Chapter II: Verification

In order to make quite sure about conditions up to date, I spent two months last summer examining some 1500 miles of coast line, from Nova Scotia, round by Newfoundland to the Straits, and thence inwards along the Canadian Labrador and North Shore of the St. Lawrence. On the whole, I found that I had rather under- than over-stated the dangers threatening the wild life there, and that I had nothing to retract from what I said in my _Address_ and _Supplement_.

As I spent one month among the fishermen of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, who commit most of the depredations, and the other month among the people along the Canadian Labrador, on whom the depredations are committed, I enjoyed the advantage of hearing both sides of the story. It was very much what I had heard before and what I said it was. The argument is, that so long as there is no law, or no law put in force, every man will do what he likes--which is unanswerably true. I am also afraid that there is no practical answer to the logical deduction from this, that so long as bad men can do what they like good men must do the same or "get left". Good, bad and indifferent, all alike, are squandering the capital of the wild life as fast as they can, though the legitimate interest of it would soon yield far better returns if conservation was to replace the beggaring methods in vogue to-day.

I would urge the earliest possible extension of thoroughly well enforced wild-life conservation laws to the whole Labrador peninsula; and I would venture to remind the Commission again, as I did in my _Supplement_, that the wild life of Arctic Canada is even now in danger and ought to be efficiently protected before it is too late. But, for the present purpose, I shall revert to Labrador only; and, for a practical beginning, recommend the immediate adoption of conservation only in the "Canadian Labrador".

So far as I could judge from talking things over with the south coast trappers, most of the fur-bearing animals seem to be holding their own fairly well in the market. But it should be remembered that, with the recent great rise in prices, fewer skins may mean more money, and that even the establishment of fox farms, and the probable establishment of other fur farms, may not overtake the present increasing demand, which, in its turn, must tend to deplete the original source of supply still further, unless strict conservation is enforced. There was a wonderful supply of foxes a year ago, though nothing to the muskrats which swarmed down south last fall. But failure of food further north may have had more to do with those irruptions than any outburst of unusual fecundity. Caribou apparently remain much as they have been lately. But the hunger of wolves and the greed of men are two enemies that nothing but conservation can keep in check. Of course, genuinely "necessary food" is not at all in question. I know an old hunter, living at Pokkashoo in summer and St. Augustine in winter, who brought in sixteen caribou last season. But he gave fifteen away to really necessitous families and kept only one for himself.

The whale factories at Lark Harbour and Hawke Bay, on the west coast of Newfoundland, were both closed for want of whales. The only one in the Gulf that was working last year was at Seven Islands, on the North Shore, 300 miles below Quebec. I happened to be almost in at the death of the biggest finback ever taken. But, speaking generally, the season was not really prosperous. The station of Seven Islands is worked by Norwegians, who are the most exterminatingly efficient whalers in the world. They worked their own whaleries to exhaustion and raised so much feeling against them among the fishermen that the Norwegian government forbad every factory along the shore. They then invented floating factories, which may still be used in Canadian waters with deadly effect unless we put whaling under conservation. The feeling among the fishermen here is the same as elsewhere, strongly in favour of the whales and strongly against the exterminating kind of whaler, because whales are believed to drive the bait fish close inshore, which is very "handy" for the fishermen.

The spring sealing of 1912 was a failure on the Canadian Labrador, as the main "harp" herd was missed by just one day. The whole industry is carried on by Newfoundlanders and men whose vessels take their catch to Newfoundland, because the only working plant is concentrated there. The excessive spring kill greatly depletes the females and young, as it takes place in the whelping season, when the herds are moving north along the off-shore ice; and this depletion naturally spoils not only the Newfoundlanders' permanent industry itself but the much smaller inshore autumn catch by our own Canadian Labradorians, when the herds are moving south. The Canadians along the North Shore and Labrador look upon the invading Newfoundlanders, in this and other pursuits, very much as a farmer looks upon a gipsy whose horse comes grazing in his hayfield. And the analogy sometimes does hold good. When men under a different government, men who do not own a foot of land in Canada, men who do not pay specific taxes for Canadian rights, when these men slaughter seals on inshore ice, use land and inlets for cleaning fish and foul the water with their "gurry", and when they also "egg" on other peoples' islands in defiance of the law, then the analogy is perfect. It does not hold good, of course, in ordinary fishing, which is conducted under Dominion licence and vigilantly watched by Commander Wakeham. But whether Canada is not giving away too much for what she gets in licences is quite another question.

The excessive spring kill by the Newfoundlanders does not seem to be the only reason why the local seal hunt is not so good as it used to be. The whites complain that the Indians along the coast kill an undue number of seals on the one hand and of caribou on the other. But fishermen all the world over are against the harbour seals; and generally exaggerate their depredations, as they exaggerate the depredations of most kinds of seabirds. Whatever the fate of the harbour seals should be, there can be no doubt that the harps or Greenland seals, the bearded or square-flippers, the grey or horseheads, and the gigantic and magnificently game hoods, should all be put under conservation. I am also inclined to think that the walrus could be coaxed back to what once were some of his most favourite haunts. Just now he has no chance whatever; and he is so extremely rare that the one I nearly rowed the dinghy into last August, down at Whale Head East, was only the second seen inside the Straits during the present century.