Atlantic Ocean, NS - John Bryan

My name is John Bryan and I’m from Burnt Islands. I’ve been a cook with McKeil for nine years In July. My most powerful memory of water? I have lots of them. It’s gotta be fishing. All I’ve done all my life is fishing. I have a lot of stories to tell for fishing. But the most memorable is when I was fishing down in Nova Scotia. We went fishing from Glace Bay in Nova Scotia, down to St. Peter Bay on a little 34-11 boat. We ended up with our day finished and we were waiting for another day to come. At the same time there was a hurricane on the way. What should’ve took us 8 hours to get back to Nova Scotia, it took us 26 hours. Any where there is fish is my favorite place to fish.

Done most of my fishing not in Newfoundland - one third of my time fishing was in Newfoundland, the rest of my time was partly in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton. My first memory of water was when I was working at the fish plant and one of my buddies came asked are you ready to go fishing, and of course I went fishing and on the water and it was the best thing ever. Water is my livelihood. When you fish for 20 odd years, that’s all I’ve done from Nova Scotia to Cape Breton to Newfoundland and onward. Small communities you went in to.

Then I left that and went up to Calgary, working for 5 years, which I didn’t like so I came back and got back into fishing for another 5 years. Then that pretty much tapered off. I ended up coming to McKeil, but still on the water so mostly the story is making a living on the water. My father was on the water for many years, his whole life – I’d say from 13 years old on until when he died, he was on the water. My mother, well she was always by the water, it’s a small community around the water. One of my brothers went on the water, he’s now living on the Great Lakes. One of my other brothers just went to the Great Lakes about 2 years ago.

We should protect water for ourselves and our families and the people who are coming up in the world now. You know for everybody and for everything, you got animals and you got us, the whole world needs it. When the boys go out fishing, I go out fishing with them.

I used to like fishing off of Saint Paul’s in Nova Scotia. When you getting 60-70 halibut on a string of gear, you’re talking about 4,800 pounds of halibut a day. Water is everything and water is healthy as long as we don’t destroy it ourselves with our chemicals and whatever. Besides that, water is good and healthy.
 

Waterbody
Atlantic Ocean, NS
Organization
McKeil Marine
Contributor
John Bryan

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