David Boyd

Back in the ’50s and ’60s, I grew up on the fishing boats with father in a little fishing village that was isolated from the world. No roads in, no roads out. But my father fished for all of his life. He lived to be 92. So I developed a great love for the water and for fishing. And when we say fishing, we meant fishing for cod, of course, right? We had cod traps back then, right? So anyway, I fished all my formative years and matter of fact, I had my first lobster licence back when I was eight years old. It was 50 cents then to buy a lobster licence. All the boys in the harbour had their own lobster licence and so on, right? We had a great bit of fun. You know, not like today. We were only in the house long enough to gobble something down to eat and then gone through the door, right? There was no road to my village at that time, and we had to make our own fun. But anyway, to make a long story short, in 1995 I said to my wife, Christine, everything that I grew up with in that little fishing village, like all the fishing artefacts and the old fishing stages and fish stores and net lofts had all fallen down, you know? Somebody ought to do something about it. But too often we say “somebody”. So anyway, we decided we were going to build a fishing museum, or a fishing heritage centre. Anyway, I called it the Prime Berth Historic Fishing Centre. So we built a place that’s a tribute to my father and all the fishermen and fishing families and fishing women, because the women worked harder than the men, I think. So we’ve been at that now since 1995, we actually started in the fall of ’94. And this year I had 100 motor coaches. We did demonstrations in the old fishing stage where I grew up as a boy for 100 motor coach groups. That’s maybe 45 people in a motor coach, so we had at least 4500 people from all over the world on motor coaches come to visit us. And that’s not counting the individual tourists, right? But in addition to that, we also do boat tours and take people out cod fishing when the recreational fishery is open. I’m still a commercial fisherman, by the way. I’m 75 years old now.