Watching my brother-in-law build his lobster traps by hand taught me the value of old ways

This First Person article is the experience of Colin MacKenzie, a filmmaker in Montreal. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

As a kid, I remember lying across the seat of a white rowboat in the hot sun during my summer holidays.

My grandmother lived on a small lake surrounded by pine trees and chickadees in the Laurentians. I was fishing for perch, or anything really. But I can probably count on one hand how many fish I actually landed between the ages of four and 16.

Maybe only one or two of them were big enough to bring home, clean, fry up and eat.

In 2006, what seemed like a lifetime later, I was having one of my first quick chats with my future brother-in-law, on the weekend that he and my sister Kathy were getting married. We were standing on the steps of a small white church in the town of Shigawake, Que., people around us helping get things ready for the big day.

Michael Sullivan is a lobster fisherman. Wearing his preferred black ball cap and sporting a chevron mustache, he catches enough lobster and fish to make a living.

Michael's eyes twinkled when he explained the ins and outs of his craft. His family tree takes him back to Ireland, but the Sullivans eventually settled on the Gaspé coast, the thumb-like peninsula that juts off eastern Quebec. Both Michael and his brother are fifth-generation fishermen.

He told me about his greatest heartache, that the lobster fishery is a disaster, with catches getting smaller and smaller. He was convinced that by the time he retired, he would not be able to find someone to take over his licence.

But two daughters and 11 years later, things had taken a surprising turn. Michael had been upping his catch, substantially, every year. He had gone back to the "old ways" — building his own wooden traps.

Many people fish lobster with modern, prefabricated metal traps. But Michael's wooden traps are inspired by a design from his now-deceased father. They're a tribute of sorts, with Michael making adjustments each year.

The sea had always been a mystery to me. My father worked at a pulp and paper company and we moved from one small mill town to another, nowhere near salt water.

That changed after my parents' marriage ended. We moved with my mother to the Gaspé Peninsula — first to the copper-mining town of Murdochville, then to Bonaventure, where our home was beside a lighthouse on the bay.

Years later, that is where my sister met her future husband.

When I met Michael that day on the church steps, I decided I had to make a documentary about this man, his chosen path and his wooden traps. Committing to the film opened up an opportunity to spend more time with my mother, my sister, her children and Michael in their Gaspé homes, a 10-hour drive from my apartment in Montreal.  

In the winter of 2019, I moved into the spare room at my sister's house for five weeks to document Michael's plan to build 200 new traps.

It quickly became apparent that the "old ways" were also part of the family's daily life, with my sister looking after the household and Michael focused almost entirely on building his traps and maintaining his boat.

Everyone worked hard, holding up their end of the family business. This fishery was the focus and everyone, kids included, contributed to that end — knitting fishing nets, tying and braiding ropes, building frames for the traps and pouring cement into their base to weigh them down.

When I was growing up, my father went into an office every day. I had no idea how our home, groceries and vacations were paid for. Here at my sister's, it all was much more apparent.

There are 10 weeks every year when lobster can be caught, and each lobster contributes to this family's survival. There was a rhythm to those winter days, which all pointed to late April when the season opened.

During those dark months, the wood stove crackled in the basement and nights were filled with the girls wanting to play board games and cards, or sometimes watch a movie. Then it was back to work at the crack of dawn.

As spring approached, you could feel the tension rise, the home simmering with the stress of final preparations.

It was challenging to have all this activity swirling around me and not contribute. But my job was to attempt to capture it all on video, and to then take this world back to my edit suite.

It helped me understand the world this part of my family was living in. It was a doorway into another way of life, one that felt centuries away from my apartment living in the city.

Watch Colin MacKenzie's film The Lobster Whisperer on CBC Gem.

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