East Quoddy Tours

30/10/2024

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16/10/2024

Have you heard? We have a new website! ⚓️🛟🧭

www.eastquoddytours.com (link in "about" section)

13/10/2024

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you from Campobello Island!
🍂🇨🇦🌞

06/10/2024

The Porch at Friars Bay Inn and Cottages 🌞

Good Sunday Morning everyone!! Just a reminder we are still open until October 13th. Full menu available and we will be closing out the season with our Thanksgiving Turkey Dinner with all the fixings.

27/09/2024

Curious about what happens at the Campobello Island Seaglass Festival? Of course you are! You’re in luck; it’s not a mermaid secret!  But where to find all of these incredible stoppers, collected by Festival Founder Stephanie Anthony, may still be a mermaid secret! Following last week’s newsl...

23/09/2024

20/09/2024

20/09/2024

We couldn't have done it without you! ⚓

From beautiful sunsets to breaching whales, we enjoyed each and every tour with you. Getting to know you all was the unexpected highlight of our summer! 🌞

Looking forward to seeing you all again next year,
East Quoddy Tours

20/09/2024

The full moon rises over a fishing boat sailing past a weir off the coast of Campobello. The Grand Manan ferry is visible on the horizon.

20/09/2024

🐟 This month the Connors Brothers fish factory announced mass layoffs. Back during the Great Depression, that same factory saw Blacks Harbour thrive under its visionary owners Neil and Allan McLean.

The McLean brothers had been asked by another set of brothers, the Connors who the factory is still named after, to buy them out in the 1920s.

When the McLeans first visited Blacks Harbour and found a mess. Most homes were tar paper shacks. The cannery was only open in Summer. Surrounding it was a vast camp where summer workers pitched the tents they lived in.

The McLeans looked around and saw potential. Together they bought the Connors Brothers fish plant and ordered production to be doubled. Then they doubled it again.

They embarked on building workers housing and expanding to different types of seafood that could keep the factory running year-round instead of only in summers.

Just when things were going well, the Great Depression hit.

The McLeans vowed there would be no layoffs, declaring to their worried employees: “If anybody goes broke then we will all go broke together.”

Neil in particular was outspoken, publicly demanding that government and businesses stop cutbacks and begin deficit spending to boost the economy, declaring that the cuts were “stopping the pain by killing the boy.”

In a remarkable public spat with a government Minister, he tried to explain his economic theory in smaller words: “A man or woman labors and receives money. He or she then spends money at a store … goods and not money represents income.” What he meant was that what mattered wasn’t the number of dollars a worker made, but whether that was enough to actually buy the consumer goods they needed.

Exasperated, he added, “Finance ought to take its rightful place in New Brunswick’s school textbooks!”

The brothers put their own money where their mouths were, spending their cash reserves and savings on keeping their workers employed. With nobody buying their canned fish, they ordered a variety of make-work projects.

New housing for workers was constructed. They established their own shipyard and began building boats. Their cannery was expanded in every direction on a mind-boggling scale. By 1936, the Connors Brothers factory, which sat empty, held the title of “The Largest Sardine Cannery in the British Empire.”

That year they resumed production with a card up their sleeves. A huge problem they faced was that the protectionist British House of Lords declared that only canned herrings from the Mediterranean island of Sardinia could be labelled “sardines.” The same product sold under the name “canned herrings” sold poorly.

Working with Canadian diplomats, the McLeans had secretly spent the Depression successfully convincing the governments of every other country in the Commonwealth (except for Britain) to allow them to call their product “sardines.”

With production resuming with the new brand name “sardines” and focussing on markets from Australia to South Africa, Blacks Harbour became an icon of economic prosperity as the rest of the Maritimes languished.

In a curious twist, the current owners of the Connors Brothers factory that ordered the mass layoffs earlier this month is a massive British hedge fund.

📰 The full version of this week’s article (with more photos) can be read here: https://backyardhistory.ca/f/the-fish-that-saved-a-town

📸 This photo was taken in the 1950s and a handwritten note on the back proudly boasts "Today, Connors Bros. is Canada's leading canned fish producer!" (Provincial Archives of New Brunswick P93\CH\288 [colourized])

📘 Order the book ‘Backyard History: Forgotten Stories From Atlantic Canada’s Past’ here: backyardhistory.ca/book

19/09/2024

I thought I would share a comparison of the 2 minkes whales in our area missing their dorsal fin. The top images are of the new minke we just documented yesterday, you can see the shape of the dorsal is slightly different from Slice and the newly sighted whale also has some entanglement scars visible on both the left and right hand side of the animal. I know it's not easy to tell from the images but the newly sighted whale is smaller than Slice (Slice is a large minke).
If we continue to see this minke we will have to think of a great affectionate name. The names we use for our local minkes are affectionate names and not officially catalogued named like the humpbacks are (thank you to Center for Coastal Studies for maintaining the catalog for the GOM humpback whales).

18/09/2024

Disclosure: This guide would not have been possible without the support of Visit Southwest New Brunswick, Homeport Suites, the Cap Sill Restaurant, the BOATIQUE, Milberry Marketing and the overwhelming kindness and hospitality from Deer Island locals I met along my travels. For decades, people have....

17/09/2024

Seats available tomorrow (Wednesday) 11:00-1:00

17/09/2024

16/09/2024

Whale watching, anyone? 😀

Text, email, or send us a message!

506-396-BOAT
eastquoddytours @ gmail

15/09/2024

September has been beautiful so far! Today's tour saw whales, tuna, and more - including the Beachcombing Tour happening at the same time. 🌞 Campobello Island Seaglass Festival