Saltwater Cowboys

COD COLLAPSE: The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland’s Saltwater Cowboys

Coming Fall 2019 (Nimbus Publishing)

More than twenty-five years ago, the cod moratorium put some thirty thousand fishermen across Newfoundland and Labrador out of work. These were my people. My book, Cod Collapse: The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland’s Saltwater Cowboys, is a nonfiction narrative encompassing memoir and history. It shares the stories of descendants of Newfoundland fishers and our communities, revealing how life changed with the moratorium. Together, we tell the stories of our ancestors and those of us today who see a resurgence of the modern-day saltwater cowboy and a revival of life on the island. I’ve felt the loss of a way of life of generations before me – a life that ended in Little Bay East, on the southeastern shores of Newfoundland with my father and uncles, but traces back to the late 1700s. Now, a quarter of a century after the moratorium and more than half a century since my grandfather, or Pop, as we called him, was a fisherman, I dig into the stories of my past.