Any fears Donnie Jacquard may have had about the success of his book on southwest Nova Scotia’s lobster fishery melted away when a particular fisherman he thought might not like it told him, “Donnie, that’s the most wonderful thing anybody has ever done for us. Every time I read your book, I cry.”
The book that made the fisherman weep, Lobstering Southwestern Nova Scotia: 1848-2009, took Jacquard 15 years to research, organize and write. He published the book in September 2009.
The area, known to those in the fishery as Lobster Fishing Area (LFA) 34, is considered prime lobster ground.
Despite his being a 61-year-old retired teacher and school principal, Jacquard said, “I do think [fishermen] look at me as one of their own.” Jacquard combines the education, experience and family background necessary to accomplish this mammoth project: his father and 10 uncles were lobster fishermen as are his in-laws and most of his friends and neighbors.
His background gave him the insider knowledge necessary to take on such a project. To this, he added the inherent curiosity of a born researcher. His education and fishing experience helped him organize the disparate information about who fished where and when.
He credits his high school history teacher and mentor, Alphonse Deveau, with giving him self-confidence. He was inspired by an exhibit about the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. several years ago. The exhibit, he said, “Touched me in the sense that I needed to know more about this incredible tale of human endurance.” Deveau, who taught history, gave Jacquard, “a lasting influence on my appreciation for southwestern Nova Scotia’s history.”
Jacquard’s previous project, a genealogy of his church parish, a community of some 1,000 Acadian families around his hometown, Wedgeport, gave him consummate research experience. It took Jacquard, 10 additional researchers and 20 years’ effort to produce two volumes.
During subsequent research on the lobster industry in Wedgeport as part of a potential town history, Jacquard said, “It became apparent there was a much bigger story waiting to be written.”
Researching runs in the historian’s blood. He explained that “finding answers” fascinates him. “And I’m still doing it,” he said. “It’s what I was doing yesterday; it’s what I was doing today.” For Donnie Jacquard, it’s like hunting for buried treasure, but his gold-facts and stories-is gleaned from books and other written materials, funerals, historical societies, museums, family members, neighbors, and others in the industry.
“I never believe what I read, in the sense that you have to question history,” he said. “I write stuff depending on the information that I have. That doesn’t mean it’s accurate.” Despite the disclaimer, anyone who has seen Jacquard’s lobster history has to recognize the care and effort involved.
Written and self-published in English rather than Jacquard’s native French, the book comprises over 250,000 words, over 100 photographs and over 80 references to Maine or the Gulf of Maine.
Just looking over the chapter headings gives the reader an inkling of why this history took so many words to tell. Covering the lobster cannery era took over 100 pages because it includes every place that showed evidence of lobstering activity.
This coastal area is rich in islands, and the Tusket Islands were, and probably still are, particularly fertile lobster grounds. Not all were inhabited and some were used only during the fishing season. Lobster fishermen built shanties for their stay. Women and youngsters would take jobs as cooks for the fishermen, and one of the most interesting chapters in the book is simply called “Cooks.” Jacquard thinks their stories hold potential for an entire book.
Asked how things have changed in the lobster industry, he replied, “A rise in lobster landings and an expansion in holding capacities have influenced the lobster supply and demand equation.” He mentioned Nova Scotia now has soft shell lobsters and said, “The climate is changing, and our calendar is the same.”
Both Jacquard and Scituate fisherman Fred Dauphinee had summer jobs as kids collecting Irish moss. “We all went mossing,” Jacquard recalled, adding, “There is about 10 percent of the Irish moss that used to be on our shore.” Dauphinee said the rocks where he used to collect moss are now bare. Jacquard noted, “We used to have huge windrows of kelp along the shore, and we don’t see that anymore.” Both men blame pollution. Jacquard said, “We can blame the draggers for the codfish and we can blame the seiners for the herring, but they never destroyed the kelp. It’s a bigger picture.”
Selling 1,000 copies of a self-published $45-dollar book in rural Nova Scotia by word-of-mouth is a remarkable achievement. Jacquard’s readers have been clamoring for a second printing. A second edition will have to wait: a Wedgeport tuna fishing history is now “rolling around” in the historian’s head, and must come first.
Sandra Dinsmore is a freelance writer who lives in Penobscot. She writes the Lobster Market Report for Commercial Fisheries News.