It has been more than 400 years since the first Islanders crossed the Atlantic in search of pastures new. They went to plunder the cod-rich seas of the American and Canadian coast.
When the first Europeans reached Canada is unclear, but it is thought to be Italian explorer John Cabot’s descriptions of ‘new found landes’ and a sea swarming with fish in 1497 that drew fishermen to the north of the continent.
and around 1600 English fishing captains still reported cod shoals
By the beginning of the 16th-century Basque fishermen were travelling to the region to fish and, by 1580, around 10,000 European fishermen were making the transatlantic voyage to the area each year to fish for cod.
Channel Island fishermen were among these and by the 1750s they had set up lucrative trade routes between Canada, Europe and America, establishing bases on the Gaspé Coast where they could salt and prepare the cod.
the sea there is full of fish that can be taken not only with nets but with fishing-baskets
John Cabot after his voyage in 1497
It was easy to fish in the open sea for cod at any time of year, but fishing inshore was far more difficult.
It was here that the Channel Island fishermen made their biggest catches.
Escape
For some early settlers, life in Canada was a move to prosperity and business success – an escape from problems back home to a new land of opportunity.
But for others, life in Gaspé in the 17th and 18th century was one of debt and eventually bankruptcy in a harsh climate thousands of miles from home.
Many of these young fishermen took up jobs with Charles Robin, the Le Boutillier Brothers, Fruings, Janvrin & Janvrin and Le Masurier, eventually marrying and settling down.
The Jersey communities fitted in well in Gaspé, and despite the fact they were a minority, speaking Jersey-French in their communities and businesses, they were the economic giants of the area.
It was financial problems back home, as well as the disappearance of the cod trade, that eventually led to the dwindling of the Jersey fishing community in Quebec.
In the 1870s and 1880s they suffered a credit crunch, as the Jersey banks crashed leaving many companies in huge debt.
Borrowed
The crash of the Jersey Banking Company in 1883 had a serious impact on the Canadian-Jersey companies, many of whom had borrowed heavily from the bank.
When the banks crashed, vast sums that had been made during the fishing monopoly years were wiped out.
The credit system, where fishermen would receive all they needed from the company insured against future catches, also left many workers heavily in debt to their employers.
Few of the residents of the Gaspé Coast could be persuaded to continue to live in such a harsh climate as the demand for cod dried up.
Taxation
Many houses on the coast were burned down intentionally by their owners to avoid taxation on buildings, and a road constructed in the 1920s to bring more prosperity into the area had the opposite effect – everybody wanted to leave.
The few buildings that remain are truly survivors of a lost era.
Opportunities from the hand of cod
One of the biggest companies on the Gaspé coast was operated by Charles Robin, a Jersey merchant, who set up a fishing post at Paspebiac in 1767 after Canada passed to the English.
Although Robin was forced back to Jersey at the onset of the American Revolution, he returned in 1783 and took advantage of the lack of competition to set up a fishing monopoly.
In 1802, Robin retired to Jersey, where he died in 1824, but he had trained his nephews Philip and James to take over the company.
But the firm had borrowed heavily from the Jersey Banking Company which crashed after the bank manager Philip Gosset was caught gambling with the bank’s funds. This eventually brought an end to Jersey’s monopoly of the cod trade in Quebec.
