Cooperative Approach Deep Seated in Tignish, PEI

The fishing port of Tignish, Prince Edward Island, lies on the northwest tip of the Canadian province. The land is flat and fertile, open to the Northumberland Strait and Gulf of St. Lawrence. The Tignish and Judes Point Harbor is a long inlet behind whose breakwaters a fleet of snow crab, lobster, herring and tuna boats is berthed. On Judes Point Road sits the Tignish Fisheries Co-op Association. The cooperative is Canada’s oldest fishermen’s cooperative, founded in 1924 by seven local fishermen.

Today the 190-member cooperative owns and operates a 75,000-square-foot processing plant, with cold storage for 5 million pounds of processed seafood. A second building holds 850,000 pounds of live lobster. A retail shop sells some of the tuna, mackerel, lobster, and other species landed by co-op members, marketed under the co-op’s Royal Star Foods label. “We do A to Z for the fishermen,” explained Francis Morrissey, the co-op’s lively general manager. “Bait, fishing supplies, equipment. We have a store on site open 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week. If you need parts in an emergency, you just call.”

The Tignish Fisheries Co-op began at the beginning of the 20th century in response to the impoverishment of local fishermen. Few owned their own fishing boats or equipment at the time, instead fishing from boats owned by local fish buyers. To pay to rent their boat, the fishermen had to give half of their catch to the fish company. During the winter months, those buyers gave fishermen scrip good only at the company store, which put them further in debt. In 1924 several Tignish fishermen had had enough. They secretly formed a legal association with the assistance of a local lawyer, Chester McCarthy, and began selling their catches off the island. The next year they wanted to buy a fish plant to process their own catch but banks in those days were hesitant to loan money to a bunch of fishermen. So McCarthy put up $3,500 of his own money in exchange for a percentage of the sales. “The policy for members then was the same as it is now,” Morrissey said. “One hundred percent loyalty. You sell all your catch to the co-op.”

To join the Tignish Fisheries Co-op Association, a fisherman offers his or her name to the board of directors. If accepted, the person must pay $500 for membership, and $500 each year he or she remains a member. “You immediately get a $5,000 line of credit and $500 added to that credit line each year after that. The co-op will look after your crew’s pay and paperwork. You get your money back for your shares when you decide to leave,” Morrissey explained. Each year in April members meet for the annual meeting where they receive a dividend based on the profit made by the company and the pounds each individual landed of different species. There’s a lot of good fishing off Tignish, according to Morrissey. Mackerel, tuna in the fall, lobster during the eight-week spring season, snow crab in the spring, herring, flounder, oysters — the co-op processes a rich range of species. But the company no longer handles only its members’ catches. It buys lobsters from throughout the Maritime Provinces to either store or process. “This week [mid-February] we will ship 150,000 to 200,000 pounds of live lobsters to China for their New Year celebrations,” Morrissey said.

The animals are trucked to Halifax Stansfield International Airport or to airports in Toronto and Montreal. The company also processes herring, not only for lobster bait but also for the roe, which is popular in Japan. At its peak during the summer, Morrissey said, the company employs between 380 and 400 people.The notion of individuals banding together for their common good was a familiar one to the earlier fishermen of the region. Their isolation and the difficulty of making a good living instilled a sense of community that remains strong today. “The cooperative movement is big in this area,” Morrissey said. “There’s the co-op grocery store, senior center, health center. The community is built of the Irish, Scots and French. They got along because there was no choice.”The company has grown in the last several years, Morrissey continued, in part because of rising lobster landings and in part because of a growing membership. “The members are very loyal to the co-op. They don’t waver in hard times and there are always hard times,” he said. “If someone thinks of leaving because they’re paying a nickel more somewhere else, then don’t bother being a member.”