Interviewing: Vincent SnowInterviewer: Charles Halibuston Question: Now, how about the beginning, Vincent? You grew up in Digby, Vincent?Answer: Right.Question: So do you, I wanted particularly you know about the scallop business and how it began in this area. There wasn't always a scallop fleet in Digby.Answer: No.Question: What do you remember about the earliest scalloping?Answer: Ah, the thing that I remember about the scallop business, at the start, when I was probably about 9 or 10 years old, I suppose. Question: Would that be around 1920?Answer: Around the twenties, the early twenties, I suppose. My father, he took some time off from the sea. He was a sea captain, a deep sea captain, and heQuestion: What was his name?Answer: William. Captain William Snow. And my uncle, Vernon Bent, at that time, was interested in going in the scallop business and the boats were very small then. I remember they were much smaller than they are today. They were-for fuel they gasoline, almost all of the boats- used gasoline, andQuestion: Were those boats like our cape Island boats, or were they decked in?Answer: Ah, they had a little deck in the front, they were more like the Cape Island boat and yes they were open for the most part.Question: An open cockpit towards the back end?Answer: Toward the bow.Question: Towards the bow.Answer: Yeah, they had a little, sort of a little cabin toward the bow which is what the Cape Island boats have, as you know. And, anyway, he had my father interested to the point where he, I guess, whether my father bought a boat or they shared in buying a boat, and they went dragging, as they say, dragging the scallops or raking them out in the Bay of Fundy, and I remember them going through the winter out there with the tide and there would be a lot of ice cakes around, you know, and they'd wend their way when the weather was calm enough, when there was little wind, and they'd fish through the daylight hours and they'd return just before dark, and sometimes with the tide, and with the ice cakes coming in, I remember. But anyway, they were shucking their scallops shore those times. They used to bring them in and shuck them sometimes.Question: How many men were on that boat? Just your father and Vernon Bent?Answer: Yeah, just the two of them, I believe. They might have been or had somebody go along to help shuck the scallops. They'd shuck some outside and mostly ashore, then in those days.Question: Where did they shuck them?Answer: Ah, oh, I remember, Rollie Warmal, you see he was the, he and, Rollie Warmal and Ern Vantassel, I believe, were probably the first two to drag scallops and they first got them here in the Annapolis Basin. They found them there, and then it was later on, of course, that they went into the Bay of Fundy, but I remember that on one occasion, probably when I was 11 or 12 years old, they were along side of a wharf at the racket and they had this pile of scallops there. I remember they shoveled them out on the beach there, and I went down and they said that, well, if you want to shuck scallops, here's a knife, you know what I mean, and you go to it. They were paying maybe $0.50 a pail or something, I guess , at that time, and I made a dollar that day.Question: So, you were shucking them right out on the beach?Answer: Right there, in the outdoors. We wereQuestion: And what did Rollie, was it Rollie Warmal, Roland?Answer: Rollie, ah we called him Rollie Warmal, but Roland I suppose his name was.Question: And, was he the first fellow that dragged for scallops?Answer: I think that he probably was, that a - I know it was Jim Trahan, the blacksmith, and Rollie Warmal that conceived that you know, a type of drag, and there was some contention I know in later years as to who- they wanted to get a patent done on the thing as to who was most responsible for, what do you say, creating this type of drag, and so, as I say, it was in the early twenties as far as I know, as I remember it. Question: I see. Who, was there actually a battle about it, any court actions or anything aboutAnswer: I think there was a court, some court case over that, I'm not sure about that but I know there was some trouble over it anyway as toQuestion: And Trahan's Blacksmith Shop was just at the end of your street, King Street?Answer: It was, no, it was on first Avenue. It's where the Digby Forging, don't they call it Digby Forging now?Question: I see, I see. That was Trahan's place.Answer: that's right.Question: when you say they first conceived the idea of the gear, was that the particular type of gear or was that scallop dragging, period? Had they found scallop drags or were they copying scallop drags from somewhere else?Answer: they, I, maybe they got some idea of how to make them from some other place, I don't know, but they came up with something different again that would be suitable for dragging here in the basin and then eventually in the bay of fundy, you see. AndQuestion: Was there any scallop dragging going on further down the Bay of Fundy or on Georges Bank or anywhere you know of before Rollie Warmal started dragging here?Answer: Ah, as far as I know, the only scallop dragging that amounted to anything was Digby for quite a few years, yeah. Then in later years, of course, down around Lunenburg, they used to set out and went to Georges and dragged scallops there.Question: But that would be good deal later, wouldn't it?Answer: yeahQuestion: Wouldn't that be in the 1940's or so?Answer: I think something like the 1940's of the 1950's, yeah, that they started, because for one reason, we had a number of boats that came from the south shore of Nova Scotia, that came to drag scallops here. There was a fellow by the name of Parks, he had a sort of little tugboat type boat. There was Venice Wilmouth who had the "Lazaren" he called it, the little- it was a small vessel, a two- masted vessel and he used to drag scallops here and a fellow by the name of Bacham and Strum, those fellows were from the South Shore.Question: What period would that be? What years would you be talking about?Answer: Ah, well it would be in the 40's. we started in 1936 to buy scallops.Question: So these were fellows that you brought from?Answer: That's right, yeah.Question: Going back to the twenties when your father and Vernon Bent were fishing, were there other boats, there was Warmal,Answer: That's right. There was a number of other boats but it was a small fleet and small boats and Question: Do you remember any of the other people involved?Answer: Ah, one of the first ones, now Frank Anderson, who was the assistant-manger, I think, or he might have been the manger of the Maritime Fish Corporation then, he had a boat, let's see, he had Shirley Tidd, I think, was running his boat and it was one of the first and one of the oldest I know that I remember in later years that was still fishing, and the "Earl h.", she was named after his son, Earl, H., yeah.Question: Any other boats at that period? Was there anybody from Parker Cove fishing out of here at that time?Answer: There would be some , yeah. The Longmires were into it. They came into it in the 20's, sometime in the 20's.Question: Did they, in the 20's?Answer: yeah, and there were people like, when we, when I first started in, there was like Ernest McGraw, Cyril McWhinnie had the "Aldenmack", a small boatQuestion: This was 1936.Answer: This was 1936, yes, and a few years later, when Cyril gave it up and Ernie McGraw still was carrying on or he owned the boat, George, a fellow by the name of Captain George King came to me one day and wanted to know if I would share with him in buying this boat from Ernie McGraw and that, by the way that was about what, a 45 or 50 foot boat, small- they were not very low in the water and, you know that he and I shared in the purchase of that boat, we both invested $350, $700- the boat was already to go, machinery and all the gear and everything.Question: That was the full purchase price? $700?Answer: The full, yeah, the full purchase price.Question: What years would that be?Answer: That would be in the 40's, probably or some, the early 40's, I would imagine, and Question: And George King, is he related to Jack King?Answer: Father of Jack.Question: Jack's father?Answer: Yeah. And he used to give me a share, you know. He was the captain of the boat and, that used to catch two to three half barrels of scallops a day, about as many as a lot of those boats are getting today.Question: When you say a half barrel, was that a scallop barrel?Answer: Yeah, they were waxed inside. They held about 125 or 130 lbs. if they were full, but there would be brine in with the scallops at the same time.Question: So how many pounds a day was that boat catching, then, 250 or 300 pounds?Answer: That is something like that. Yeah. And during the daylight hours, they'd come in a little after dark possibly.Question: Now, did I understand you saying earlier that Clayton got into the scallop business before you did?Answer: Before I did, yes.Question: How long was your father involved in fishing scallops?Answer: oh, I only remember two or three years he went, I guess.Question: And then did he go back to the banks?Answer: And then he went down to the deep sea fishing again. After that. He did this during the winter, I guess and the hardest part of the year when, you know. Question: At that time, Vincent, in the early 20's, were there fish buyers in Digby like we have today?Answer: Oh yes.Question: So there was Maritime.Answer: And there was Syda and cousins, I think, before my time. I remember them talking about Syda and Cousins. Hayletts around the retail market and they used to buy from the inshore fishermen, and that's all we bought. We bought from the inshore fishermen. We didn't buy from the offshore fishermen.Question: Who else would have been in the fish buying business then?Answer: Of course, there were the Maritime Fish were the big buyers. And they had, like, they bought from Centreville, you know, the Raymonds. Ern Raymond who was the father of Keith Raymond. They used to buy the fish down there in Centreville for Maritime Fish, and let's see, oh yeah, there would be Hayden, a man by the name of Hayden, who had a wharf to the west of the Maritime wharves. And I remember, That's where there was a dory tied at one of his wharves one day and I went down there and it had a long line on it, and I mean, quite a lot of play, and that's how I happened to row a dory, I got in it and the oars were left in the dory and I fooled around, I remember, after school one day, at Mr. Hayden's wharf.Question: There was nobody around in the front of the town buying. Answer: Now there was Sproule, there was people by the name of- I don't know whether he had boats or not. He had a store- a fit out store and Milbury had a fit out store for the fishermen in that area where the fish company is today in the racket.Question: Do you remember how your father, then, when he was fishing for scallops, how he sold them? And where he sold them?Answer: Ah, I know my brother, Boyd, was the sales manager for a National Fish Company in Halifax at the time and I know they used to ship some scallops down to him.Question: How did they package them to ship them? Answer: They would, now I would imagine, they would be shipping them in half barrels. I don't know whether they put them in boxes or not, but we were, by the way, I might say this, that my brother, Clayton, and I, they call him Bucky, as you know, anyway he and I were the first to grade scallops in Digby and we out them up in little plastic bags, about a pound in a bag and we packed them into wooden boxes, but first of all, you'd take the scallops and you'd wash them through the brine, and you'd cull them, you know what I mean to say, there was the brown scallops you used to pick out if they didn't look very good or there was a lot of foreign matter, like even the little baby cod fish, you know, that would come in with the scallops sometimes, and we'd wash them through and clean them up and then grade them for size, and now I had a salesman in Detroit who wanted the very small scallops so I'd pack off the small ones for him and they were the size that he used to buy the Cape Cod scallops. They get higher prices for that. Well, he paid me a bit more for them and, of course, he had three, what did he have, a very large restaurant in Detroit. I was there visiting there one time and there were three parts to it, I know, and there was a long line of people waiting to get in, you know, a very popular restaurant, and he served me some of these scallops when I was there so Question: So you sold them direct to that restaurant, then, in effect?Answer: That's right. Well, I had a salesman there and he used to sell them. He took me to this restaurant to meet this man that ran this restaurant when I visited there one day, butQuestion: O.K., well, now, in 1936, you got into the scallop business yourself.Answer: Right. And we sold the fisherman gasoline and oil, scallop kegs, and I sometimes used to buy their groceries for them, you know, if they were fishing night time, and the stores were closed, or whatever, and they would put their orders in.Question: You mentioned scallop barrels or half barrels and scallop kegs. What do you mean by that? What were they made of? Where did they come from?Answer: We bought them, first we bought them from, it would be, Oxners Limited, I think it was, in Chester, Chester Basin, actually, and then when he died or went out of the business, his son-in-law, by the name of Eric Countway, we bought, oh, we used to buy 200 barrels at a time, half barrels there were at the time.Question: Why do you call them half barrels?Answer: Well, that's the size that they were. A full barrel was about 200 lbs.Question: Do you mean it was a barrel that's cut in two in someway to make it a half barrel?Answer: No, they were made smaller, that's all. And they had steal hoops on them, you know, they weren't like apple barrels, and they were vey tight, water tight, and if they weren't quite water tight, we used to swell them and make then water tight to hold the brine.Question: And when you packed the scallops in those, did you use a liner at all, or was it straight in the wood?Answer: they were waxed inside. The wood was waxed inside.Question: With paraffin?Answer: they were burned to begin with, a sort of, I guess maybe the buring was to cure the wood or something, and then they were waxed so there was protection, you know. The scallops didn't hit the wood, in other words, directly.Question: Were there other suppliers of barrels?Answer: Yes. When they got through producing them, you see, in the 30's, by the way, the late 30's, we bought a lot of barrels from Bealer and the Baxter in Bridgetown, and I almost believed, now that I think of it, that they were the first before we bought from Oxner and Countway. Yeah, Bealer and Baxter. We bought, oh thousands and thousands of barrels, and Clayton and I, at the same time, we were running the golf links in the summertime at that time, 1937, and we were in the fish business as well. Question: Well, at that time, the scallop fishery would have been only a wintertime fishery, wouldn't it?Answer: Ah, it was seasonal from the middle of October until the end of April, I believe then, and then after a few years, they went beyond, lets see, they closed from seven or seven and a half miles off shore, and then beyond that, you could fish in the summertime.Question: Would that be about 1950 before there was a summer fishery?Answer: Around the late 40's I would say, or around 1950, yeah, when they brought in the summer fishery, it would be around the late 40's.Question: Back to these barrels again, how many scallops, how many pounds or how many count or how many scallops, gallonsAnswer: We used to put them up in gallons and after we washed them out of the barrels.Question: Is that how you sold scallops at that time, by the gallon?Answer: By the pound and by the gallon. The gallons- we used to get our cans from the States in Boston- American-sized gallon and they would hold eight pounds of scallops. Question: These are- now you are talking about cans.Answer: That's right. The cans-we bought the cans from Boston.Question: Something like a paint- like a gallon paint can, is that what.Answer: They were tin cans, yeah, I suppose they would, they were tin cans anyway, and they were shellacked inside. They had a shellac lining.Question: How did, so when did you decide to ship, why would you sometimes ship in a barrel and sometimes in a gallon can?Answer: Well, the first few years we were in the business, most everything was shipped in the half barrels, the kegs. They were properly called kegs.Question: All right. I Answer: Then we went into the more specialized business by shipping further. You could, well, you pack your scallops in cans and ice them, see, now when they were shipped in the kegs, they weren't, well, we used to sometimes put a junk of ice in the centre because that's where they heat up first is in the centre of the keg. And that would keep them cool. But to keep them longer, we would pack them in the tins or the cans, as you might call them, eight pounds to a can, and then there would be, but then we would, an apple barrel, by the way, we bought a lot of apple barrels, and we would put four of these gallon cans in the bottom, in the centre there would be five and another four on top, so let's see, there was thirteen or fourteen cans in a barrel, gallons, with ice, you see, all through the cans and on top. Of course, you would probably have about eight or ten inches of ice on the top of the barrel and you could ship them further, of course, and they would keep better, you know, fresher by doing it that way. Question: How many pounds or how many gallon were there in one of these half barrels?Answer: Well, thirteen or fourteen/Question: No, in the half barrels?Answer: Oh, in the half barrels? How many..oh, well we didn't ship the cans in those.Question: No. But how many gallons or pounds did a half barrel hold?Answer: 125 or 130 pounds. Loose.Question: That would be about 15 gallons, then.Answer: Yeah, that's right. Or a little better-15 or 16 gallons.Question: And, what method or what were your markets when you were selling in the barrel, when you were selling only in the barrels, what markets were you shipping to?Answer: I would say that a large part of our shipment to Boston and the Boston area. Some went to New York and there was the odd time, we had a man who was interested in buying our scallops way down in the Southern States, but we didn't ship many down there. In the cooler weather, we did, you know.Question: In the barrels? Did you ship them down there?Answer: Yeah, in the wintertime, in the cool weather.Question: were you selling through brokers, through salesmen?Answer: Well, we sold direct to him and we sold direct to Powell & Nickerson, a company in Boston we shipped to. That was direct to them.Question: That's Powell & Nickerson?Answer: Powell & Nickerson. And they were people originally from Nova Scotia, the Powells and the Nickerson.Question: I see. Were they brokers like Reba and so on?Answer: They were wholesalers but I don't know whether they were retailers or not, but I think they were wholesalers for the most part. The Consolidated Lobster Company was another company we used to sell to in Boston area andQuestion: Well, now again, were they buying them so that they could ship them around there?Answer: They were actually distributors, I suppose you could call them, yeah.Question: What was the price you were getting when you started your business in 1936?Answer: When we started in 1936, we were working on a commission and we started with $0.50 a keg. For 125-130 pounds, we were getting commission, for the most part. We shipped to Boston. We did a little business on our own, you know, we bought and sold, but then we figured that $0.50 a keg wasn't enough because we were taking shrinkage sometimes on that too, you know, so we struck for $0.75 a keg, I remember, and we got it.Question: When you were, so when you were buying on a commission, you were also buying barrels. Now who paid for the barrels?Answer: We paid for the barrels.Question: Out of the $0.50 a keg?Answer: Let's see,Question: Or did the fishermen pay for the kegs?Answer: The fisherman, yeah, that's right. We sold the kegs to the fishermen, right. They were paying for the barrels. They were about $0.35, I think, $0.35 or $0.50 a keg, then, that they paid us for those kegs. That's right. No. But if we were doing it on our own, if we bought them outright, we used to give the fishermen a chance either to sell outright at a certain price, because we'd try to figure out the market ahead of time, and then we'd get the market price everyday by telegraph. Yeah, we used to use the telegraph in those days, of course, we have the C.N. and the C.P. Both had telegraph office here, and we'd get the reports of what they sold in Boston that day, to Powell & Nickerson, what Powell & Nickerson got and what they were willing to pay us, and now we said to the fishermen we'll either pay you on the basis of tomorrow's market, see, because we shipped the scallops today, or we'd pay on the day after's market. You can take the results of that, or you can sell them for a certain price, after we really got going there, after a year or two, but that's the way it went.Question: How many people were employed in that business when you started up?Answer: ah, we had- there was Clayton and I, of course, and we had- when we just had the scallops, we only had one or two men working with us.Question: When you were selling by the keg or barrel, did the fishermen actually pack them in the barrels themselves or did you do that?Answer: Oh, they were in the barrels when they sold to us but then we'd take them out of the carrels and wash them in the big tubs. We used to have big dip nets.Question: I see. Even when you were just kind of acting as a commission agent at $0.50 a barrel, you stillAnswer: We still washed them through the brine and cleaned them up, you see, and cull them and take all the foreign matter out of them, and pack them off and ship them in the kegs, yeah.Question: Now, when you- so Boston was your main market?Answer: At the starting, yeah, the first year or two, two or three years.Question: How did you transport them to Boston?Answer: Well, they'd go by truck. I know there was Bill Hazelton used to take them from here to Yarmouth and they'd go on the ferry from Yarmouth to Boston.Question: Did he operate a regular trucking service?Answer: Yes, he did. Yes.Question: Bill Hazelton.Answer: Yeah, Bill Hazelton, yeah. They lived on the north end of King Street in his father's home. They lived there.Question: And, did he- did that service go every day or every other day?Answer: Six days a week. We operated six days a week.Question: What happened to them in Yarmouth, then? What ships areAnswer: Let me see now. The Yarmouth boat, yeah, was it three times a week the Yarmouth boat…that's right too, but he was available for trucking, I say, six days a week, but I believe that we had three days a week that we shipped to Boston.Question: What shipAnswer: Every other day.Question: I see. Was there one ship that operated three times a week?Answer: The Yarmouth, ah Question: The "S.S. Yarmouth"Answer: Actually the "S.S. Yarmouth" I think it was, and the "Evangeline" I think was the name of the other. There was two ships going, I think, between Yarmouth and Boston.Question: Were they same- belong to the same steamship company? There was a Yarmouth and Boston Steamship Company or something.Answer: Yeah, they belonged to the same steamship-and the C.P.-they were C.P. ships, so far as I knowQuestion: Oh, were they? Were there any ships coming in here at that time from Boston or New York?Answer: Only that, let's see, in the late 30's early 40's there was a, in the summertime, you know, there were cruise ships.Question: I see.Answer: One from Boston every week and one from New York every other week, I remember.Question: Do you remember their names?Answer: No, I don't remember their names.Question: But they didn't carry cargo back?Answer: No, they were just cruise ships.Question: Now when the business changed, and you got shipped in these cans, how much later would that have been after 1936?Answer: We started shipping the cans, let's see, it was in the early 50's, probably '54 before I started shipping cans.Question: So that's 10 or 15 years that you were shipping in kegs before that happened?Answer: Yeah. We sometimes packed scallops into boxes, fillet boxes, and then, oh yes, the fillet boxes were what, 20 pounds. They'd hold 20 pounds of fillets. We'd line them with parchment, these boxes, and then we'd produced, then what we had, I remember we used to have our boxes made down in Meteghan and the Comeau Brothers, you know, the father, I guess, started the business.Question: E.M. Comeau & sons.Answer: Yeah, that's right. E.M Comeau & son, and we got them to make a ten pound box and it was all printed up, you know, suitably for scallops, and we packed those. I think that started probably in the 40's sometime. Yeah, sometime in the 40's we started that.Question: Where did those boxes go, this was your own - nobody else was shipping in boxes like that then. That was just your own, that was Snow Brothers, was it?Answer: Yeah, that's right, yeah. Snow Brother Registered, we called ourselves.Question: Right. And where did you ship those boxes?Answer: Well, there- my brother, Boyd, who was, as I say, I mentioned, I don't know whether I mentioned to you, but I mentioned to somebody, about being the sale manager of National Fish, anyway, in 1929, I think, he went down to Liverpool, he and a Captain Myers, and they started a business themselves, the Mersey people, the Mersey Fish Company sold out to them or there were Nickersons that owned the place and ran it, and anyway, they operated there for a few years and it was in depression times, and things didn't go very well, so finally, my brother, Boyd, moved to Montreal and he became a broke up there and we- he arranged a lot of our sales at Montreal and we used to ship to Quebec and throughout Ontario, different points in Ontario and Toronto, and so forth, and so he had a big connection, you see, with all the wholesalers and retailers there, and he used to sell quite a lot of our scallops from there.Question: Were your shipments, so was your business at that point, then, after Boyd went to Montreal, was your market mainly in the Montreal and Toronto area?Answer: Ah, our Canadian market, most of it, yes. We still shipped quite a few scallops to the states.Question: How did you make your shipments to the Canadian market?Answer: They all went by train, you know, by ferry across here to Saint John and then by train.Question: So that was a daily service.Answer: That was a daily service, yeah, and we could, as I told somebody, that we could count on the shipment leaving here within minutes, you might say, and arriving within minutes.Question: What time of day did you get them out of here?Answer: Ah, they left here in the early part of the afternoon. Of course, the saint John boat, you know, left here the ferry left here atQuestion: At two o'clock or so?Answer: Two o'clock. Around two or three o'clock, it was.Question: And it was a three hour run to Saint John to meet the train?Answer: That's right.Question: And when would those scallops be in Montreal or Toronto?Answer: Well, they'd leave here, let's see, as you say, two or three o'clock in the afternoon, and they'd arrive at about noontime, I think, in Montreal the next day or they'd arrive in Boston. If we were shipping to Boston, they'd arrive noontime.Question: Oh, you could route them through Saint John to Boston as well, could you?Answer: That is right. They had that train service from Saint John to Boston.Question: What, after, then, you developed this little box, you were really in the business of buying scallops then. The fishermen had nothing to do with where you shipped them or what the price was?Answer: No, we for the most part, I think, probably altogether, we bought at a certain price and sold at a certain price.Question: Yeah. How long did that situation prevail where the fishermen had the option of saying I want my scallops shipped to Boston to so and so, or whatever?Answer: Well, they didn't care where they went so long as you gave them the market, you know, figured out the market price. Oh, that went on until, I would say, until the middle, let's see, the middle 40'sQuestion: Middle 40's.Answer: Yeah.Question: As of the middle 40's, what kind of equipment were the fishermen using, and who were the fishermen you were buying from/Answer: Ah, at one time, well, there was one winter I bought from the whole fleet. There was about 25 or 30 boats there. The source of supply had gone down to a point where some of the boats had given up, you know, and these ones from the south shore weren't coming and the ones from Pubnico, I don't know, there might have been several from there form Middle West Pubnico, but it wasn't worth while for Mr. Richardson, who was the manager of the fish company over at National Sea Products, as I guess it was then. He said you might as well look after my boats as well as your own and so we did. But,Question: That would be the fleet in the mid 40's?Answer: Ah, that would be the mid 40's, I think, probably that the source of supply went down to that point, but in the late 30's, from, let's see, when we first went in 1936, '37, '38, yes, and probably '39, there was something like, between Digby and the Bayshore, a lot of these boats were from the Bayshore- Centreville had at that time, probably 12 or 15 boats. Altogether, the whole fleet would be about 80 or 90 boats when we first started.Question: I see.Answer: Must have been around 80 or 90 boats registered.Question: And it dropped down to 25 or 30 boats?Answer: Down to around 30 or 35 anyway.Question: At that point, when the fleet had diminished like that, what kind of daily catches would the boats expect to get?Answer: Ah, they were down to two or three barrels. In the late 30's, they were getting as high, of course, they would fish all the fine weather they would get, sometimes they'd stay out for two or three days to a time, you know, night and day, and they'd come in with maybe 10 or 15 barrels, half barrels, kegs as we called them.Question: After three days, after two or three days fishing.Answer: Yeah, maybe 12-15 barrels. Yes, there again, there was a difference in the size of boats and, you know, the gear that they handled.Question: Well now, the dragging gear was the same in '45 as it was in '35.Answer: Pretty well the same, yeah. I think 18-foot bars they had and probably six drags, six three-foot drags on the bar.Question: The number of drags would, perhaps, depend on the power they had in their engines, would it?Answer: I think, yes, right. The bigger boats would carry heavier drags and more, butQuestion: What kind of boats had they become in 1945? Were they still much the same as they were in '35?Answer: They were still, yeah, run by gasoline and very much the same engines.Question: Had they the elevated afterdeck decked over as we know today?Answer: Yes, when we first started in the late 30's, they were decked over, yeah, the boats were decked over then for the most part. No, they weren't like they were in the middle 20's.Question: I see.Answer: Yeah.Question: So that had changed between the early 20's and the 30's?Answer: Yeah, they would go further a field and they would stay out, you know, longer hours and, you know, the boats were larger.Question: Do you remember who the, I suppose there were highline fishermen, then, just as there are today.Answer: That's right.Question: In the mid 40's, do you remember, does anybody stick out in your mind as being among the better fishermen?Answer: The fishermen, yes, I don't hesitate in saying that Wilbur Robinson and Elwood Oliver were very steady fishermen and they looked after their fish really well. Don Turner and his brother, they were good fishermen.Question: Were they from around Granville, the Turners?Answer: Ah, Litchfield, Don and his brother. Ah, Wilbur Robinson, of course, as you know, is from over the shore, Parkers Cove, and Elwood Oliver, and of course, Horace Snow From over in port Wade, he used to sell to us once in a while. He built his own boat and he had a nice size boat, a lovely boat, and as I say, Ben d'Eon, who is still living. He's in his early nineties now and they tell me he is very alert yet, and he used to look after scallops and they were good - they produced a good quantity of scallops and very best quality, I would say.Question: Did those, you mentioned Ben d'Eon with a two - masted schooner. Did he, did that schooner and did the other boats have wheelhouse on them fore or aft at that time?Answer: Well, the little two- masted schooner, of course, they had their fo'c's'les you know, forecastles, and the regular fishermen - they went sword fishing when they were in between scallop seasons, they would go sword fishing and like that. Question: That schooner wasn't operating under sail when it was sword fish and dragging for scallops?Answer: Well, I think they used sail, too, and they had power, of course, but I think that they had sail too. They used to use sail.Question: Well, now, these other boats like Wilbur Robinsons and SnowAnswer: They didn't have sails.Question: What did they, where was the wheelhouse?Answer: Ah, they had a wheelhouse in back, yeah, those boats then, when they were covered over, the decks - when they had the decks on the boats, the wheelhouse was on the back for the most part.Question: And they dragged their drags from the side, then?Answer: Yes, that's right. Yeah, they were planked on the sides, you know, to protect them, the boat itself, and they dragged from the side. Yeah, today the scallop boats, as you say, the wheelhouse is up front, isn't it? And they have quite large wheelhouses. The boats today are very wide and they're deeper, of course, and the tonnage is quite a lot greater than it was when we bought scallops.Question: Now when I came to Digby in 1962, a lot of the scallop fleet were what looked like converted sailing vessels, maybe. Or there were several Newfoundland schooners and slender, sleek looking hulls- some of the others that had been built for power. As you say, that's changed now. They look a lot stubbier, but were those boatsAnswer: They were double enders, a lot of them, when we first went in, they were sharp on both and stern and bow, you know, double enders. And the one that George King and I bought was a double ender boat, the "Algamack."Question: Were they all, were they mostly, most of those boats that came into the scallop fishery, had they been built originally for other things or were some of them builtAnswer: Oh, quite a few of them were builtQuestion: SpecificallyAnswer: Some of them were built specifically for dragging scallops, yes, that's right. And a lot of them were built on the Bayshore, up around Parkers Cove, up that way.Question: Do you remember the names of any particular boats?Answer: Ah, well, there was the, let's see,Question: Wilbur Robinson's boat, do you remember what that was?Answer: Yeah, that was- Wilbur, let me see, what was his now, gosh now, I'm on the spot there now.Question: Or snow? Was he the one that built his own boat, you say, in Victoria Beach?Answer: Right. Question: Horace Snow.Answer: I forget the name of the boat that heQuestion: Now, let's talk about Horace snow's boat that he built himself. Did he build it there at Victoria Beach?Answer: He Built it over there at Port Wade.Question: Port Wade?Answer: Port Wade.Question: And how big- how long would that have been?Answer: That would have been about 50 or 55 feet probably, I suppose.Question: And did she fish here for a long time.Answer: Quite a few years, yeah.Question: After he was gone, orAnswer: No, I think the boat was out of commission before he died, I think. I'm not sure about that, but I think it was out of commission. He might have sold it to somebody else, I forget now.Question: Do you recall what her width would have been?Answer: Ah, no, I don't know the dimensions. I really don't know the width. That is, it probably would have been 55, could have been a 65-foot boat.Question: And what kind of an engine would he have had?Answer: No, well it was a gasoline engine, but I don't know the power.Question: They used to use Acadia engines in the 20'sAnswer: That's true. Yeah, I know that Mr. Sollows used to sell - I think he sold boats here, you know, he was selling engines fromQuestion: Did he sell Acadia engines orAnswer: Ah, I think he did. I'm not sure about that.Question: Did he sell anything other than that?Answer: No, I don't know.Question: Vincent, we just had a little interruption and you told me the name of the boat that Elwood Oliver operated at that time.Answer: Yeah, the "Lorraine O." Was the name of the Question: And those Turner brothers were who?Answer: Donald and Milton. Yeah, they ran their own boat. Very good fishermen. They were very reliable. They were steady customers of ours. We really valued them as customers and friends, for that matter. Fine chaps.Question: O.K. Now after, so you and Clayton and another brother established the business, Snow Brothers Registered, during 1936.Answer: That's right.Question: What course did that business take after that? What sort of business interest did, perhaps, you and your brothers pursue up until retirement?Answer: Well, in the early 40's, my brother, Clayton, and I divided the business. He , ah, we had started the lobster business you see, and we had the scallop business, and so he took the lobster and I took the scallop business, and then after a little bit, we, I think that he and I also started buying ground fish, too, before we divided the business a bit but anyway, he just took the lobster end of it and he developed that by - he started building buildings and building lobster cars so that we were selling lobster the year around. I know I still did some business with him after we divided the business and, by pounding the lobster in floats. Why there was a fellow by the name of Edmond Thimont. He came up and built us some lobster cars.Question: Oh, from Church Point, Saulnierville?Answer: Yeah, he died just a few years ago.Question: ComeauvilleAnswer: No. He was from down the -Westport. Down from the Islands. Thimont. Edmond Thimont. EdmondQuestion: Edmond ThimontAnswer: THIMOQuestion: He was from Westport?Answer: Down- I think so. Yeah. He was from the Islands somewhere there, and I think it was Westport. Yeah.Question: Ah, What sort of volume of business were you doing in scallops, say in the late 40's, when you were handling it all?Answer: Well, we were shipping anywhere form like, 30- 40 kegs at a time, and I remember that was one particularly good spell of weather and we worked three days and three nights with hardly any sleep at all because the boats, then, used to, you know, they'd fish anytime during the twenty - four hours that was good, fine weather to fish and we'd get weather reports from the Wilsons who were then down at the lighthouse, you know, and they were very kind in giving us weather reports as to how the weather was in the bay, and so anyway, we worked these three days and three nights. I guess I got about five hours sleep, and average of two or three hours of night, and we were falling asleep on our feet for that matter, but we bought three hundred barrels, three hundred kegs during that spell of weather, and the fishermen, actually, they were wiser than us at that particular time. This was sometime during the late 30's, and they were wiser on the markets and they had rather, they were better weather profits than we were, so they knew, pretty well knew, that the market was going to go down and down and we were taking a chance on the weather breaking, you know, and the market holding, and that pretty near put us out of business. We lost over $300. We had bought 300 kegs and had lost over kegs and had lost over $300 so we had to reassess and think about this.Question: What was the price of scallops? You lost about a dollar a keg.Answer: Yeah, we lost an average of about a dollar a keg.Question: What was the market value for keg at that point?Answer: They were around, let's see, for a keg, 125 pounds, they were only going for about $12- $14 a keg.Question: So about $ 0.10 a poundAnswer: Yeah, something like that.Question: so you lost about 0.10% on your gross.Answer: Yeah.Question: Were those shucked ashore at that point or shucked on board?Answer: No, they were shucked, for the most part, in the Bay and they took shuckers a long with them.Question: Do you remember when and why what changed? Why they were shucked ashore?Answer: I think there was more intensive fishing. You see, in the 20's, in the mid 20's and late 20's, they didn't fish as many hours, probably, as they began to fish in the late 30's, when we established our business.Question: Was there any use made of the shells when they were shucking ashore?Answer: Some, yeah. We used to barrel them up in the apple barrels, the shells, and some people like to have that and I think probably they were used for different purposes, I don't know. There was a certain amount of lime, you know, you break them up and they were good chicken feed. And clam shells, maybe, I don't know.Question: In dollar volume, what was the biggest year, or would you mind telling me what was the biggest year of dollar volume that your business did?Answer: Ah, scallops, let me see, I'm pretty, it's very hard to say but, we would, that was when, let's see, October, November, about a six-month season, would it be something like that, and the total production would be, oh goodness, we might send eight or ten thousand kegs to market, or something like that, if you could figure that out.Question: I see, and at price of $12 or something like that?Answer: Yeah, a keg, you see.Question: Now, did you ever handle more scallops than you did during that period, after you and Bucky separated, did you handle more scallops after that, or, than you had before, or was.Answer: No, about the same, the same Quantity of scallops. Ah, you see, IQuestion: Then you got into clams after that period, did you?Answer: Yeah, the clam business I went into about the middle 50's, and I still kept on buying scallops, but when we began to process clam meats, and we canned those you know.