Hand Troller song - Forums Archive

bearhair

2012-03-06 21:02:30

Came across this while trolling the 'net and thought I would share:

Here is the link to the webpage where you can listen to the song: http://www.workinglives.ca/trolling/song-hand-troller.html

The song Hand Troller takes place in the 1930s when the Great Depression caused mass unemployment. Hundreds of the jobless built or purchased small boats and trolling gear and spent the summer months handlining on the fishing grounds off Vancouver Island.

Hand Troller

Words by John McLachlan

I am a hand troller in the Georgia Strait waters

I work hard for little - it’s what I must do

My boat’s a double ender, sleek and slender

A sprit sail moves her across the blue

In the early mornin’ dawn I row out in the calm

To the place where I think all those fish may be

The coho, the bluebacks on the herring they feed

It’s my Cowichan Spinner I hope they see

(Chorus): I am a hand troller I work hard for my dollar

I don’t get much sleep from May to October

I curse the bad weather but in fair or better

There’s no life like - a hand troller’s

I am a hand troller, my life’s very simple

For five months I live in a shack by the sea

I share with others food and provisions

For you never know when you’ll be the one in need

It’s rowing all day from the 15th of May

With one line over in all kinds of seas

A hard life of hard work and for what kind of fee?

Two cents a pound from the Cannery

(Chorus)

(Instrumental)

I am a hand troller - in the best of conditions

I might make three hundred when the season is through

Hardly enough to last me the winter

The times are tough - the jobs are so few

But I’ve got my dignity, I’ve got my pride

The bad times will end, prices will rise

Maybe buy a gas boat - add a few lines

Hope everything works out just fine

(Chorus)

(Chorus)

Abundance

2012-03-07 01:06:09

The more things change, the more they stay the same. The depression is when the fishery seems to have really taken off, or so it seems to me. The ability to get your own food and make a few dollars on the side had a real appeal. And a guy could get into it for the price of a cheap wooden dory. That's what my great, great grandparents (by my great grandmothers second husband) did back in the teens and twenties. They fished from Cape Addington to Cape Muzon, handlining a plain herring from a dory. They had a two horse engine, but whenever that thing would inevitably break down they had sails and oars. They fished only in the morning, but apparently some really driven highliners would also head out for the afternoon bite. Most of them just socialized, drank and smoked all afternoon. Hundreds of little boats would be rafted together off of Kelly Cove or Hole in the Wall, or pulled up on the beach in front of shacks. I can still find some of the remains from old time handtroller shacks in some areas. They caught about as many fish in a five month season as we would in a week nowadays. And they died by the droves. Hardly any of them survived to old age, at least from the stories that I have heard. I can think of at least three stories from that time that begin and end with "And they went out in a snowstorm". They were a foolhardy, crazy bunch. It is sad I suppose that they are gone, but someday somebody will be talking about us like this. Hopefully they remember us as being as cheerful about our pleasantly miserable labors as these old timers.