clearer.
Lobster can be caught for 10 weeks out of the year, and each lobster helps this family stay alive. Those winter days had a pattern that pointed to late April, when the season started.
During those cold, dark months, the wood stove in the basement would crackle, and the girls would come down at night to play board games, cards, and sometimes watch a movie. Then, at first light, it was back to work.
As spring got closer, you could feel the tension rising and the stress of making last-minute plans in the house.
It was hard to watch everything going on around me and not do anything. But it was my job to try to record everything on video and then bring this world back to my editing room.
It helped me understand what life was like for this part of my family. It was a doorway to a different way of life that seemed like it was a thousand years away from my apartment in the city.
Watch The Lobster Whisperer is a movie by Colin MacKenzie.on CBC Gem.
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